Recent Pasts 20/21 Words Series - Philip Glass, Page 6

MAGNUSSEN:	Now at a certain point you stopped writing what you considered Minimalist music, so the change that your music has undergone, the kind of music that you were writing in the late 60s vs. now, for instance – how would you describe that?
GLASS:	I have a very easy way of describing that. When people ask me what kind of music I write I say, “I write theater music.” And that has the virtue of being actually truthful. I've written more theater music than anything else. I've written 20 operas, at least 20 ballets, probably more film scores, lots and lots of theater pieces. I worked in the Public Theater when Joe Papp was there. I was there for about 20 years, and those things happen very quickly. The music for a Shakespeare play – I would write the music in a couple of weeks, and those things would happen all the time. So, I've written so much theater music I can truthfully say I'm a theater composer. Or to put it another way, I'm writing an opera now so I'm at home, but I just finished a symphony for Leonard Slatkin and I felt a little uncomfortable – I didn't have a libretto.
BRUBAKER:	I was going to ask you, are you always writing theater music? In fact, in some sense, even in the non-theater music?
GLASS:	I think I am. What I did with Leonard's piece is that I wrote a three-part piece based on the trilogy of ideas of the Mayan-Toltec tradition of Mexico. I checked with him – this was his birthday piece – I said, “Would you like to have a piece involving Mexican history and Mexican philosophy?” and he said yes, he was very interested. So, the first is called The Corn , the second The Sacred Root and the third The Blue Deer . These are significant ideas that have to do with that culture, and in a sense I basically turned it into a theater piece. The Sixth Symphony was based on a poem of Alan Ginsberg, called “Plutonium Ode.” The Fifth Symphony has a lot of text for chorus, The Fourth Symphony – I'm going backward – The Fourth Symphony was based on music of David Bowie, The Third Symphony was actually a symphony, The Second Symphony was also a symphony, and the first piece was another piece based on music of David Bowie. So, of the seven symphonies I would say only two are, strictly speaking, purely symphonic or ideas that came from the language of the symphony itself. So, what I would say: the difference between theater music and concert music is that concert music usually is based on ideas of the language of music itself, whereas theater music is always based on something that comes from outside. It can be text, movement, image and music. Those are the four elements, and those cover everything pretty much. They are the earth, air, fire and water of theater. When we work writing a string quartet or a symphony, we might be thinking about the musical language itself. And that's the reason, very clearly - apart from a few exceptions, Brahms did not write any operas and Verdi didn't write any symphonies (as far as I know). Basically, composers find themselves doing one thing or the other. And it's a predilection you will probably have had from a very early time in your life. So, the other thing about the theater and film and dance is that, when our work is impacted by these other things – by text or by image – we invariably find ourselves doing something that we didn't know how to do. That was what happened to Stravinsky when he began writing ballets, he had to invent a music that – of course, he was well on his way with his studies with Rimsky Korsakov, and he had a very good…
BRUBAKER:	But isn't that what happened to you? I think it's what happened to you.
GLASS:	Just what happened to Stravinsky?
BRUBAKER:	No, but I think if somebody said, “OK, Philip Glass, here write me ten string quartets,” you wouldn't have found the same voice. You eventually did that, but I think it was in the theater…
GLASS:	Yes, I really found it in the theater. I've been working in the theater since I was twenty. And I found that the encounters with artists from other mediums always put me in a position where I didn't know what to do. I had to extend my vocabulary, extend the language of what I did. I had to invent something to account for a new situation.
BRUBAKER:	I wonder, is it a difference in this theater music, or these collaborations with film makers, for example? It's also music that really has a function.
GLASS:	You know, Bruce, for a long time theater composers were a bit looked down on. It was not considered pure music. However if you look at the history of music – if you look at the monumental changes in Western art music, you will find that for people like Monteverdi, Mozart, Wagner, Stravinsky – it all happened in the theater. And it happened I'm sure for the reasons I've expressed, that the composers had to retool themselves in order to address a situation which they had not encountered before.
BRUBAKER:	There's that little statement of John Cage where he says there are two kinds of music but he's more attracted to music that does something than to music that says something. He says a lot of music seems to say something but the music that's really interesting is music that does something. There's something about that which speaks to this issue of music for use -- “Here, give me twenty minutes to occupy this particular space.”
GLASS:	I think that the expansion of the music horizons that we've talked about is also because composers are working in what we used to call mixed media. Now we just call it opera, which is what it always was to begin with. We've all become involved with that.
BRUBAKER:	You see that happening in other arts, too, but it's very interesting to see it happening in music. People used to say in the visual arts, “Oh, I'm a photographer.” Well, who's a photographer anymore? Now, every artist is a photographer, everybody's using photography.
GLASS:	You don't feel that you're stuck with this old piano?
BRUBAKER:	Well, I'm trying to do what I can.
GLASS:	This is a wonderful instrument (referring to piano). That's what I have at home. All the electronic stuff is three blocks away. The only thing electronic in my house is the pencil sharpener…oh, and the metronome.