If you like minimalist music, you will probably like the music of American composer Philip Glass (b. 1937). Glass is among the most influential composers of the modern era, and one of the most prolific. Over a career than has spanned more than half a century, he has produced 27 operas, 11 symphonies and scores for more than 50 films.

Music wasn’t his initial calling. At 15, Glass studied mathematics and philosophy at the University of Chicago, graduating in 1956. Interest in atonal music then led him to Julliard. 1964 was the defining year for Glass, when he won a Fulbright scholarship to study in Paris under the distinguished French composer, conductor and teacher, Nadia Boulanger. There he met the Indian sitarist, Ravi Shankar whose music had a huge influence on the budding composer. “Ravi Shankar was a composer and a performer … I saw that as a possible future,” Glass said. And so he began to transcribe Shankar’s Indian music into Western notation. “I couldn’t figure it out. And then I erased the bar lines and suddenly I saw the flow of music.”, Glass recalls.

With this epiphany, Glass was on a roll. He temporarily abandoned the formal elements of traditional Western music such as harmony, tempo and melody, and experimented with music of a monotonous and repetitive style, establishing a genre of atonal, minimalist music that would earn him a small but growing audience when he returned to New York by the late 1960’s. His formation of the Philip Glass Ensemble in 1971 further opened the floodgates on his creativity, giving him the chance to hone and refine his musical ideas with total freedom.

Selected Works of Phillip Glass

Metamorphosis (1988), 2nd movement. Performer: Lavinia Meijer, harpist.

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Music video from the Movie, The Hours (2002). Scored by Philip Glass.

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The Poets’ Act, from the soundtrack of The Hours (2002).