Listening Report 5 Philip Glass Einstein on the Beach (1983)

 

Maria Alighourchi

7489718

The Future of American Music

 

Listening Report 5

Philip Glass

Einstein on the Beach (1983)

 

Philip Glass, who admired Reich a lot and got inspired by his minimalistic music, shares a few  similarities with him. Glass also uses overlaying and overlapping of the same sequence to create sounds that are utterly new and unique.

As unique is one of his most famous composed operas “Einstein on the Beach” (1983) which consists of nine 20-minutes sequences and was initially four to five hours long. The title of the opera is quite interesting since it establishes a curious scenery. To imagine the icon Einstein at a beach is what went through my head while listening to the 20-minutes extrait; and it was a pretty wild imagination.  The whole time my mind wondered to a dystopian world, a parallel dystopian world, that could as well be ours, while Einstein and all the other people are in sheer terror, begging for Einstein to find a solution to the dying earth but all hope is lost.

In the beginning of the extrait I thought that the ever overplaying sequences were beautiful to listen to and come across fairy angelic, considering the voice of the female singer. But after a few minutes the angelic feeling turned to annoying sound which could be compared to your alarm clock in the morning. I wanted to turn it off and be done with this sound. However, to not be able to turn it down, the slightly strange in every overlapping sequence, pointed towards inevitability. That is where the feeling of an apocalypse or a dystopian world started to emerge. I am not saying that I do not like the music or the nauseous feeling I get from listening to it for 20-minuted straight. Though, I am saying that hearing these sequences for over 4 hours without a real pause sounds excruciating (there is no pause in the opera), regarding the claustrophobic feeling of being trapped with Einstein in an apocalyptic world with rising terror is not my ideal idea of a night out at the opera. Further, the rising terror and the lacking climax of outburst is established through the circling and repeating of the same sequences - just slightly altered which contributes to the claustrophobic and trapped feeling even more.

Whatever Glass’ vision or story behind his composition of “Einstein at the Beach” might be, he  accomplishes to establish a trance like state where one finds himself in a different world or parallel universe, without a real change to escape – as if his intention is to hypnotize the audience through the repetition, delivering a secret message. That is the real magic of music in general; that is what music should strive for – to be a bit like magic (does not matter if light or dark magic). After listing to it (just the 20 minutes), I do feel hypnotized and slightly altered; just like waking up from an instance dream from which you remember nothing but you could swear that it is at the tip of your tongue.