Music sharing practices and cultural impact

Philip Glass: The Light and the Hours

This paper will examine two pieces by the enormously talented and tremendously gifted 20th century composer, Philip Glass. Philip Glass's compositions are frequently used or commissioned for the screen and that is no surprise. Aside from being melodic, his pieces frequently are able to touch upon an elusive and ephemeral aspect of human emotion. This paper will examine Glass's 1987 piece, The Light, and the first track from the score that he created for the 2003 film, The Hours: the Poet acts. These are dramatically different pieces, and this paper will attempt to analyze and illuminate the different factors which influence and shape each one.

Glass's 1987 piece, The Light, was apparently composed as a means of commemorating the 100th anniversary on the famous Michelson-Morley experiment which looked at the various properties of light. It was also the first work that Glass commissioned for a full symphony orchestra. This piece is remarkable because every aspect of it reeks with a sense of celebration. The arrangement of sounds which make up the melody is so aesthetically pleasing, that it seems to almost imitate the shimmer that light makes when it dances against a windowpane or radiates off water. The harmony, which is the simultaneous notes in a chord is able to almost imitate the complexities which makes up the speed and the structure of light. There is an overwhelming sense of clarity to the piece, which seems to be strongly evocative of how light radiates and functions in form. The texture of the piece is able to lend itself strongly to the essences of celebration. There appears to be not only a celebration of the experiment itself, but also a celebration of all the things that light can achieve: there's a sense of the majestic inherent in the piece's texture, a rolling quality of all that is. The rhythm is able to imitate that sense of majesty as the rhythm. The accentuation of the tones over time has a certain vastness about it: it almost seems to evoke a majestic and royal hall in a castle which goes on forever.

The timbre of this particular piece is determined by a range of factors which make up the quality of a sound, and is influenced by the overtones and the harmonics present. Sometimes the timbre is just subdued and understated, and seems to hint at the possibilities of all that light can achieve: this element of the timbre can seem promising and evocative of the magic that is to come. Thus, in this manner, the timbre can seem to point to the overwhelming feeling of the sky being the limit. The entire form is broken up in to what appears to be five or six distinct groups or sections. The first two sections evoke all the promise of what is to come and what can be achieved. The middle two sections are far more majestic and celebratory. The final two sections provide the sense of closure, reflection and the finality of overall achievement.

The piece, "The Poet Acts" is the first composition of Philip Glass's legendary score, The Hours. This is the piece which has the most profound sense of foreboding in perhaps the entire soundtrack to this film. The melody of this piece seems to be riddled with the most profound sense of sorrow: melodically the sounds work together to convey an almost palpable human emotion. This track is entitled "The Poet Acts" because it is used in the film against the moment when Virginia Woolf commits suicide by drowning herself. Thus, melodically, there needs to be a sense of not only palpable human sorrow, but also of a sense of the inevitability of all that is. The suicide is imminent and nothing can be done to stop it. Harmony is the connection between several pitches and is impacted by chord progression. In this regard Glass is able to keep a harmony which is able to adequately influence both the thematic and melodic elements. The rhythm helps to create variance in the accentuation of the sounds over time, while keeping a strong sense of the human heartbeat or pulse, which helps the listener to bear in mind the fact that so much is at stake. In this sense the rhythm is able to help create a clear picture of all that is going on; one is never able to forget just how high the stakes are. The quality of the sound and the color work together to strongly evoke this sense of melancholy. The texture of the piece is able to shimmer, eerily evocative almost of the intangible surface of the water that the protagonist ultimately drowns herself beneath. In this manner, all of the elements of the score are all able to work together to convey both action and human emotion in a manner that few pieces of music can.