Prepping Einstein for the Dissection Table

I'd love to see more of these early minimalist works made available. Einstein was a critical work for me; I was not a fan of minimalism until I listened to the radio premiere of the Tomato Records set on WKCR-FM (it reached my home in NJ, barely) and was blown away by the work. I still have that old LP set and am amazed I haven't worn out the vinyl myself.

It's great that these works are coming out in score form, and hope to see many more coming down the pike.

Kyle, your readers who are interested in Einstein might wish to check out Rob Haskins' rather enjoyable article 'Another Look at Philip Glass: Aspects of Harmony and Formal Design in Early Works and Einstein on the Beach' on the Journal of Experimental Music Studies site, at http://www.experimentalmusic.co.uk/Experimental_Music_Catalogue/Jems.html .

KG replies: Thanks, Virginia, I'll take a look at it.

You probably already know this, but Bob Fink's book _Repeating Ourselves_ has a lengthy analysis of M18, which focuses heavily on the places where Reich breaks the system he established. Basically, the opening chord cycle is supposed to be a sort of blueprint for the large scale harmonic structure of the whole piece, but there are certain cases where Reich instead uses the "wrong" chord--Fink presents this analysis as a way of illustrating how Reich is thinking teleologically. (Which is in turn part of my reason for arguing that M18 is a sort of bridge between Minimalism proper and Postminimalism.) I believe Fink also analyzes Octet, but I don't have the book in front of me to check.

What sort of analysis are you planning on doing for a piece like the Young String Trio, assuming you'll be covering it?

KG replies: I know about the Fink analysis because you told me about it, and I'm including the piece because of it. This blog would be a sorry investment if it didn't attract so much expert opinion.

Don't know about the String Trio yet. I'm leery of including something 12-tone just because there's so much else to do, but it might be worth looking into for temporal factors.

I would so much like to be able to attend such course. So I'm patiently waiting for the book.

"And by the way, Einstein: not a dynamic marking in the entire score."

I think since Einstein (and many other PG compositions) are composed for a core group of familiar musicians there is less need to fill out a score with dynamic instructions. This is especially true since Philip performs in his own ensemble, which enables him to steer the direction of the music. When I recently played EOB @ Carnegie Hall, there were tons of things that were not in the score that had been just worked out over the years between the musicians in the group. For instance, in Spaceship there are atleast 10 different tempo changes which you have to just feel immediately. It shifts from section to section.
There are lots of examples like this throughout the score.

KG replies: Then I guess Chester Music better make sure they only sell his scores to his core musicians.

Kyle, could you look at Fig 64/66 on page 213. Here the famous five-chord theme is presented in a shortened, 4-bar version. Look at both organ parts, right hand. Now, is the E natural a mistake? Surely it should be F (an octave doubling in an F minor chord)? But the E is where the D# of the last chord resolves, so with the E the first chord would be an interesting bitonal combination, and an early example of such in Glass's work. I'm ashamed to admit that I can't really tell from the Tomato recording if the organs play the E or not - the sound is so thick at this point. I don't have the later recording. What do you think?

KG replies: Hi Juhani, nice to hear from you. Well, as an amateur musicologist I'm flummoxed and have no idea. But as a composer I rather like the voice-leading that the E provides, and see it as a somewhat clever solution to having left out the intervening chord. It looks right to me, or at least reasonable.

Hi Kyle,

Following up from Juhani's comment, I don't have access to a copy of the score to Einstein, but on the basis of what I've seen of later Glass scores (Satyagraha, Akhnaten, Koyaanisqatsi, The Voyage, Orphee, La Belle et la Bete etc) my guess is that your interpretation is correct: the E natural is not a mistake. I think it offers an insight into the way he was thinking at the time. One of the speakers at the Bangor minimalism conference talked about harmonic slippage and he had a point. But I also think a spatial metaphor that came up when I interviewed him in the early 90s might be relevant: he told me he was thinking about bitonality in terms of the kinds of optical illusions found in drawings by people like MC Escher. In musicological research, the idea of tonal perspective comes up here and there - Noami Cumming, who wrote an important article on Reich's Different Trains, discusses the subject in her book The Sonic Self. My own view is that there isn't a great deal of difference from a theoretical or perceptual standpoint whether one is discussing harmonic ambiguity or polytonality - the principles are the same. The degree to which you smooth over the dissonances is what sets the two approaches apart. Here I think Glass left some of the "cracks" exposed in a way that anticipates later works. Music theory types might not like this way of thinking but it makes sense to me, and I believe it did to PG as well ...