Philip Glass - Music in Twelve Parts

     Philip Glass is widely recognized as one of the most prominent composers of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been described as "minimal music" with characteristics of other "minimalist" composers, such as La Monte Young, Steve Reich and Terry Riley. Glass described himself as a composer of the "music with repetitive structures," which he helped develop stylistically. His works are made up of minute, almost primitive patterns, repeated over and over again.

     Glass's music may seem static, but it has a lot of forward drive. He likes to bring the listener to complete insanity with a long, long repetition of the same musical pattern, and then abruptly changes the key - this technique causes a huge surge of energy, comparable to a dozen breakdowns in metalcore.

     Music in Twelve Parts (1971–1974) began as a single piece with twelve instrumental parts, but evolved into a cycle that summarized Glass's musical accomplishments since 1967. It even surpassed it - the last part features a twelve-tone theme, sung in the ensemble's soprano voice.
Music in Twelve Parts has all the hallmarks of Glass's early period: minimal harmonic variety, simple melodies and counter-melodies interacting in interesting ways, wordless female vocals, electric organ, robotic rhythms.

     The only challenge is to be able to listen to Glass's Music in Twelve Parts for a long time. It was a little hard for my brain, but, overall, I find the piece unique, because it combines the repetitiveness inherent in popular songs with classic motifs.