Customer Reviews

Glass: Symphony no 5 (Choral): Requiem, Bardo, Nirmanakaya

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I am one of those Philip Glass fans that is always looking for him to write Koyaanisqatsi all over again, though through time I come to love all of his symphonic works. His 5th symphony is no exception. From beginning to end, it constantly builds until the opening of the symphony is recapitulated in the last moment. Everything seems to flow seemlessly in the next section, with increasing tension and power. The different texts add so much to the symphony. Not only do they add a psuedo-plot, but also add a dimension of universality. Glass added them to promote a world culture, and they succeed very well. It is amazing to see all the parallels between the different religions presented. Perhaps the most interesting thing is how this music is refered to as minimalism, but looking at the orchestration and sheer magnitude of the symphony there is nothing minimal about it. This symphony will undoubtedly be paralleled with Mahler's 8th. Preexisting texts are sung and a huge symphony, including a choir, a boy's choir, and 5 soloists, is used. Like Mahler, Glass uses these to move his audience with great power, but there are also moments of great quiet and delicacy. It all contributes to a symphony that rivals Mahler's great masterpiece. The cd's themselves come with a set of ten (one for each movement) cardboard text guides. One the inside of each one are the words sung, and on the outside is a representation of the words in their respective languages. This adds to the overall listening experience but it also adds to the price, which is my only complaint. It is alot to pay for one opus, but if you are a die hard Glass fan like I am, then perhaps price isn't an option. Still, this is a must have for any Glass fan and for me, at least until he gets around to rewriting Koyaanisqatsi.

I bought the Glass Symphony No. 5 recording mainly because I had tickets to hear the work live at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and I wanted to know in advance how to listen to the music when I went there.

At first I listened to the CDs as I usually do--doing one or two other things at the same time. I thought, "That was nice music, but not exciting." Then I thought that since the work was a choral work in English, and the CDs came with such nice cards with all the words, I really should try reading along and focusing on the words. It was an investment in time and attention, but when I did it the symphony suddenly came alive to me, both musically and emotionally, and clearly that is how it was intended to be experienced.

At the Kennedy Center I had the opportunity to hear Philip Glass himself speak informally before the concert, describing the writing of Symphony No. 5. He was accompanied by the Rev. James Parks Morton, the President of the Interfaith Center of New York, who had been closely involved with Glass in collecting the text excerpts from the "world wisdom traditions" that were used as a text in the work.

In his talk, Glass confirmed that this work centers on the text. The symphony was intended as a large work that would be a tribute to the change of millennia. The music is in twelve sections (Glass seemed unsure whether they should be called movements), each treating a major theme found in the great scriptures. The text selections come from nearly every major world religion as well as wisdom stories from folk cultures worldwide. Not only does this work have geographic and cultural breadth, but also it has a breadth in time that boggles the mind, sweeping from "Before the Creation" to "Judgement and Apocalypse," and "Paradise." En route, the human condition is examined with sections entitled "Joy and Love," "Evil and Ignorance," "Suffering," "Compassion," and "Death."

Here are some brief examples of the text:

Before the Creation: The symphony opens with these memorable words: "There was neither non-existence nor existence then; there was neither realm of space nor the sky which is beyond. What stirred? Where?" (The Rig Veda, India)

Joy and Love: "Come, come, whoever you are!/ Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving./ Come./ This is not a caravan of despair./ It doesn't matter if you have broken your vows a thousand times./ Still come, and yet again come!" (Rumi, Persia)

Paradise: "There I have seen joy filled to the brim./ There falls the rhythmic beat of life and death:/ Rapture wells forth, and all space is radiant with light." (Kabir, India)

Dedication: The closing lines are: "For as long as space endures/ And [for] as long as living beings remain,/ Until then may I too abide/ To dispel the misery of the world." (Bodhicaryavatara, Tibet)

Glass pointed out that the last section repeats the music of the first section, "but a little more distantly." He said this is to suggest (as taught in Eastern traditions) that the great cosmic cycles of time repeat again and again, so as one cycle comes to an end another begins.

