Customer Reviews

Philip Glass: Two Pages; Contrary Motion; Music in Fifths; Music in Similar Motion

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm a going-on-four-year Glass fan. At the risk of sounding snobbish, I wouldn't reccomend this disc to anyone who's spent less time than that as a Glass fan. Not that this music is not delicious; in fact - if you are a fan of the his early electronic pieces, this CD is a godsend (if you believe in that sort of thing.)

For those who are new to Glass, let me try and put it delicately but realistically. Have you ever heard the caricatures or jokes about Glass's minimalism, endlessly repeating? The infamous South Park episode where the character Glass writes a piece consisting of one note? Well, if you aren't familiar with his music, this will sound like that. Rest assured, it grows on you, but you will need tons of patience to become an addict like me!

For the rest of us, don't hesitate. For the "early" fans, there IS NO alternative!!! Here's a brief description:

Two Pages: Michael Riesman on piano, Glass on organ. Very sparse piece starting with repeating chromatic 5 note sequence in minor key, gradually adding notes on the end of the prhase, taking notes away from the beginning of the phrase. This one will suprise you how fast it grows on you!!

Music in Contrary Motion: Suprising use of intricate counterpoint for early Glass. Minor key solo organ alternating between I and V chord with counterpoint overtop. Phrases get longer according to a planned sequence that (according to Glass) can be added ad infinitum and go on for days. This one's a little too tense for me.

Music in fifths (and) Music in Similar Motion: I put these together as the concept (except for the intervals involved) is similar. Again, repeated phrases with expanding and contrasting sequences but both of these are for full ensemble (back in the Dickie Landry days). Music in fifths is a joke as it is written entirely in fifths, the cardinal sin of counterpoint.

All in all, a good disc. The recordings are old but remastered so the quality is good and like I mentioned before, despite the EXTREME sparsity of these pieces, they will grow on you quicker than you think!

Okay, first off, this is only my second Glass CD (the first being Koyaanisqatsi), so I'm probably not the best person to be reviewing this. Oh well. The first time I listened to it, it nearly drove me insane. This isn't anything like his later pieces; gimmie a second to think of a way to explain how this thing sounds.

Take four sets of an infinite number of toothpicks, each set having a different color. Now, lay them out in order, from end to end (red, blue, green, yellow, red, blue, green, yellow etc.). Every few cycles, sneak in a new toothpick or take one out. Eventually, you might end up with about twenty blue toothpicks lined up in a row, so of course you've got to start taking them out, one by one. This type of music isn't like Glass' later works because it doesn't conform to anything like a constant tempo or a constant number of notes in a measure. His later stuff uses a kind of "layering" technique, which actually obeys some rules of traditional composition.

Music that acts like this shouldn't be entertaining... but it is anyways. I find myself putting this thing in my CD player at least once or twice a week.

I love it. It's addictive. I can't stop listening. Someone, please help me.

I first heard "Music in Similar Motion" (track 4) when I was around six or seven years old. It grabbed me straightaway with its arrangement of rhythmic patterns and harmony, and kept my attention for the full seventeen minutes. That piece fuelled my interest to date in experimental music.
For those who do not know these pieces, they are organ-based works which are based on rhythmic and harmonic systems, repeating themselves again and again. These systems get progressively longer as the pieces carry on, but how much longer they get is difficult to judge on listening, as they are not purely mathematical progressions. These pieces are all intense and unrelenting; you may very well be driven up the wall before you finish listening, but when you do get to the end, the sense of relief you get makes the whole experience well worth it. I found this was especially true of the original LP versions (whicb I still have).

This album doesn't really have a title. It's a compliation of previous released material, but it's been remastered and it's an official release. The album consists of 4 masterpieces from Glass's early years. It's fabulous stuff. Another reviewer said it really grows on you, and it does. It's beautiful, hypnotic, and magnficent. And most of it is played by Glass himself on organ. I have an attraction to piano and organ music for some reason, and I just revel in this kind of stuff. I have around 20 Glass CD's (no albums), and I love almost everyone of them. I really like this one a lot. I know a lot of people really dislike Glass's music, and I honestly don't know why. It's magnificent.

This is another Glass CD that's difficult to rate. This disc serves more as an important historical note than as entertaining music. It shows the very early stages of Glass' development as a truly unique composer. Many of the ideas that he would use to great effect in later works like "Koyaanisqatsi" are heard here in their germinal form. In a Glass musical chronology, it's easy to see how works like "Music in 12 Parts" emerged from pieces like "Music in Fifths". I really enjoy the last four sections from "Music in Twelve Parts" because it is has a traditional musicality to it that Glass' very early work did not. On this disc, Glass is still forming his repetitive, minimalist style...sans the listenable musicality that he would infuse in later works. ("Music in Similar Motion" probably comes closest to being listenable for extended periods and could easily bemistaken for one of the first three sections of "Music in 12 Parts".) This disc is heavy on abstract theory, but short on what most would percieve as "music". It should only be undertaken by those who are hard core fans or "completists" who want to hear how it all began.

