When Philip Glass’s music came to the attention of the general public in the early 1970s, it did so by presenting itself as an alternative to everything that music had to offer at the time: rock was becoming increasingly complex and academic, overlapping its most experimental forms with contemporary research; vocal music was progressively swelling, engulfed by symphony orchestras or marked by the metronome of electronic drums. In the meantime, contemporary music had folded in on itself, addressing an increasingly rarefied audience of connoisseurs and justifying itself with abstruse and pretentious musical lyrics.
Thanks to its return to candid and joyful rhythms and an almost physical feeling for sound, Music in Twelve Parts (1971/1974) was released by a new label, Virgin, and laid the foundations for a new avant-garde music, which did not require long explanations.
Glass’s immediate and lasting success, which reached an ever-growing audience that was not only composed of classical music specialists, explains how Glass, from an underground and alternative musician, managed to become a universally acclaimed composer. His undisputed merit was to go beyond the academic divisions of contemporary music, taking inspiration from different sources (from the French tradition to the Indian one), reconciling the popular with the academic and the East with the West. In the documentary Looking Glass we will have the opportunity to accompany him step by step through his creative journey, from the process of writing a theme to collaborations with different musicians in the studio, at home and live.
