Top Philip Glass Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Philip Glass Biography

Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an American composer. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been described as minimal music, having similar qualities to other "minimalist" composers such as La Monte Young, Steve Reich, and Terry Riley. However, Glass has instead described himself as a composer of "music with repetitive structures", which he has helped evolve stylistically.

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Philip Glass Quotes

In order to arrive at a personal style, you have to have a technique to begin with.

Order, Style, Technique, Arrive, Begin

I always knew what I wanted to do and I did it.

Wanted

What I've noticed is that people who love what they do, regardless of what that might be, tend to live longer.

Live, Love, Might, People, Regardless, Tend

Theatrical times are different from concert times, to put it simply. Taking a figure like [Mahatma] Gandhi and setting him on a stage requires thinking about what theater is about and what the whole experience is about and what we're trying to communicate in that way, so you get into certain less abstract considerations.

Considerations, Different, Theatrical, Thinking, Trying

I find that people can’t find you. It’s kind of quiet. When I go to a city, I can almost always get a piano if I need one. So there’s something nice about being on the road and focusing on something you want to do.

Cities, Focusing, Kind, Nice, Piano, Road

But the difference between the little pieces and the big pieces - I'm not actually sure which are the little pieces. With some of the big pieces, it's a lot of musical running around, whereas the little pieces, you can say everything you want to say.

Big, Differences, Everything, Musical, Running

A new language requires a new technique. If what you're saying doesn't require a new language, then what you're saying probably isn't new.

Ifs, Language, Probably, Requires, Technique

It takes about a year to write an opera for me, but not a really a year of writing. I'm touring at the same time, and I'm playing, sometimes doing smaller projects. [The opera] Akhnaten fits in with Gandhi and Einstein, so that forms a trilogy in a way. I picked people who were these kind of larger than life characters, who kind of changed the world they lived in by almost the force of their personality and their inventiveness. People that I think not only do I admire but I think they're admirable people.

Character, Gandhi, Thinking, Trilogy, World, Writing

The problem with listening, of course, is that we don't. There's too much noise going on in our heads, so we never hear anything. The inner conversation simply never stops. It can be our voice or whatever voices we want to supply, but it's a constant racket. In the same way we don't see, and in the same way we don't feel, we don't touch, we don't taste.

Conversation, Course, Listening, Simply, Voice, Want

The generation of composers that are just preceded me, people like [Karlheinz] Stockhausen, [Pierre] Boulez, and, well, [John] Cage for that matter,[Morton] Feldman. . . That was a kind of experimental music that was very isolated. It had no real public.

Generations, People, Pierre, Preceded, Real

I was a regular kind of academic music student. I was at Juilliard. I had to study all the contemporary music of the time, and changing that language very radically was just a sign or a signal that I was going to try to do something very different. I find that that's what I feel closest to. I found no real inner response in me in a non-tonal language.

Academic, Different, Found, Real, Study, Trying

I'd say it's just part of the world that we live in; it's part of the music world.

Live, Music, Part, Say, World

If you remember your lineage, you will never feel lonely.

Lineage, Lonely, Remember

I shift between mediums very frequently. Instead of taking a break from writing, I just write in a different medium or in a different way or for a different purpose, so that I don't actually stop writing - I just go to something else. Like going from a big symphony to a piano piece is great and very refreshing, I find. And then going from that to a big concerto, and then having to go out and play.

Writing, Play, Symphony, Concerto, Big

I'd say the differences are more interesting than the similarities at this point. Certainly no one would ever mistake my music for Steve's [ Reich].

Differences, Interesting, Mistake, Reich, Say, Similarities

I consider the first 20 performances just learning the piece. Think about it this way: If you think about a pianist who plays a Schubert sonata through his whole lifetime - if you listen to Rubenstein or Horowitz playing their repertoire later in their life, you understand the richness with which they play that music, and how differently they must have played it when they were younger.

Lifetime, Performances, Pieces, Play, Played, Thinking

I don't think I'm capable of making radical changes, but over a period of four or five years you can perceive very big changes, and they seem rather small at the time.

Capable, Changes, Four, Thinking, Years

I like the idea that [Mahatma] Gandhi is appearing now in an opera hall in all these different places, and people kind of think about it again.

Ideas, Kind, Like, People, Places, Thinking

Satyagraha is an opera which I wrote for the Netherlands Opera, so it uses an orchestra of around fifty, a chorus of forty, and there are about seven soloists. The opera. . . Satyagraha means truthful, so it was a name [Mahatma] Gandhi used to describe his civil disobedience movement.

Civil, Mean, Names, Seven, Use, Wrote

You get up early in the morning and you work all day. That’s the only secret.

Day, Early, Morning, Secret, Up Early

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