Never commented on the internet before, but I just started to learn playing the Intro Theme to Candyman on piano [0] yesterday and then saw this. Weird coincidence...
The movie Candyman itself and the rest of the songs in the score are also fantastic.
Heard about that song from the sample in Travis Scott's The Prayer [1].
Nothing weird at all. After I learned horse riding (focus: dressage) I started seeing horse-related stuff everywhere - horse carrying trailers on roads, shops, etc.
The "secret" is not some deep universe related mystery but your perception. Those horse-related things were there all along - I just never paid attention, my mind filtered it without any of it ever reaching my consciousness. Your mind filters out lots and lots of headlines when you scroll through the news or HN, your brain reacts when something is relevant.
That there has to be something relevant even if it's niche once in a while is not exactly shocking when HN goes through several dozens of headlines every single day. The site shows you so many diverse topics, it would be strange if you never have this experience.
I had no idea he wrote that, very interesting! I need to look into other film scores he's written.
My first introduction to Philip Glass was his Book of Longing collaboration with Leonard Cohen. If anyone hasn't heard this, I'd recommend you check it out on Spotify.
Really surprised nobody commented on this. Specifically, the magnitude of what he/she is saying - not just first comment on HN (43 month old account), but first on the internet.
>Yes, after Einstein on the Beach I went back to driving a New York cab. I didn’t mind that. It was interesting work. I didn’t have an agent. I ran all the business side of it and the box office myself. I enjoyed it.
> Throughout this period, Glass supported himself as a New York cabbie and as a plumber, occupations that often led to unusual encounters. “I had gone to install a dishwasher in a loft in SoHo,” he says. “While working, I suddenly heard a noise and looked up to find Robert Hughes, the art critic of Time magazine, staring at me in disbelief. ‘But you’re Philip Glass! What are you doing here?’ It was obvious that I was installing his dishwasher and I told him I would soon be finished. ‘But you are an artist,’ he protested. I explained that I was an artist but that I was sometimes a plumber as well and that he should go away and let me finish.
There are a couple of great anecdotes about Glass working at other jobs while starting out as a composer, one involving the art critic of Time magazine and another about driving a taxi.
'Glass understood that he had finally arrived as a composer when a woman tapped on the side of his cab and told him “you have the same name as a very famous composer.”
I first herd Einstein on the Beach after a particularly manic period in undergrad. My advisor wasn't familiar with it, and I may have spooked her a bit try to explain it. I think to this day its great background music for programming work, but to me more because it can illicit that sense of young focus and drive that I find increasingly fleeting. Perhaps not unlike how music can "wake up" dementia patients. It elicits a deep base response.
Anyhow, I didn't know that either about his life. Very fascinating.
As an aside I believe I discovered Einstein on the Beach after listening to Hydrogen Jukebox. I wonder how others come about listening to it for the first time. Especially those in their 30s like myself who were born a decade after its success.
I discovered Philip Glass' music through the movie Koyaanisqatsi, which I heartily recommend. If you haven't seen it, go into it without expectations of what a movie is supposed to be like; it's weird.
I remember the name Philip Glass only due to watching the movie "Hamburger Hill", which started with an opening theme [1] that seemed so unusual that I looked up the composer on wikipdia.
Koyaanisqatsi is an anthropological study of Earth made by aliens. They watch it before deciding "Not Yet" to the question of whether to invite Earth to join the Galactic Federation.
This is how I discovered his music as well. I probably saw it for the first time 15 years ago and I still listen to the soundtrack regularly. Incredibly powerful, both film and music.
I'd listened to Philip Glass quite a bit through studying music in high school (including some exposure from the drum and bugle corps scene), but hilariously enough it's his composition for Kundun that stuck with me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAh9oLs67Cw
While I'd listened to some of his music previously, Spotify highlighted his score for Tales from the Loop with their end of year "Missed Hits" and it is excellent. Been listening to it the last few days.
I saw Glass at a performing arts center in my hometown. The PAC has a lot of season ticket holders, and Glass' music triggered an older attendee to march to the front of the auditorium and yell, "this isn't music". He was quickly ushered out by his wife, but Glass was noticeably smirking, and the whole thing really added to the avant garde vibe of the performance. Amazing concert BTW. One of my favorite artists.
Steve Reich mentioned a similar anecdote in which an audience member came up to the stage and banged on it with his shoe demanding that the playing be stopped.
Philip Glass is my hero and inspired me to learn playing piano.
Personal anecdote: I've managed to get invited to a small Einstein on the Beach play at The Greene Space NYC - I've been flying to NYC for business and this alone made my whole trip so much nicer. I remember him sitting 2 chairs away from me and the play was beautiful.
