Essay - Philip Glass Biography Introduction Philip Glass Is Certainly the World's...

Philip Glass Biography

Introduction

Philip Glass is certainly the world's finest identified living serious composer owing to vast amounts of American recording contracts. He has a readily exclusive, if ever controversial, style that is both imitated and parodied the world over. He is familiar to pop audiences, crossover audiences, new music audiences, opera audiences and increasingly to chamber music audiences and symphony goers. He is in regular performance around the ***** performing with his ensemble; an output that generates around sixty concerts a year. Although he has written a fair amount ***** concert music, ***** has arguably won ***** most recognition for his work in dance, film, music t*****atre and opera.

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Born in Baltimore on January 31, 1937, Philip Glass discovered music ***** his father's radio repair shop. In addition to servicing radios, Ben Glass carried a line of records *****, when certain ones sold feebly, he would take t*****m home and play them ***** his three children, trying ***** discover why they did not appeal to customers. These happened to be recordings ***** the great ***** works, and the future composer rapidly became familiar with Beethoven quartets, Schubert sonatas, Shostakovitch symphonies and other music then considered "offbeat." It was ***** until he was in his upper teens did ***** begin to encounter more "st*****ard" classics.

***** began the violin at six and became ***** about music when he took up the flute at eight. However, by the time he was 15, he had become frustrated with the limited flute repertoire as well as with musical life in post-war Baltimore. During his second year in high school, he applied for admission to the University of Chicago, passed and, ***** his parent's encouragement, moved to Chicago where he s*****ported himself with part-time jobs waiting tables and loading airplanes at airports. ***** **********, he practiced piano ***** concentrated on such composers as Ives and Webern.

Glass's history ***** an entirely orthodox *****e. He initially studied flute at the Peabody Conservatoire, then piano, harmony and composition with Louis Cheslock. ***** graduated in mathematics and philosophy at the age of nineteen from the university of Chicago. After attending at ***** Julliard Music School, he studied with Darius Milhaud (in 1960) and Nadia Boulanger (between 1964-1966) ***** France. Boulanger made Glass go back to the basics, as she did with all her students, ***** although Glass appreci*****ed the experience in some ways, he bridled at ***** discipl*****e. ***** addition to what he ***** Boulanger's too excessive preoccupation ***** musical t*****ory, nearly all the contemporary music to be heard in Paris. After ***** was at Pierre Boulez's Domain Musical Series - which ***** has since described as "a w*****teland, domin*****ed by these maniacs, these creeps, who were ***** to make everyone write this crazy creepy music... what one looks for in a composer is that singular personality that comes out ***** the soul of the person - that creativity cannot be taught." This reflected later as clearly Glass felt ***** stress in his music as