Appreciating the String Music of Philip Glass

I've been a big fan of Philip Glass' music since I first heard it sometime in the 1970s and have seen him perform several times. I'm most familiar with his larger orchestral and operatic works but not so much with his string works, the violin quartets and concertos.

String Magazine has published an appreciation of his string music, with comments from several musicians about how they approach his works, which are often technically demanding. It's an interesting article and I do hope that I'll get to see some of the works mentioned performed live. For some reason, John Adams seems to be much more popular in the Toronto music scene than Glass; I've seen a few of Adams' works performed in the last few years, but only a couple of Glass' piano études.

For conservatory-trained string players who came of age in the 1980s and ’90s, a new score from Philip Glass could be met with a wary eye. Sure, he cast a bewigged violinist as the title character in his landmark 1976 opera Einstein on the Beach. And one of the earliest pieces in his trademark minimalist style was the 1966 String Quartet No. 1—the first of eight quartets to date. But orchestral musicians in particular bemoaned—even outright protested—being assigned to play Glass’ churning, oscillating patterns, while singers, keyboardists, and screened films often seemed to reap the creative glory.

In the past 15 years, however, Glass has produced a spate of solo string works that has won him new converts. Most of these pieces feature traditional forms and often lyrical, reflective moods: the Sonata for Violin and Piano (2008), Violin Concerto No. 2 (2009), Partita for Solo Violin (2010–11), Pendulum for Violin and Piano (2010), and Sarabande in Common Time (2016). There are also two cello concertos, completed in 2001 and 2012, respectively, and two partitas for solo cello, from 2007 and 2010. Other works from the last decade include a Double Concerto for Violin and Cello and a Partita for Double Bass.

Even more noteworthy is how the Glass canon is being reimagined. Last summer, Chase Spruill, a San Francisco–area violinist, cast Glass’ Epilogue for Solo Violin as a musical protest over racial injustice. Another violinist, Tim Fain, has reimagined the Partita as Portals, a multimedia project with choreographer Benjamin Millepied. And the UK-based Carducci Quartet has filmed a lockdown-era arrangement of the String Quartet No. 5 with jazz-rock drummer, Cristián Tamblay.