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.
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