I first heard "Music in Similar Motion" at the American premier of the "Low Symphony". I, and much of the audience were amazed by Music in Similar Motion, all the keyboard parts connected to each other like a machine and the driving, hypnotic rhythms. I did not feel the same of the Low Symphony and Itaipu which were overblown orchestral scores. It is essential to listen to Philip Glass' early works to understand his true vision. In Music in Similar Motion, the highlight of the disc, echoes of it can be heard everywhere from Brian Eno to Laurie Anderson to Kraftwerk. Of the short pieces Philip Glass has done, it is the finest. Two Pages is formative, one of the first pieces he wrote for electric organ (the sound of the analog organs is entrancing) and it is not as cohesive as the others. Contrary Motion and Music in Fifths are a whole different story. The contraputal harmony between the the phrases are as fascinating as Bach's harpsichord works. I make that comparison because anything from a fugue to a scherzo had preset musical phrases and obviously were a source of inspiration for Philip Glass. Then we reach the aforesaid Music in Similar Motion which is absolute perfection. The way to acustom yourself to minimalism is to appreciate the piece as a whole instead of waiting for the gradual changes. Just like Ravi Shankar who was Philip Glass' mentor, the music is a series of phrases connected together, totally different from American music and a breath of fresh air for people who had to suffer through 12 tone and serialist music. Yes, some of Philip Glass' newer stuff is easier to get into but this disc captures why he mattered and why minimalism was a musical revolution.

3 1/2

One of this maestro of minimalism's most surface-level repetitions, though also one of his most rewarding. He's worked close to these themes before, but rarely stayed as committed to intellectual endeavors the whole seventy-five minutes long. The result is a work that gives out as much as it gets in- put it on in a meditative mood and the tonal transitions will near profound, but listen to it casually or from an analytical viewpoint and shallow frustration may occur.

Philip Glass' fame among the general public probably relies on his more recent, often lushly orchestrated, neo-Romantic works. The works on this disc, however, represent his earlier, far more austere-sounding experiments, the bare backbones of his more recent music, so to speak. As such, they may come as a surprise - possibly a disappointment - to many, and I am indeed unsure that the music here will have general appeal to others than musicologists and ardent fans of minimalism. In general, the titles are apt summaries of what happens in the work in question.

Two Pages (1968), for piano and organ, is a very austere work based on a repeated 5-note musical cell, to which notes are added at the end and taken away from the beginning. The idea is interesting enough - embodying the very idea of minimalism, I guess - but at 27 minutes requiring more than a little persistence on the part of the listener. It is probably the most spartan work on the disc. Music in Contrary Motion, for solo organ, is rigorously contrapuntal in an almost baroque sense, but there is very little Baroque about anything else in it. The basic plan is to have phrases being longer and longer according to a planned recursive sequence; there is thus no upper limit on how long the piece can be, but the performances here wisely cut it short after roughly fifteen minutes. I'd frankly say that it is more than enough.

Music in Fifths (1969) is again based on repeated, contrastive and expanding phrases, based wholly on fifths. But this time the structure is closed (it ends when the accumulation of repetitions fill it out completely). The upshot is a slightly jittery, but very austere, obstinate and inexorable work putting a lot of demands on the pure stamina (and doggedness?) of the performers. Unless you pay close attention the subtle changes in rhythms are going to escape you, and paying close attention to this distinctly unappealing work will not be an easy task. Similar to Music in Fifths, Music in Similar Motion is based on repeated phrases, slowly developing phrases. It is, however, the most immediately attractive work here, and far less static-sounding than the others. The work starts out with one melodic line, then adding another a fourth above, then another a fourth below, then a bass line. It may not sound very complex, but the transformation the music goes through when the new lines are added is actually pretty effective.

The performances sound good enough and the sound, while showing its age, is fine. But this is very austere music and I cannot imagine it will have much general appeal - they frankly didn't appeal to me, except in a very theoretical way (hearing them once, appreciate what is going on, not feeling like going back to them). The booklet claims that `to fully appreciate the sheer, unbridled audacity of these four early works by Philip Glass, it is helpful, for a moment, to imagine that it's 1969 and you've never heard any of the composer's music before. Indeed, in 1969, it would have been unlikely that you'd heard anything like this before.' That is surely correct. Unfortunately for the music, I am unwilling to grant that premise. If the music is to have merit, it has to have merit now, regardless of its original context. And I am not sure if the music here actually does manage to transcend the context in which it was created. Others (including other reviewers here) seem to disagree. I guess the appropriate conclusion is: consider yourself warned.