If you're curious, I strongly suggest watching
Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts documentary about his life and career. What a man.
> Have the old divisions between musical styles – a source of surprisingly bitter contention in the last decades of the 20th century – now healed? Do people now accept your chosen path of tonal harmony, melody, repetitive structures?
> No no no no no. Those divisions never healed. Those people just died! The people who don’t want you don’t change their minds. You outlive them, if you’re lucky. They’re all dead now, the older guys. The battle was never won or lost. The army just went away. What can I tell you? Isn’t that the truth? It’s biology. Nothing more than that. They’ve just gone away… and we carry on playing.
This seems true in so many things: politics, engineering approaches, even theology at times. Keep doing what you think is worthwhile, but don't expect to change the minds of the old guard: you "win" by having the newer generation accept your approach.
These days I would pick a movie to see based on who did or contributed to its soundtrack. Glass, Zimmer, Richter, and Preisnser, in particular.
Some of Glass' work transposes well to other instruments, but a real extra gift to the world would be if he wrote a guitar suite.
I've been hacking around with a classical guitar arrangement of Pärt's "Spiegel im Spiegel," and might see if Glass' new "The Teacher" is more amenable, as it's very much an homage about 1/3 the length and complexity.
Philip was awarded a Kennedy Center Honors in 2018 for lifetime achievement [1]. St Vincent performed one of his pieces from the Mishima film soundtrack on guitar [2], but it has since been removed from the web. If anyone can locate it, please post link.
The Philip Glass Mishima string quartets by the Smith Quartet are pretty nice if you havent heard them. From the soundstrack to a film about Mishima, who was also being discussed on HN the other week
I've seen all three of the "Portrait operas" live. The second two are definitely very different to Einstein on the Beach which feels more "modern" and experimental (but also really approachable - this is far from what many people expect of 20th Century avant-garde music)
Steve Reich seemed to want to also move towards more conventional narrative forms later in his career and seemed to sacrifice some of the elegance and purity to do so.
John Adams on the other hand came a generation later and those compromises always felt more natural and less forced for him.
(Terry Riley is the real maverick out of the original minimalists. He just does his own thing and damn everyone else. I had the pleasure of having a very brief chat with him after a concert and he was a lovely chap. I asked him about John Cale)
Reich is brilliant! “Come out” is a very affecting piece, and the history behind it is also quite interesting.
Also, judging from the name, OP is probably also a fan of Arvo Part. There is a moving “video etude” for the piece Healing of Arinushka that I would recommend if you’re feeling contemplative https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7exvD2nJG8
Music for 18 Musicians is my favorite composition.
Some crazy post-grad at Rutgers convinced enough colleagues to make it her performance piece a few years ago, and it was free to boot, so I drove a couple hours with a friend to see it. It’s great on recordings, and much cooler to be in the room with it live.
I’ve also recently come to love (especially the first half/performance of) Terry Riley’s Persian Surgery Dervishes. With just an organ and a delay pedal, he builds such a trancelike, subdued and dark yet pleasant mood.
If you want to see a hilariously awful documentary, watch "Glass: A Portrait of Philip In Twelve Parts". It's hard to say whether the director really intended to create a more subtle and wry Spinal Tap, or it just came out that way. (Not knocking Mr. Glass - you're welcome to enjoy his music as much as any other and I like some of it too)
I love some of Glass's works, but others I find annoying. If you experiment on the cutting edge, you will have clunkers and duds, but also break ground every now and then. Or invent something half-finished that a future composer will improve upon.
Works that transitioned from Baroque to Classical are often considered clunky by modern standards, but that's because they were trying new things. If those pioneers didn't experiment, we wouldn't have Mozart and Beethoven. (I do enjoy Baroque though.)
I make electronic music. 7 years ago, in a very sad period of my life, I made a classical piece of music, (From midnight to 4am) which I am very proud of it today. It would make me really happy to get some feedback from you guys if you know a thing or two about music. It tells a very personal story and here is the link to it:
When I was in high school, my friend got the cassette tape of the first part of Satyagraha stuck in his car stereo. For some reason rather than digging it out, we just went around blasting it for months. We were even singing along in overly dramatic fashion by the end of it.
> Have the old divisions between musical styles – a source of surprisingly bitter contention in the last decades of the 20th century – now healed? Do people now accept your chosen path of tonal harmony, melody, repetitive structures?
> No no no no no. Those divisions never healed. Those people just died!
Ain't that the truth!
