It is natural to believe that
Philip Glass’ musical style has landed his success amongst popular culture. This aspect for the most part, is entirely true, and he has demonstrated that the palette of minimalism is a perfectly viable medium to express music. However, his second symphony is the point where his pure minimal ties would come to a well rounded and poignant end, at least in terms of the art itself. An end to minimalism itself? Certainly not, but in terms of Glass, the works proceeding this forged a new type of minimalism for him.
Within the glass parapet, Glass, introduces an idea predominantly about the illusive quality of the music he tries to create. For a lot of the time, it works, mainly by weaving in and out of chromatic chordal textures, constraining passages, and timely flounces. The first movement connects the listener in a very effective and haunting introduction, serving as a first part. From here, the music follows the same Glassian equation of additive line after line, until a final climax is reached, in this case through a barrage of tambourines, triangles, chimes and static woodwinds. While Glass and his musical equations have served him well in the past, it is unfortunate that the impression left proceeding the initiating movement, fails to mark any sort of musical brilliance. Interestingly through, before there is enough time to dwell on this problem, the orchestra moves into another motion. Again, haunting in its initial approach,
"Part II" envelops the listener in another flurry of linear addition, with a fractal like exponential growth, only a little more subtle in design.
The symphony so far, has done what so much of his music does – engage the audience into a hypnotic trance of intrigue to the motion of the composition. Quite like a kaleidoscope of polytonal and polyrhythmic elements, the audience inevitably dictate the movement of pieces of melody within their tube of experience, rather than having the composer do it for them. It’s not amazingly enjoyable, but still certainly listenable, and there always appears to be an overshadowing force of curiosity that encompasses the listener’s mind, to the point where switching off becomes a lost battle to personal discovery.
At the final junction, the music shifts, into the last majestic movement. Serving as its own support,
"Part III," scores the true zenith of the symphony, perhaps one of Glass’ finest symphonic compositions up to this date. Built of the same melodic and rhythmic structure of the first two parts, this chapter is profoundly more animated and rigorous. In addition, this also marks to point of Glass’ movement into new musical territory, and therefore, stands of its own significance, while also maintaining a sense of emotional quality to its lace. It is therefore quite safe to maintain the thought that
Symphony No. 2 remains as nothing ‘new’ from the house of Glass, but is certainly important for the refraction towards his newer ideas seen in later works.
