The Secret Agent - Philip Glass

Well, this is only half procrastination - writing this post is total procrastination but the contents I'm hoping will help me focus on writing.



I was listening to CBC Radio yesterday evening while making dinner and C'est La Vie had a rebroadcast of a piece they did on Philip Glass, specifically, Montreal virtuoso violinist, Angele Dubeau's 2008 album, Philip Glass, Portrait, where she recorded selections from Glass' most dramatic pieces with her all-female string orchestra, La Pieta.

A blurb from the review:

As Glass explains in the September 1999 issue of Le Monde de la musique, “We came out of experimental theatre rather than a traditional education imparted by learned professors: our roots were John Cage, Merce Cunningham, the Living Theatre, Grotowsky and Genet. The idea of a different kind of time, one with flexible duration, came more from Beckett than from Indian raga.” Moreover, by choosing to treat sound as neutrally as possible, Glass conveyed a desire to abandon reason altogether. By letting themselves be guided primarily by sensations, listeners better perceive the relative flexibility of time and the shimmer of the melodic units, which combine and divide as they seem to build, inducing a meditative state, doorway to a chaotic world that lacks any point of reference or apparent logic, yet nevertheless seems perfectly natural.

Listen to the track samples here. My favourites are The Secret Agent and Echorus.

I also downloaded Music in Twelve Parts and Book of Longing (Leonard Cohen and Philip Glass) from Torrent for more studying and relaxing pleasure.