Born in Baltimore in 1937, Philip Glass studied at the University of Chicago and the Juilliard School. The composer of operas, film scores, and symphonies, he performs regularly with the Philip Glass Ensemble and lives in New York.
The long-awaited memoir by “the most prolific and popular of all contemporary composers” (New York Times).
A world-renowned composer of symphonies, operas, and film scores, Philip Glass has, almost single-handedly, crafted the dominant sound of late-twentieth-century classical music. Yet here in Words Without Music, he creates an entirely new and unexpected voice, that of a born storyteller and an acutely insightful chronicler, whose behind-the-scenes recollections allow readers to experience those moments of creative fusion when life so magically merged with art.
"If you go to New York City to study music, you'll end up like your uncle Henry," Glass's mother warned her incautious and curious nineteen-year-old son. It was the early summer of 1956, and Ida Glass was concerned that her precocious Philip, already a graduate of the University of Chicago, would end up an itinerant musician, playing in vaudeville houses and dance halls all over the country, just like his cigar-smoking, bantamweight uncle. One could hardly blame Mrs. Glass for worrying that her teenage son would end up as a musical vagabond after initially failing to get into Juilliard. Yet, the transformation of a young man from budding musical prodigy to world-renowned composer is the story of this commanding memoir.
From his childhood in post–World War II Baltimore to his student days in Chicago, at Juilliard, and his first journey to Paris, where he studied under the formidable Nadia Boulanger, Glass movingly recalls his early mentors, while reconstructing the places that helped shape his artistic consciousness. From a life-changing trip to India, where he met with gurus and first learned of Gandhi’s Salt March, to the gritty streets of New York in the 1970s, where the composer returned, working day jobs as a furniture mover, cabbie, and an unlicensed plumber, Glass leads the life of a Parisian bohemian artist, only now transported to late-twentieth-century America.
Yet even after Glass’s talent was first widely recognized with the sensational premiere of Einstein on the Beach in 1976, even after he stopped renewing his hack license and gained international recognition for operatic works like Satyagraha, Orphée, and Akhnaten, the son of a Baltimore record store owner never abandoned his earliest universal ideals throughout his memorable collaborations with Allen Ginsberg, Ravi Shankar, Robert Wilson, Doris Lessing, Martin Scorsese, and many others, all of the highest artistic order.
Few major composers are celebrated as writers, but Philip Glass, in this loving and slyly humorous autobiography, breaks across genres and re-creates, here in words, the thrill that results from artistic creation. Words Without Music ultimately affirms the power of music to change the world.
##無法想象是位80歲老人的自傳,真誠平和沒有煽情與說教。上半本特彆有意思,童年成長,音樂藝術求學之路,從巴黎帶著最貴的傢當(收音機)搭車去東方學瑜伽。40多歲還是一邊當藝術傢一邊晚上開齣租車維持生計。倒不是個“大器晚成的”勵誌人生故事,有趣的是字裏行間的故事和生活告訴我we don’t need that much money to be happy. a real genuine person and artist. 最後的尾聲好打動人
評分##在畫傢朋友約翰·勞森30歲意外死亡後 不久之後,另一件靈異事件發生瞭。一名演員——大衛·華瑞羅,他是我們在巴黎成立的話劇團演員(之後到瞭組約我們將劇團改名為“馬勃礦地劇團”)——從倫敦給我打瞭個電話。那時我剛從印度和巴黎迴來並再次在紐約居住。 大衛當年正在倫敦和一...
評分##“我作為一個音樂蠢材的名聲……” 嵇心 “開場與尾聲,起點與終點。它們之間所發生的一切都是一閃就過去瞭。‘永恒’其實就是尾聲之後那個新起點。不知怎的,所有內容暫時顯得很具體、很實在。但我們所感受過的真實有朝一日會被我們遺忘,而我們所不理解的東西到最後也會被我...
評分##10/16/2016 購於 Julliard Bookstore. 每周在往返Bronx的地鐵上讀這本書,通勤時間變得好過瞭很多。Music and words, love and lost, genuine and humble.
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