Glass said that while he was writing he wondered if the work, drawing from so many sources, might come across as a mere "patchwork of texts" rather than as a unified whole. But he said when he heard it performed he was satisfied that it held together well. This is my experience also. I was impressed that in this work so many disparate cultural voices speak together with both unity and urgency. It is a tribute to the universality of these text selections, as well as the sensitivity with which they were arranged.

Someone asked Glass how he came up with the music to fit each selection. He said that the music arose from the words themselves as he meditated on them, aided, of course, by a lifetime of composing music for songs and choral works.

Someone else asked Glass whether working with these texts had affected him spiritually. He answered that they had very much affected him and that he continues to study the wisdom teachings. Currently he is reading "Black Elk Speaks," and, he said, some of these texts have found their way into more recent works, including a Symphony No. 6 on which he is now working.

During the Kennedy Center performance, as the choruses and soloists lingered on every word, and the music embraced the beautiful thoughts of the great thinkers and spiritual seekers of the world, I felt emotionally overwhelmed. Other people too, were deeply moved as evidenced by a ten minute standing ovation for the hundreds of orchestral and choral performers, for the conductor, Dante Anzolini (who also conducted for the recording), and for Glass himself, who joined the performers for a bow.

Philip Glass is something of a paradox; he is continually changing in terms of the APPLICATION of the broad spectrum of influences he brings to bear on his creative process, but the process remains fundamentally the same. A few records back, I thought he might be heading in the Wagnerian direction, perhaps fondly reminiscing about his salad days with Nadia Boulangier. Certainly, LA BELE ET LA BETE reflected a certain Wagnerian posturing.

Here, in his Symphony 5, we have the final culmination of Glass's seemingly perpetual internal conflict between nineteenth century romanticism and late twentieth century modernism/minimalism. I'm not saying the result is necessarily the greatest thing on earth; I'm very fond of Glass's heavy-duty minimalism, especially MISHIMA and KOYANISQUAATSI (and of course EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH.) But here we have something more enduring and more profound than the early works. Philip's had things on his mind. The music of course revisits his trademark loops and arpeggios but also has a dark, surging urgency that the bare minimalist frameworks of his earlier pieces simply lack.

This really is a tour-de-force of Philip Glass; no matter what period of his music you like (if, for instance, you prefer his CANDYMAN work, or you really like the score for THE SECRET AGENT, which I think contains some of his best moments musically), Symphony No. 5 has something for you to appreciate. If you like Philip loud, he's loud. If you like him dark, he's appreciatively millenium-compatibly dark. If you like him soft, there are moments reminiscent of SATYGRAHA or even Mahler's KINDERTODENLIEDER. It does lag if you examine it in bits and pieces; you can't just skip around and listen to random bits like you can with EINSTEIN. Listen to the whole thing and then understand how far Glass has come-- from someone who was essentially extending Satie's concept of 'furniture music' (people were free to wander in and out of the initial eight hour performance of EINSTEIN), to someone trying to reconcile his own inner spiritual vision with a newly reborn creative dynamic shed of the 'largess' of postmodern minimalism. Glass denies that his music was ever polemic, and the film-maker (and fellow Boulangier alum) Godfrey Reggio has even called Glass the last 19th century Romantic. But here, the concern (and debate) over how much the currents of modernist polemic have influenced Glass seem to fall away. It's the text that's critical. In fact, the text may be more critical here than in any other of Glass's vocal works. Fundamental questions about life and death and existence are asked, culled from the great philosophical/theosophical texts of both eastern and western civilization. I think this is the first time Glass has actually made music around words, rather than making music FOR words or adapting words to music.