The cool thing about (most of) the assholes being dead is that they didn't need to be correct in their various ideologies for their work to be meaningful, even for composers who work outside of a particular aesthetic.
So today you can have composers still engaging with and drawing upon the work of the assholes without having to deal with any of the negative side effects of interacting with them (verbal abuse, professional ostracization, etc.).
His style of minimlaist music is certainly attractive to the HN demographics, I'd say that it helps a certain type of focused flow given its apparent lack of melody or traditional chord progressions.
Take for example his "Opening" from Glassworks (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2vRbNehGB0) is not that difficult to play once you get the hang of the polyrhythm, but it's difficult to understand why it works the way it works.
I miss the documentary about Glass that used to be available on streaming. It's one of the few discs I plan to actually buy.
I don't understand the business model of small films that withdraw from streaming completely, especially documentaries. Surely that can't be more profitable? I think about this question a lot while going through the dreck on Netflix and Amazon Prime. I think about all that work and knowledge and art just going silent and no one ever finding it or watching it again.
[+] [-] pdevalla|5 years ago|reply
The movie Candyman itself and the rest of the songs in the score are also fantastic.
Heard about that song from the sample in Travis Scott's The Prayer [1].
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7FFEu7Har0
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iOH8V0KTVI
[+] [-] nosianu|5 years ago|reply
Nothing weird at all. After I learned horse riding (focus: dressage) I started seeing horse-related stuff everywhere - horse carrying trailers on roads, shops, etc.
The "secret" is not some deep universe related mystery but your perception. Those horse-related things were there all along - I just never paid attention, my mind filtered it without any of it ever reaching my consciousness. Your mind filters out lots and lots of headlines when you scroll through the news or HN, your brain reacts when something is relevant.
That there has to be something relevant even if it's niche once in a while is not exactly shocking when HN goes through several dozens of headlines every single day. The site shows you so many diverse topics, it would be strange if you never have this experience.
[+] [-] patates|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ktross|5 years ago|reply
My first introduction to Philip Glass was his Book of Longing collaboration with Leonard Cohen. If anyone hasn't heard this, I'd recommend you check it out on Spotify.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAn8s13kleU
[+] [-] coolgeek|5 years ago|reply
Really surprised nobody commented on this. Specifically, the magnitude of what he/she is saying - not just first comment on HN (43 month old account), but first on the internet.
It was a 'Holy cow' moment for me.
Hope you found it fruitful, pdevalla!
[+] [-] thinkr|5 years ago|reply
Just threw on my headphones and listened to it 5 times.
[+] [-] rajangdavis|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emptyfile|5 years ago|reply
Interesting, I had no idea.
[+] [-] dorkwood|5 years ago|reply
> Throughout this period, Glass supported himself as a New York cabbie and as a plumber, occupations that often led to unusual encounters. “I had gone to install a dishwasher in a loft in SoHo,” he says. “While working, I suddenly heard a noise and looked up to find Robert Hughes, the art critic of Time magazine, staring at me in disbelief. ‘But you’re Philip Glass! What are you doing here?’ It was obvious that I was installing his dishwasher and I told him I would soon be finished. ‘But you are an artist,’ he protested. I explained that I was an artist but that I was sometimes a plumber as well and that he should go away and let me finish.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/nov/24/arts.highe...
[+] [-] ranko|5 years ago|reply
https://interlude.hk/philip-glass-composer-taxi-driver/
'Glass understood that he had finally arrived as a composer when a woman tapped on the side of his cab and told him “you have the same name as a very famous composer.”
[+] [-] mgr86|5 years ago|reply
Anyhow, I didn't know that either about his life. Very fascinating.
As an aside I believe I discovered Einstein on the Beach after listening to Hydrogen Jukebox. I wonder how others come about listening to it for the first time. Especially those in their 30s like myself who were born a decade after its success.
[+] [-] brianzelip|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hypertele-Xii|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Alex3917|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Bayart|5 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq_SpRBXRmE
[+] [-] crooked-v|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dvdkhlng|5 years ago|reply
[1] https://youtu.be/YeD4b2L1iNU
[+] [-] jspash|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dreamcompiler|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 3np|5 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAh9oLs67Cw
[+] [-] allenu|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yellowapple|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] runarberg|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sebmellen|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dwd|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pacomerh|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tmountain|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoeDaDude|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marshray|5 years ago|reply
Have to admit I was a little disappointed to find that wasn't part of the show.
[+] [-] john61|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AndrewUnmuted|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FBISurveillance|5 years ago|reply
Personal anecdote: I've managed to get invited to a small Einstein on the Beach play at The Greene Space NYC - I've been flying to NYC for business and this alone made my whole trip so much nicer. I remember him sitting 2 chairs away from me and the play was beautiful.
