Einstein on the Beach

Philip Glass

album cover

Philip Glass didn't invent the arpeggio—the series of notes played in succession that usually outline a chord. It's common currency in music. He holds no proprietary stake in endless repetition, either. Nonetheless, the New York composer has built a completely idiosyncratic musical signature just by manipulating those two devices. Virtually anywhere you visit in a Glass work (Einstein on the Beach is one of what he calls his "portrait" operas), you'll encounter short arpeggiated motifs looping around each other, like interconnected spirograph circles. He is the "Riff/Swirl/Riff/Swirl/Repeat a zillion times" guy.

At times during "Train 1," from the first act of Einstein on the Beach, Glass's unorthodox ensemble (which includes saxophones and electronic keyboards) has two or three of these interlocking phrases going. Just when the pattern clarifies, Glass will shorten it by a few beats. This sends everything into a slightly different orbit, as he explained in the liner notes to this edition: "A simple figure can expand and then contract in many different ways, maintaining the same general melodic configuration but, because of the addition or subtraction of one note, it takes on a very different rhythmic shape." This amounts to Glass's trade secret, a scheme that informs much of his composition. A plotless series of marathon riffs and short connective episodes dependent on Robert Wilson's visuals, Einstein is Glass's first opera, and his longest, usually clocking in around five hours without intermission. It's not "about" anything in the traditional sense, though there are times during this recording when it sounds as if important events are unfolding. The namesake luminary is referenced occasionally, the chorus chants meaningful-sounding sets of numbers (the code for an atom bomb? a waitress's phone number?), but there's no central narrative.

As a result, those looking for "story" usually come away from this marathon under-whelmed. Those in search of an all-consuming musical experience, on the other hand, find themselves mesmerized by Einstein. The most elaborate of Glass's major works, it's a triumph of arpeggio mangling and arpeggio management, an excellent example of how small recurring units can be massaged into music of dazzling and often hypnotic intricacy.

Genre: Opera
Released: 1993, Nonesuch
Key Tracks: "Train 1," "Night Train," "Dance 1"
Catalog Choice: Koyaanisqatsi
Next Stop: Steve Reich: Different Trains
After That: Steve Roach: Dreamtime Return (see p. 649)
Book Page: 314

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Comments:

#1 from tony heiderer, Boulder, colorado - 05/13/2009 3:03

Perhaps an alternative choice would have been Terry Riley’s “Rainbow in Curved Air” and particularly, the second side, “Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band”. I believe that Glass became more influential in NY as part of a collective of artists and dancers that later came to call their work “minimal”. NY artists, as always, were better at promoting themselves, and Glass worked hard to to produce a a steady flow, some say a glut, of recordings that were eventually applied to a variety of circumstances (the same idea over and over again with a different backdrop). But as I remember Riley was the first, the most original, and and , I think, the best of them. He quickly adopted other influences in his music and ceased to remain “minimal”.

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