Philip Glass - Part 10 of Music in Twelve Parts: Repitition without repeating

 

Philip Glass put me in trance with this his music, but it was not a comfortable one at all. Similar to Steven Reich, repetition and looping play a major role in his music. The whole minimalistic song consisted of a melody played over and over again with only slight deviations and variations being added. It was quite problematic for me to listen to it fully concentrated because I was unable to figure out when the melody begins and ends. The whole song was not separable into different sections for me. There was no remarkable pattern to be noticed.

My confusion started right with the introduction because there was none. The song started with the melody right away it was just quiet and took a few seconds to build up its volume. I thought if the musicians started off like this or if just the recording begins at this point and the tiny introduction was added afterwards. However, the melody is hypnotizing from the beginning. It reminded me of meditational music but it was too fast and packed with different instruments. Thus, I felt pretty busy and restless while trying to focus on the main melody. It took my whole concentration although it was a pretty simple melody and clearly in the foreground. My brain just tried to get any other stimulus since the melody was so exhausting to listen to. When I lost my focus, I started to break out of the state of trance and felt stressed. The only thing that made get a grasp on this song was gone and I had to rearrange my perception of it.

It was relieving whenever the song had slight deviations and instruments added, so I just had anything else to listen too. Sometimes, these variations created a short period of chaos in my perception since these also disturbed my focus on the melody. I was never really sure what to listen for in this song and why it lasts for 17 minutes. It seemed to me that it could be two minutes long or just last forever since the ending was just the music slowly fading out. In conclusion, it was a very underwhelming experience and mostly unpleasant to listen to.