Philip Glass

View moreBrowse piano sheets by Philip Glass on Zen Virtual Piano. Glass's father owned a record store and his mother was a librarian. His father often received promotional copies of new recordings at the store. Glass spent many hours listening to them, which shaped his knowledge of music and his taste. His composition teachers included Vincent Persichetti and William Bergsma, and Steve Reich and Peter Schickele were fellow students. Many hours spent listening to promotional copies of new recordings suggests that his ear was trained as much by listening as by lessons. In 1964 he received a Fulbright Scholarship, and from autumn 1964 to summer 1966 he studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger; in 1979 he said, “The composers I studied with Boulanger are the people I still think about most,” naming Bach and Mozart. His distinctive style came from working with Shankar and Rakha, who perceived rhythm in Indian music as entirely additive. He worked as a studio assistant to the visual artist Richard Serra from 1971 to 1974, and from 1973 to 1978 he also worked as a plumber and cab driver, and he had a moving company with his cousin, the sculptor Jene Highstein. Serra provided Glass with gallery contacts, and the two collaborated on various sculptures, films and installations. Work as Serra's studio assistant, set beside his Paris studies with Boulanger, may suggest that his training and his contact with visual art came from different directions. A style that came from working with Shankar and Rakha and their additive view of rhythm, together with a 1979 remark naming Bach and Mozart, may hint at influences drawn from more than one tradition. He formed the Philip Glass Ensemble in 1968, but wide critical and popular success came only with his opera Einstein on the Beach in 1976. In 1982 he became the first composer since Aaron Copland to join the CBS Masterworks label. The success of Einstein on the Beach in 1976, set beside his work as a plumber and cab driver from 1973 to 1978, may suggest that his day jobs overlapped with the years his opera drew wide attention. Glassworks came after his bigger concert and stage pieces and was meant as a pop-leaning, “Walkman-suitable” record: its pieces are much shorter and easier to approach, and they were written for the recording studio. The credits list the music as composed and arranged by Glass and produced by Kurt Munkacsi and Glass; Jack Kripl is credited on piccolo, soprano sax, clarinet and bass clarinet, and Glass on electric organ. The Grammy Trustees Award (2020), the Kennedy Center Honors (2018), the National Medal of Arts (2010) and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1995) are among his honors. A composer joining the CBS Masterworks label, set beside a record written for the recording studio, may point to recorded music being part of his work.

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