If you're curious, I strongly suggest watching Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts documentary about his life and career. What a man.
[+] [-] geofft|5 years ago|reply
> No no no no no. Those divisions never healed. Those people just died! The people who don’t want you don’t change their minds. You outlive them, if you’re lucky. They’re all dead now, the older guys. The battle was never won or lost. The army just went away. What can I tell you? Isn’t that the truth? It’s biology. Nothing more than that. They’ve just gone away… and we carry on playing.
This seems true in so many things: politics, engineering approaches, even theology at times. Keep doing what you think is worthwhile, but don't expect to change the minds of the old guard: you "win" by having the newer generation accept your approach.
[+] [-] motohagiography|5 years ago|reply
Some of Glass' work transposes well to other instruments, but a real extra gift to the world would be if he wrote a guitar suite.
I've been hacking around with a classical guitar arrangement of Pärt's "Spiegel im Spiegel," and might see if Glass' new "The Teacher" is more amenable, as it's very much an homage about 1/3 the length and complexity.
[+] [-] JoeDaDude|5 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_Center_Honors#2010s
[2] https://consequenceofsound.net/2018/12/st-vincent-tribute-ph...
[+] [-] codeulike|5 years ago|reply
String Quartet No.3: "Mishima": "Blood Oath"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXf77yY8qVg
String Quartet No.3: "Mishima": "1957: Award Montage"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJE7I8GfOaY
[+] [-] andybak|5 years ago|reply
Steve Reich seemed to want to also move towards more conventional narrative forms later in his career and seemed to sacrifice some of the elegance and purity to do so.
John Adams on the other hand came a generation later and those compromises always felt more natural and less forced for him.
(Terry Riley is the real maverick out of the original minimalists. He just does his own thing and damn everyone else. I had the pleasure of having a very brief chat with him after a concert and he was a lovely chap. I asked him about John Cale)
[+] [-] okareaman|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taliesinb|5 years ago|reply
Also, judging from the name, OP is probably also a fan of Arvo Part. There is a moving “video etude” for the piece Healing of Arinushka that I would recommend if you’re feeling contemplative https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7exvD2nJG8
[+] [-] filoeleven|5 years ago|reply
Some crazy post-grad at Rutgers convinced enough colleagues to make it her performance piece a few years ago, and it was free to boot, so I drove a couple hours with a friend to see it. It’s great on recordings, and much cooler to be in the room with it live.
I’ve also recently come to love (especially the first half/performance of) Terry Riley’s Persian Surgery Dervishes. With just an organ and a delay pedal, he builds such a trancelike, subdued and dark yet pleasant mood.
[+] [-] AndrewUnmuted|5 years ago|reply
IMO, an excellent first listen would be Tehillim. [0]
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiaTvR9sFX8
[+] [-] kerblang|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tabtab|5 years ago|reply
Works that transitioned from Baroque to Classical are often considered clunky by modern standards, but that's because they were trying new things. If those pioneers didn't experiment, we wouldn't have Mozart and Beethoven. (I do enjoy Baroque though.)
Keep experimenting, Mr. Glass!
[+] [-] mozak1111|5 years ago|reply
https://soundcloud.com/bitmarx/story-of-a-rexile
[+] [-] TigeriusKirk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jancsika|5 years ago|reply
> No no no no no. Those divisions never healed. Those people just died!
Ain't that the truth!
The cool thing about (most of) the assholes being dead is that they didn't need to be correct in their various ideologies for their work to be meaningful, even for composers who work outside of a particular aesthetic.
So today you can have composers still engaging with and drawing upon the work of the assholes without having to deal with any of the negative side effects of interacting with them (verbal abuse, professional ostracization, etc.).
Edit: clarification
[+] [-] pantulis|5 years ago|reply
Take for example his "Opening" from Glassworks (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2vRbNehGB0) is not that difficult to play once you get the hang of the polyrhythm, but it's difficult to understand why it works the way it works.
[+] [-] Gehinnn|5 years ago|reply
The theme that starts at 2:18 is just so typical for him (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU_uBDujLAE&feature=youtu.be...). I do believe that he composes symphonies, they are just not so different from his other works.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] JohnJamesRambo|5 years ago|reply
I don't understand the business model of small films that withdraw from streaming completely, especially documentaries. Surely that can't be more profitable? I think about this question a lot while going through the dreck on Netflix and Amazon Prime. I think about all that work and knowledge and art just going silent and no one ever finding it or watching it again.