More powerful, in any case, than the limpid second and third symphonies, and perhaps the last of Glass's symphonic efforts, the No. 5 is definetly Glass at his apex in terms of the symphonic form. This is definetly a western symphony, and parallels can be drawn with all the great 19th century symphonic composers. Particularly Wagner. So beware. It's stained Glass; the complex architecture of 19th century romanticism is sifted through the minimalist tradition Glass himself has established. Glass referencing Glass in much the same way Bowie is forced to reference himself in his current recordings; but the disturbing implication is that we cannot escape the 'academy' of 19th century romanticism, and that the direction of the 21st century will be a final inscription of the 19th century western tradition on the complexion of music world-wide. Modernism was a boutique; maybe we really did reach the height of our aesthetic civilization during the 19th century, musically speaking. What do we do now?

I come not bury Philip Glass (1937) but to praise him. Some skepticism nevertheless mitigates the praise. Of the six works that Glass calls symphonies, four seem genuinely symphonic: The "Low" Symphony (1992), the First (1993)*, the Second (1994), and the Third, for strings (1995); but the "Heroes" Symphony (1990)*, the Fourth (1997)*, and the new choral FIFTH (1998) do not manage to achieve that "large-scale integration of contrasts" that musicologist Hans Keller once cited as the essence of the genre. The FIFTH is subtitled "Requiem, Bardo, Nirmanakaya," the latter two terms being synonyms, in Thibetan and Sanksrit, for the first. If the FIFTH fall short of the truly symphonic, how then to describe it? The term "suite" seems more appropriate. By labeling it as such, however, I do not mean to dismiss the new score, which remains enjoyable in that alpha-rhythm-generating way that characterizes Glass's early work. Indeed, the FIFTH strikes me as a return to the style of "Einstein on the Beach" and "Koyaanisqatsi," hypnotic, declamatory, ritualistic. (One of the other customer reviews notes this, too.) Glass keeps the vocal parts simple - the chorus usually sings in unison - so that discerning the words never poses any difficulty. The sonorities are frequently startling and beautiful. The texts come from an eclectic variety of mythic and theological sources, including the Thibetan "Book of the Dead" and various Hindu scriptures. But some disappointment must accompany the listener's experience of this symphony so-called, since the generic identification leads him to expect a tonal plan akin to that in a purely instrumental work like the Second Symphony. Despite the musical cross-references among movements, the sense of Keller's "large-scale integration of contrasts" is not there. Minimalism can, in fact, produce something which is at once chorally large and genuinely symphonic. Steve Reich accomplished this convincingly in "The Desert Music" (1984), to poems by William Carlos Williams. Glass's non-organic succession of moods would engage the attention a good deal more if wedded to a dramatic text that provided an argument. No one expects "Satyagraha" or "Akhenaten" to be symphonic, but the action, or at least the scene, helps sustain interest and point in a certain direction. If you follow Glass, you will want this, of course. If you're looking to find out what Glass is about, and don't already know, it might be wiser to start with the Naxos disc of his Violin Concerto and smaller works. Also: Nonesuch spreads the work over two discs, both of rather short measure. It is becoming the practice elsewhere that when two discs are required, but one gives only short measure, the two are priced as one. Decca gave us a Mahler Second this way and BIS gives us Magnard's Third and Fourth Symphonies this way. [*An asterisk indicates that I am unsure about the precise date of a given work.]

I must admit there have been times when I've almost despaired of Philip Glass. After the early Eighties and the passing of his more overtly `minimalist' style, there seemed to follow a long period of confused and apparently aimless compositions; Glass looked as if he'd somewhat lost his way. With the exception of a few (too few) highlights, much of his output seemed simply less /interesting/ - and some of it was frankly mediocre. (Itaipu? Gazuntheit!)

On the evidence of more recent releases, however, it's beginning to look like this was just a phase: the intermediate passage between a bold minimalism and an equally bold handling of melody and harmony of deeper colour, with the old rhythmic engine still doing great things beneath the bonnet. Symphony No. 5 is very much a piece in the new style, and there's much here to delight in. Glass's handling of solo and ensemble voices is now superb and his ability to wring grand and brilliant music from an orchestral force just goes on getting more impressive. There are moments here, many and sustained, that are nothing other than ravishing.

