Max's Musings

I Think I'll Make a Cake

The Hours

Who doesn't like cake? Much as I enjoy baking and eating cake, that's not what this blog is about. It's about a piece for piano by Philip Glass, but I've got a circuitous route to explain why.

I first heard another modernist piece of music, Stravinksi's RIte of Spring, in a movie theater, watching a Walt Disney animated film, Fantasia. When Rite premiered in 1913, it was shocking. The audience rioted, so hostile was their reaction. Twenty-seven years later, it was still controversial, and Stravinksy was happy to sell the right to use the song to Disney. While the film initially failed commercially, the critcs were generally supportive of the use of the music, in that it brought modern music to the masses. Later, when I heard Stravinksy conducting the actual ballet, I realized that the Disney film had mangled the piece, omitting parts, repeating other parts, and using things of order. Still, I'll wager more people have heard Disney's version of Rite than have heard all of his other works combined.

Which brings me back to Philip Glass.

This blog about the brilliant score by Philip Glass to the film The Hours. If you haven't seen it, it's well woth watching. The working title for Virginia Woolf's 1925 novel, Mrs. Dalloway, was The Hours, and the movie is loosely based on the novel, with multiple streams of consciousness threading through the narrative. Indeed, Glass's score, with its recursive rhythms and tonalities, provides both unity to the film and another streaming consciousness.

You can hear the score here, with the song in the blog's title at 11:00:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heu9tD0dzkY

Glass has written scores to numerous films, and been nominated for the Academy Award three times, including for The Hours. But he's also one of the most influential living composers. He studied the classics under Nadia Boulenger, and has collaborated with such popular artists as Paul Simon and David Bowie. Besides his many movie scores, he's written widely performed symphonies and operas. The New York Metropolitan Opera's production of Akhnaten won the Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording in 2022.

Unlike Stravinsky, who eventually described Fantasia as an "unyielding imbecility," Glass has collalborated with artists wherever he's found them, in whatever venues he can reach. Whether it's the Met, or Netlix's Stranger Things, he's penetrated our culture at multiple levels.

Whatever your taste in music, Philip Glass has something for you. Kind of like cake.