Nachum / Glass / The Revolutionary Absence of Bar Lines - NOSPR

‘Then I did something surprising, entirely by intuition: I removed all the bar lines from the score. Suddenly I saw something I had never been able to perceive before: the flow of extended rhythmic cycles that could not be contained within the rigid framework of European metre’. This is how Philip Glass, many years later, recalled the decisive moment in the formation of his minimalist musical idiom. It happened in Paris in the 1960s. An unknown American student of Nadia Boulanger undertook the task of transcribing the film music of the Indian master Ravi Shankar, who was himself just beginning to establish a presence in Europe. Before long, the two composers would fundamentally transform Western conceptions of rhythm by transplanting the cyclical, trance-like sensibility of Hindustani music into the Western tradition.

To mark Philip Glass’ ninetieth birthday this year – perhaps the most popular composer of concert music of the past quarter-century – we have decided not simply to revisit, but to present for the first time three of his early works, directly inspired by his encounter with Ravi Shankar – works that remain, to this day, as radical as they are literally hypnotic.

Michał Mendyk

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