Thread: Reich and Glass

Looking into buying some Steve Reich and Phillip Glass CDs this upcoming payday. Any "must-haves" or other suggestions for me? Looking for stuff that exemplifies their styles.

Well for Reich this 5 CD box set can be got pretty cheap and contains many of his important works:

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Glass: Solo Piano, Two Pages (There's a CD with this, Contrary Motion and Music in Fifths on, find it!) and Koyaanisqatsi should get you started nicely.

There's a free digital album sampler of Philip Glass on Amazon. "The Orange Mountain Music Sampler" Of course it has snippets instead of full works, but 1) It's free, 2) It's enjoyable and 3) May help direct you to which works you'd best enjoy. For example, based off listening to that I picked up his solo piano album.

I have the box that Quack mentions, it is quite a good starting point for Reich, yes (it was an end point for me too, I must admit, have not the time to explore more of his works. And that is not something I'll be doing any soon, I think, no Reich fan I think). For Glass, I can recommend the following cd's:

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Solo piano works, very nice, seet calming music


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Much more heavy music. It is like a gigantic big old ship, it sounds like an angry ocean. (film music)

I love Glassworks too:

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Solo piano

And then there is his opera Einstein on the Beach (I have a bit of a hate/love relationship with it - I'm not always in the mood for the talking through the singing thing, but you could try it)

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The nice thing about Glass is it really doesn't matter which CD you get. They all sound just as good as any other one.

Personally, I go off Glass's music fast from about 1985. His earliest pieces have a minimalist rigour which you can either like or not, but at least it’s honest and self-sufficient. The epitome of this style was probably reached in Music in twelve parts (1971-4) and Einstein on the beach (1976).

There is then a brief transitional period where you can hear Glass fighting to reconcile his former rigorous style with a much looser, more melodic one - in this stage the former wins in pieces like The photographer and Koyaanisqatsi (both 1982), and the latter wins in the two operas, Satyagraha (1979) and Akhnaten (1983).

Thereafter, Glass seeks to play with the big boys by producing what I presume he hopes are appealing, non-rigorous pieces which seek to sugar the pill of minimalism to the point where it is better to call his style post-minimalist. The trouble is that even composers like John Adams can beat him at it and, because he still chooses to handicap himself with a quasi-minimalist style, almost every composer who chooses not to limit themselves in that way can produce works of far more interest and diversity.

That said, I do have a soft spot for his operas, the CIVIL wars, act V (1984) and La belle et la bête (1994, actually synched with Cocteau’s masterpiece of the same name and intended to be played in parallel with a screening of the film); Hydrogen jukebox (a collection of songs to texts by Allen Ginsberg, 1990); and the Three songs for a capella choir (1984). And modesty does not prevent me from mentioning my own arrangement of his Songs from liquid days (1986) for optional soloists, chorus and small ensemble, which was personally approved by Mr Glass and is on Spotify if you’re interested.

So I believe it's worth being aware of when a piece of his music was written (see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...y_Philip_Glass).

You see exactly the same process with the development of Steve Reich’s music. There is an initial stage of real minimalist rigour (eg Clapping music) which reaches its climax in Drumming (1971, best heard in its DG version which has far more repeats than the Nonesuch recording).

Then there’s a transitional stage in which the introduction of melody and harmony are kept under firm rein (probably the best of these works is Music for mallet instruments, voices and organ (1973) and Music for 18 musicians (1974–76)) before Reich, like Glass, seeks to deploy far more of the traditional techniques and devices of non-minimalist composers whilst still voluntarily shackling himself with quasi-minimalist processes. The desert music (1983), a big work for choir and orchestra, is impressive in its own terms but, like Glass’s Itaipu (1989) for similar forces, isn’t a patch on John Adams’s Harmonium (1981).

Steve Reich:

Music for 18 musicians ~ The EMI recording listed as one track is the best. Perhaps the 'seminal' widely successful piece which defines one type of minimalism (including the phasing, natch) and the orchestration, malletphones, saxaphones, wordless singers, multiple pianos, a few other winds and strings. The piece runs without pause for about 55 minutes.

Desert Music ~ Cantata for chorus and orchestra

Electric counterpoint ~ written for Pat Methany: Multi-tracked electric guitar piece.

Different trains ~ for taped material (voices, text) and string quartet. A very fine work.

Double Sextet

Thank you all for the suggestions. I think I now know what to look for.

@quack: Love boxed sets. Definitely going to look into that one.

@Bas: I'm definitely more interested in the "heavy" stuff, to mirror my current fascination with abstract and minimalist visual arts.

@Mr. Marchant: Lovely advice, thank you. I tried making a Pandora playlist for Glass, and the music seemed a bit average (film music, mostly). When Bach's cello suites started playing on that station, I figured I should try to find Glass's more heavy works some other way. Glad to know it's not just me, and that Glass's music does actually change throughout his career. I'll definitely be looking into Einstein on the Beach and Koyaanisqatsi, both of which have been recommended by others, as well.

@PetrB: I heard part of Music for 18 musicians on Pandora and part of Desert Music on Youtube, and I found both of them fascinating. Thank you for your other recommendations, as well.

Originally Posted by Jeremy Marchant

The desert music (1983), a big work for choir and orchestra, is impressive in its own terms but, like Glass’s Itaipu (1989) for similar forces, isn’t a patch on John Adams’s Harmonium (1981).

I've never liked "The Desert Music", for some reason the compositional techniques that work exceptionally well for his pieces written for smaller ensembles don't blend well with large-scale orchestral writing. I believe Reich admitted this partly and the fact that he hasn't written anything on the scale of "The Desert Music" is equally telling. The comparison with "Itaipu" is a good one, though Glass' output is rife with grandiose (dare I say pompous) orchestration.

As for representative Reich and Glass pieces. I hear good things about the later Glass, "Songs and Poems for Solo Cello", but I must say he's not one of my favourite composers. Reich is, and if you want a taste of the later Reich I would recommend listening to "Different Trains" and "Three Tales". The first is one of his great works prominently featuring speech melody and "Three Tales" a logical continuation of the former, though not as emotionally striking as "Different Trains".

Reich:

Originally Posted by Couchie

Reich:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iNhil6GPYU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbC5zhFX7Kw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZRBfRXJyak

1. Glitch.
2. Awesome polyrhythms.
3. Was electronically sampling speech into music before EDM.

Neat.