Philip Glass, Late Twentieth-Century Music And Your PC, Sort Of...

August 1, 2002 12:35 AM

Philip Glass, Late Twentieth-Century Music And Your PC, Sort Of... Andante's Carte Blanche is a new multimedia magazine dedicated to contemporary music. Its first guest-editor is Philip Glass and he's assembled an interestingly unscholarly, offbeat and pleasantly accessible issue. At least for those of us who generally pay contemporary music (too) little attention. I wonder why this is, as it's invariably challenging or enlightening when we do. Who knows? Perhaps Carte Blanche may convince some of us pop-obsessed philistines to change our ways... [ Composer John Adams, writer Susan Sontag, choreographer Mark Morris and British director Jonathan Miller will follow in what promises to be an unmissable online proposition.]
posted by MiguelCardoso (12 comments total)

N.B. The Music And Technology discussion with four other composers, moderated by Glass, is also well worth reading and has some bearing on recent discussions here on music and the Internet.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 12:46 AM on August 1, 2002

Thanks for that Miguel. At the risk of repeating myself, BBC radio 3 is an excellent starting point for new, challenging but accessible music. Late Junction is superb and very eclectic, the shows are archived for one week following broadcast and of course are available live. It is a bit obsessed with "world "music this week following the WOMAD weekend, but there is plenty there besides. It costs me a fortune at Amazon.
As a matter of interest they are currently raving about the Fado singer, Mariza, with good reason; her WOMAD performance is online and highly recommended.
posted by Fat Buddha at 12:56 AM on August 1, 2002

Thanks for the link Miguel.
posted by yertledaturtle at 2:03 AM on August 1, 2002

*excuse cheer-leading and off-topicness*

Hey, thanks yourself yertledaturtle for that Gold Chains link yesterday. Truth be told, I haven't stopped listening to "The Wonderful Girls of Hypno" since then.

Fat Buddha: I've been trying to rustle up a Fado post almost since day one here at MetaFilter but, despite its richness, there aren't any decent links to give the bloody thing any acceptable depth. If you've listened to Mariza, Camané, Mizia, Mafalda Arnault and the other young Fado singers (never mind heart-shattering Amália) you'll understand how frustrating it is not to be able to show these Americans what real, urban, not-messed-about-with soul-destroyng songs should sound like, as opposed to them namby-pamby, lightweight Blues they're always on about. ;)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:33 AM on August 1, 2002

The only problem I ever have is separating the world of serious music from the rest. Glass is blurring the boundaries here, a little, but you can still see a disconnect between how he thinks of his music and, for instance, that of Norman Cook. Mozart and Vivaldi were producing "pop" in their times.
posted by walrus at 6:13 AM on August 1, 2002

Don't forget the IBM Glass Engine. It's an interesting interface design that allows you to browse through Glass's music.
posted by willnot at 6:33 AM on August 1, 2002

I've just started to browse through, and now I see that there is some good reading in there. Thanks so much for this link!
posted by UrbanFigaro at 7:11 AM on August 1, 2002

wow, Morton Subotnick and DJ Spooky in the same roundtable? Why is it that when people try to be hip they like to include DJ Spooky?
posted by panopticon at 7:26 AM on August 1, 2002

The name of Philip Glass will live for generations, not as a composer, but as the subject of this portrait by Philip Glass (also reproduced in Andante). People who look to Glass, Partch, Cage, etc., for contemporary "classical music" are looking in the wrong direction. You have to remember that ours is the first generation to have instant audial access to the whole history of classical music. "Our" music is the previously unheard music of the past. Why listen to tedious "new" music by Philip Glass, when we can explore, say, the whole output of Hayden, Handel or Mahler -- all of it previously unavailable to the individual up until now. What is new to our generation is the ability to hear and hold the whole of musical history in our heads. Contemporary music is not Glass, et al, it's all the old music we've never heard before.
posted by Faze at 8:07 AM on August 1, 2002

I had not heard of him until a friend dragged me to see him in Austin, and I fell into a trance.
Philip Glass produced an opera out of a Doris Lessing novel (I live for the DL) - those wacky interdisciplinary kids. What will they do next?
posted by goneill at 8:21 AM on August 1, 2002

Thanks for a wonderful link, Miguel. I found this article of particular interest to me.

"My Pen is Coarse and I am not Polite":
Reading Mozart's Letters
When Robert Spaethling's muck-embracing translation of Mozart's letters was published in England two years ago, playwright Peter Shaffer seized on Spaethling's fresh, filthy versions of the correspondence as further proof that he was right all along to portray the composer, in Amadeus, as a foul-mouthed, twitchy man, a disgusting imbecilic genius.
posted by ColdChef at 9:00 AM on August 1, 2002

Miguel,
you are welcome.
posted by yertledaturtle at 2:35 PM on August 1, 2002