It's a large work and inevitably there are movements that some will favour more than others according to taste (there are four of the twelve, in particular, that I just know I'm going to be listening to almost without pause for some time to come). But it's big enough and beautiful enough to bear a little favouritism. Cherish it.

I performed this piece in the fall of 2001 under the baton of Dante Anzolini with maestro Glass in the audience (Choral Arts society of Washington/Kennedy Center).

It will live in my memory as an extremely powerful performance that brought the audience to their feet as if lifted by a giant hand as the finale's last notes drifted from the stage. There are precious few performances that can create the deep emotional bonding between performer and audience. Mr. Glass nailed it with his 5th Symphony!

I continue to play this recording regularly and it continues to reveal a nuance and sensitivity to the worlds cultures and faiths.

This is truly one of my treasured musical experiences and will continue to be for years to come.

Intended as a "compendium of reflection on the process of global transformation and evolution," with individual section titles like "Love and Joy," "Suffering," "Compassion," "Death," and "Paradise," this work is more a sequence of twelve mini-oratorios than a symphony, it's unity more theologically thematic than musical. The result, with adult and children's choirs added to the Vienna Radio Symphony orchestra, is Glass of nearly the scope and scale of <Akhnaten> and <Satyagraha>. The big themes of creation, earthly life, death, and rebirth are drawn from sacred writings from a number of languages, among them Greek, Hebrew, Maya, Sanskrit, Chinese, Arabic, Zuni, and Bengali, but the texts are sung in English "to show the commonalities with which all these traditions resonate." Unlike the recently released Symphonies Nos. Two and Three--both almost French in their delicacy--in places, the text and music of the Fifth wax a bit grandiose, but if anyone in this century can write large, it's Glass.

Philip Glass was commissioned by the Salzburg Festival to write a work for the Millennium, a work that would somehow bring all the peoples of the globe together in a musical statement. What resulted is this magnum opus for large orchestra, chorus, children's chorus, and five soloists, a work covering the creation through the 'past' as represented by the Requiem to the in-between to the manifestation of enlightened activity - a major undertaking in anyone's mind! But while Glass does not stray far from his much loved and respected minimalism, his Symphony No. 5 embraces far more extensive excursions into complex harmonies and melodies. As Glass stated 'Besides being a compendium of reflection on the process of global transformation and evolution, I hope that the work will serve as a strong and positive celebration of the millennium year.' And this recording certainly succeeds in guaranteeing that hope.

Recorded in 2000 in several phases the 94-minute work is majestic and awe-inspiring. The many texts from Greek, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and indigenous languages are translated into English and it s to the credit of Glass and the performers that the texts are completely understandable. Dennis Russell Davies conducts the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Morgan State University Choir, the Hungarian Radio Children's Choir, and soloists Ana Maria Martinez, Denyce Graves, Michael Shade, Eric Owens, and Albert Dohmen in a completely stunning performance. This is Glass work that calls for a bit of patience on the part of the listener the first time through, but the music is so hypnotic that doubtless repeated hearings will make the work among Glass' most loved.

The packaging by Nonesuch Records is artistic and informative and creates the atmosphere of a very major work even before the music is heard. All of the many texts are provided by sections to follow the twelve sections ('movements') of the symphony. This is a fine recording of a work by Philip Glass that deserves wide attention. Recommended. Grady Harp, April 06

Phillip Glass composes some of his best work yet with this the arrival of his choral and symphonic masterpiece. Fine performances from the soloists and a wonderfuly haunting sound on the choral passages. Glass manages to write a work that is spiritual in a unique way. Bravo!

I heard about this symphony after reading a book about Glass, and was excited by the possibilities of using religious texts with the music. Listening to this cd was simply transcendential. The music is something else and having collected most of Glass's recordings, I feel it is up there with the best. The texts chosen are inspirational, ranging from the Sufi poet Rumi to Tibetan Buddhism (the last piece Dedication is very moving). Essential.