The Right to Steal Shall Not Be Abridged

That's a great way to teach analysis, Kyle. And by that I mean, of course, that that's how I would do it.

I agree about the Reich. What a pretty (and beautiful) piece!

KG replies: It's also very convenient because not preparing for class becomes a virtue.

I do appreciate that you share your music and ideas so freely. Thank you. I recently printed up, played and enjoyed a couple of your "Private Dances." Nicely done!

I am very interested in how musicians, academic and otherwise, think about the music of Glass, Adams, Part and others. I admire the fact that you are doing your analysis in tandem with your students. I too have parsed this music sectionally, harmonically and motivically in an effort to understand it. But since the materials of the music itself can sometimes be pretty simple, I wonder about how it works on me and other listeners.

As a sometimes busker living, writing and performing here in Western Michigan, I have had interesting conversations with listeners on the street after performing "China Gates" by John Adams on my EP. "Sounds random" a couple of elderly appreciative listeners new to the style once observed. I realized that this aspect of the music is something that also attracts me.

I have introduced a room of Music Ap college students more than once to Part's "Spiegel im Spiegel" and been amazed at how often this simply-constructed piece finds sympathetic and patient first-time listeners.

Does this music work a bit like a Calder mobile? A mobile is a concrete creation. But I think of it as non-linear the same way I think of some music as non-linear. There are random aspects of a mobile that rely on the subjective point of view of the looker. For me, the experience of looking at it and being in the same room with it creates a still kind of changing motion that reminds me of the music I like by people like Glass, Reich, Adams and Part.

Not sure exactly how this kind of observation relates to the rigorous analytical studies necessary for parsing any music. I did notice however that in Adams's pictorial analysis included in my copy of his score for " China Gates" that he seems to make a few mistakes in relation to his parsing of his own music. At least it seems that way to me as I try to understand what he is representing with his synoptic graph.

I was reading recently about Brahms's reaction to his colleagues less-than-enthusiatic reception of his Fourth symphony. He said something about the impossibility of analysing or quantifying melody. I think that unquenchable curiosity about all aspects of music is a given, but I haven't really been exposed to much thinking about the so-called miminalist approach to composing that has helped me in the same way I remebmber Schenkerian analysis turned on some lights of understanding for me as a student. Come to think of it, as I age I tend to conceptualize about the music I play, listen to and write more and more in a subjective intuitive way even as I continue to analyse it.

where exactly are you uploading the pdf's? I'm also obssesed with Einstein on the Beach. greetings and respect from South America.

KG replies: Well, I'm not uploading them. What did you have in mind?

I wanted to thank you for taking the music of Glass so seriously; all too often, I've run up against the idea that he does not deserve serious consideration as a composer and had nothing more than a gimmick. I have great respect for Glass because of the sheer tenacity with which he stuck to his ideas. Einstein was also a pivotal work in my musical thinking and it was that one piece -- in combination with the CIVIL warS -- that brought me back into the academy to finish up my bachelor's.

KG replies: Thanks, and you're entirely welcome. Glass's output is extremely variable, but there are some amazing pieces, of which Einstein is deinifitely one.