Contemporary Composer
Glassworks by Philip Glass is flavored with Bach and Bowie
Glassworks CD cover
By Serg Childed
Philip Glass is an American composer, widely considered to be one of the most influential musicians of the late 20th century. It is hard to find a genre in which he hadn't dabbed in, or an artist who hadn't been directly influenced by his work.
Even with his extensive resume that includes film and TV scores, Glass describes himself as a "classicist," pointing out he has been trained in harmony and counterpoint and studied such composers as Franz Schubert, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
He has collaborated with a great number of artists, from popular to folk, most notably Brian Eno, David Bowie, Paul Simon, Suzanne Vega, Mick Jagger, Leonard Cohen, and even the sitar guru Ravi Shankar. Beyond direct collaboration, Glass has extended his compositional influence to musicians and bands such as Mike Oldfield, Tangerine Dream and Talking Heads.
The track Facades was released on the 1982 album Glassworks which, in its essence, is a chamber work written in six movements. Following his large-scale projects, Glassworks was his successful attempt to create a more accessible classical work for the mainstream audience.
In Glass's own words:
"Glassworks was intended to introduce my music to a more general audience than had been familiar with it up to then."
