Glass At 65

Philip Glass and Allen Ginsberg

What new element before us unborn in nature? Is there
        a new thing under the Sun?

by Jerry Bowles
 

Like a naughty cherub in a Montangna fresco, the spirit of Allen Ginsberg scampered mischievously along the rafters of Carnegie Hall Sunday afternoon during the  65th birthday celebration for Philip Glass which was highlighted by the world premiere of a new Glass symphony—his sixth—based on the late Beat poet’s epic 1978 poem “Plutonium Ode.”  For Glass, who had performed frequently in poetry/music collaborations with Ginsberg during the last decade of the poet’s life, the symphony is a way of the closing a chapter of his life. The best known of their collaborations is Hydrogen Jukebox, an evening length "opera" which the pair presented in over 30 cities as part of an international tour.  They had planned to create a new, major collaboration based on Plutonium Ode and before he died in 1997, Ginsberg had made several recordings of the poem in preparation for the new work. At that time, Glass says, he had in mind simply an extended piano work to accompany Ginsberg in live performance. “I put aside the project in 1997, feeling that I wouldn't want to go ahead without Allen,” Glass says. “A few years past and the commission of a new symphony from Carnegie Hall and the Brucknerhaus Linz reawakened my interest in the project. I felt, then, that Plutonium Ode was unfinished business between Allen and myself and this would be the opportunity to complete it. By then, the piano music I had originally imagined had grown to a full orchestra and Allen's resonant speaking voice to a lyric soprano.” Like the poem, the symphony is in three parts.  Part one, called “What new element…” is a  passionate outcry against nuclear contamination and pollution, the second, “The Bard surveys Plutonian history” takes a turn towards healing, and the final movement, “This Ode to You O Poets,” is an epiphany arrived at through personal transformation. To bring Ginsberg’s words to life, Glass chose the great soprano Lauren Flanigan, who is—in my view, anyway--the only good reason to keep the New York City Opera alive.  She is an incredibly gifted singer and actress and in a just world Dawn Upshaw would be her maid.  But, of course, the Met singers get the big contracts.  Dennis Russell Davies and the American Composers Orchestra are practically the Glass house band and it showed in the rock solid support they gave to Flanigan’s passionate reading. Although Glass’s compositional devices have become so familiar that they sometimes invite parody, the Sixth Symphony manages to sound fresh and inventive.  It is passionate and restrained, angry and thoughtful, and has about it not a little sense of loss—the loss of a friend, perhaps, or the loss of innocence, or the sense of having reached the point in one’s life when one realizes that the major theme has shifted from hope to loss, and the eventual peace that one makes with that sense of finality.  It is one of those rare works where substance wins out over Glass’s formidable style. Alas, the same cannot be said about the opening half of the program which was the U.S. premiere of three Glass pieces called Passages written in collaboration with Ravi Shankar in 1989.  All three were pleasant enough and given a distinctive edge by guest artists, the Rascher Saxophone Quartet,  but, ultimately, they were cut and paste Glass. The composer himself took a bow at the end of the program, looking extremely fit for a man his age and possessing a full-head of impossibly black hair.  But, then, who among those of us of a certain age does not look to Clairol for a little help in these matters nowadays? In societies governed by individuals with musical taste more evolved than Ernest Tubb and the Texas Troubadours, a major new work and a birthday by the nation’s most influential composer might be a minor state occasion—a reception at the Palais or a dinner at Downing Street, but, alas, this is George Bush’s America and administration officials were apparently too occupied with the business of draping naked statues  and drawing up plans to invade whatever Virgin Islands we don’t own already to even send a note so poor Glass had to make do with a sold-out concert at that most venerable of rental halls on West 57th Street.  Let’s hope that by the time he hits 70, there will be somebody in office who realizes what a national treasure we have here and will give him the party he deserves.

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Record companies, artists and publicists are invited to submit CDs to be considered for our Editor's Pick's of the month.  Send to: Jerry Bowles, Editor, Sequenza 21, 340 W. 57th Street, 12B, NY, NY 10019  Also, feel free to nominate your favorite composer-- even if it's you--for Spotlight of the Week.