Philip Glass

More Snippets VII –
Philip Glass


(Picture: The Hours, Bonus DVD)

(Picture: deepartnature.blogspot.com)

(Picture: neoantennae.blogspot.kr)

»There is no question that the emotional point of view is conveyed by the music«, says composer Philip Glass who did write the score for the 2002 film The Hours (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hours_%28film%29) that shows also the suicide of writer Virginia Woolf, the very sequence that Glass is also commenting upon. And since his music, for example his composition Opening, stemming from his six part chamber music composition Glassworks of 1981 (http://www.philipglass.com/music/compositions/glassworks.php), has also been used to score documentaries about visual artists as for example Van Gogh, we might take this as an inspiration to think about how music is used by art historical narratives to convey the emotional point of view of art (or of these narratives).

»Images are surprisingly neutral. Not that they don’t have an emotional content of their own, but they can easily be manipulated. Depending on the music. So that the direction of the music, it’s like… it’s the arrow that you shoot in the air. Everything follows that.«

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Opening is a piece of music that can easily be underestimated. First of all: it seems remarkably easy to play. But play the whole piece through with all its repetitions, and you will get a sense of that this piece is not exactly meant to be a musical wallpaper. It has more something of an exercise of meditation. You delve into the polyrhythmic structure (left hand: eights; right hand: triplets), and you find yourself within a structure that develops, but that also seems to stand still. And as the emotional content develops (with the harmonies that change), you might also become an observer of yourself, observing how you react to these changes; and in case that you might be sensitive to the harmonies of the particularly elegic b-section (already on page one), in case that these most simple changes of harmony, do touch a string of your emotional center, you delve into a mystery of simplicity. Because in thinking about this seemingly harmless piece, it remains a mystery to me, why and how this simple changes are able to develop this most intense elegic quality that probably also has made Opening that immensely popular, because it simply does affect people.
Finally: If you still think that Opening is wallpaper, its first bar is simply smarter than that. Because the very first bar can be interpreted as a most simple introductory bar, but also as the first bar of a four bar theme. And these small things, this most simple but effective detail seems to be significant to me, how the composer is able to get this flowing of things in motion. One thing is something, but already part of something else, like a permanent metamorphosis of structure and: of emotional content.

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One does find an experimental presentation of Opening on Youtube (or is it an experimental presentation of art works?) that has, on every beat (i.e. with the triplets) three works of art briefly shown (see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOY76fpQsrA).
And this experiment that, at first glance, might seem completely absurd and even dadaistic at least does show one thing: Here the music does not manage to manipulate the images. Their changing occurs far too quick, and one might be tempted to say that here the works of art shown or represented manage to escape from any attempt of manipulation that might be behind such a presentation (or be the result of any somewhat innocent experiment).
Compare this dada-experiment with the presentation here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r_DvtPXgOY) that has a more conventional slow motion slide show to the music, and here music and images actually do interact.

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I have heard Opening being used within a Van Gogh documentary called Vincent van Gogh – Revolutionär der Moderne, and whatever one might say in favor or against that documentary, it does show that music and images (paintings) can also be subjected to an art historical narrative that neither allows the music to develop, nor the paintings actually to be seen (not, thus, the music actually to manipulate the works of art).
Because, for one, the paintings are shown for such brief moments only, that it is difficult to connect to them at all, and the music, for example Opening is being used, though it is used as a signature piece, only in small excerpts, like a flavor or a general tone. And I am inclined to say that the use of the music occurs here in analogy to the art historical commonplaces displayed by the narrative. In brief: Opening serves here as the commonplace of elegy, and if the paintings shown are, by this, manipulated, I could not say, but it seems to me that also here, the actual works of art are shown only that briefly that there is not much actually to be seen in that very documentary, although it does comprise also very interesting ingredients like for example the speaking of Marina Abramović (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Abramović) on Van Gogh.
The worst commonplace, by the way, and this is my last word as to the documentary and as to the piece of music, the worst commonplace, in my opinion, is the conventional speaking of Van Gogh’s lifelong »passion«, because I tend to say that ›passion‹ (understood as ›Leidenschaft‹ and not as ›Passion‹) is something essentially being part of an individual subject and any display of passion linked to a subject, while the art historical narrative that excludes any subjectivity of whatsoever kind only displays convention, and in that, does not reveal, if it actually does know anything of ›passion‹ at all that it, nevertheless and conventionally, attributes to Van Gogh. Maybe it is this void of any allowing of subjectivity that requires, in the end, the use of music that acts as the equivalent of commonplace, and here as the commonplace of elegy.

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