Comments on: Philip Glass and Unsuk Chin at the Proms http://www.sequenza21.com/2009/08/philip-glass-and-unsuk-chin-at-the-proms/ The Contemporary Classical Music Community Tue, 11 Jun 2013 15:02:03 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: zeno http://www.sequenza21.com/2009/08/philip-glass-and-unsuk-chin-at-the-proms/comment-page-1/#comment-16180 zeno Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:47:03 +0000 http://www.sequenza21.com/index.php/1661#comment-16180 “The first movement is gently lovely and appealing, and seems to be constructed in a rather old fashioned manner; the second is of mind-numbing length and changelessness, featuring a large chorus singing nonsense syllables transcribed from a recording Glass made of an old man singing in the Mexican mountains over and over again” …

I had mixed feelings about Glass’s 7th Symphony when I heard it performed live. I can’t now recall whether the chorus members shook their little rattles in the first or second movements. However, the second movement was Glass’s attempt to “mimic” the glossolalia of a Toltec in a shamanic trance, as recorded on an ethnographic disc. I recall being fascinated without being altogether strongly impressed. I’d much rather revisited his choral symphony of the same period, which I know some people dislike as well, but which I find at the least an important cultural monument.

]]> By: David Salvage http://www.sequenza21.com/2009/08/philip-glass-and-unsuk-chin-at-the-proms/comment-page-1/#comment-16120 David Salvage Tue, 18 Aug 2009 01:59:59 +0000 http://www.sequenza21.com/index.php/1661#comment-16120 Rodney at the Proms. I always look forward to these posts. I’m totally behind on Unsuk Chin. And I like the “one damn thing after another” remark. Now, there’s Glass I like (score to Mishima). But I remember hearing his Piano Etudes, which were heralded by the NYTimes years ago, and thinking, “Why, this is just one damn thing…”

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