40+ Philip Glass Quotes On Music, Art And Storytelling

Philip Glass is an American composer who is widely considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. He is best known for his distinct style of minimalism, which is characterized by repetitive structures and the use of simple, often tonal, harmonies. His works have been performed by some of the world's most renowned orchestras and ensembles. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Philip Glass on music, life, art.

Top 10 Philip Glass Quotes

1. I don't know what I'm doing and it's the not knowing that makes it interesting.
2. You get up early in the morning and you work all day. That’s the only secret.
3. I travel the world, and I'm happy to say that America is still the great melting pot - maybe a chunky stew rather than a melting pot at this point, but you know what I mean.
4. I've been called a minimalist composer for more than 30 years, and while I've never really agreed with the description, I've gotten used to it.
5. If you remember your lineage, you will never feel lonely.
6. In order to arrive at a personal style, you have to have a technique to begin with.
7. I'd say the differences are more interesting than the similarities at this point. Certainly no one would ever mistake my music for Steve's [ Reich].
8. I, as a young guy getting out of music school, I didn't like the prospect of spending my life writing music for about 200 people.
9. The hardest thing about traveling is that mostly you get to a point - and it always happens on every tour - where you can choose between eating and sleeping, but you can't do both.
10. The work I've done is the work I know, and the work I do is the work I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing.

Philip Glass Short Quotes

• I always knew what I wanted to do and I did it.
• You practice and you get better. It's very simple.
• It doesn't need to be imagined, it needs to be written down.

Philip Glass Quotes About Music

What came to me as a revelation was the use of rhythm in developing an overall structure in music. — Philip Glass

I'd say it's just part of the world that we live in; it's part of the music world. — Philip Glass

There's almost no content in terms of language at all. I don't like using language to convey meaning. I'd rather use images and music. — Philip Glass

Finally, ultimately, you write music for yourself. I mean, I need a public, I need people to play, I need everything else. I'm not working in isolation. But finally the man that writes the music is alone. And I have to respond to those criteria which are almost like inner needs or inner responses. — Philip Glass

The generation of composers that are just preceded me, people like [Karlheinz] Stockhausen, [Pierre] Boulez, and, well, [John] Cage for that matter,[Morton] Feldman ... That was a kind of experimental music that was very isolated. It had no real public. — Philip Glass

But the difference between the little pieces and the big pieces - I'm not actually sure which are the little pieces. With some of the big pieces, it's a lot of musical running around, whereas the little pieces, you can say everything you want to say. — Philip Glass

I'm interested in what happens to music when other people use it. Whereas there are composers who don't like anyone to touch their music, I think people should because they do things I can't think of. — Philip Glass

Philip Glass Quotes About Living

Traditions are imploding and exploding everywhere - everything is coming together, for better or worse, and we can no longer pretend we're all living in different worlds because we're on different continents. — Philip Glass

So the real drama for me is balancing live performances and writing, and one of the ways I balance it is I write in hotel rooms. That's not exactly balancing. Actually, writing in hotel rooms means that I'm refusing to deal with the problem. — Philip Glass

What I've noticed is that people who love what they do, regardless of what that might be, tend to live longer. — Philip Glass

Philip Glass Famous Quotes And Sayings

I think it's a great handicap to be discovered at an early age. I didn't have that burden of early success. I had the much more livable and durable career where success comes late, and comes slowly, and you ease into it. So by the time it comes, you're ready to deal with it. — Philip Glass

Akhnaten is kind of a dark, kind of mysterious character. We don't know a lot about him - a lot of information on him was lost. But he obviously was a kind of iconoclast of him time. I guess I'm attracted to people like that. Like [Albert] Einstein also, who radically changed our way of thinking about the world we live in. — Philip Glass

Satyagraha is an opera which I wrote for the Netherlands Opera, so it uses an orchestra of around fifty, a chorus of forty, and there are about seven soloists. The opera ... Satyagraha means truthful, so it was a name [Mahatma] Gandhi used to describe his civil disobedience movement. — Philip Glass

I don't know that I make a big distinction between the big pieces and the little pieces, because I don't experience them in that way. I mean, by the same token, you're out touring with a band and then you're writing string quartets, and in a funny way, isn't it all the same, in a way? It's all just music. — Philip Glass

I find that people can’t find you. It’s kind of quiet. When I go to a city, I can almost always get a piano if I need one. So there’s something nice about being on the road and focusing on something you want to do. — Philip Glass

I like the idea that [Mahatma] Gandhi is appearing now in an opera hall in all these different places, and people kind of think about it again. — Philip Glass

I've been working in theater, really, since about 1965. I started working with the Mabou Mines about then, and in a way I've always worked in the theater, but it's never been a main part of my work. And it wasn't until Einstein that I kind of shifted into high gear with theater, working with Bob, with Bob Wilson. And since then I find it a very attractive form to work in. It's just an extension of my work. — Philip Glass

I was a regular kind of academic music student. I was at Juilliard. I had to study all the contemporary music of the time, and changing that language very radically was just a sign or a signal that I was going to try to do something very different. I find that that's what I feel closest to. I found no real inner response in me in a non-tonal language. — Philip Glass

My biggest problem about writing is whenever I write piano pieces, because I then have to learn to play them, which is sometimes not so easy. — Philip Glass

Theatrical times are different from concert times, to put it simply. Taking a figure like [Mahatma] Gandhi and setting him on a stage requires thinking about what theater is about and what the whole experience is about and what we're trying to communicate in that way, so you get into certain less abstract considerations. — Philip Glass

If you don't have a basis on which to make the choice, then you don't have a style at all. You have a series of accidents. — Philip Glass

I shift between mediums very frequently. Instead of taking a break from writing, I just write in a different medium or in a different way or for a different purpose, so that I don't actually stop writing - I just go to something else. Like going from a big symphony to a piano piece is great and very refreshing, I find. And then going from that to a big concerto, and then having to go out and play. — Philip Glass

I consider the first 20 performances just learning the piece. Think about it this way: If you think about a pianist who plays a Schubert sonata through his whole lifetime - if you listen to Rubenstein or Horowitz playing their repertoire later in their life, you understand the richness with which they play that music, and how differently they must have played it when they were younger. — Philip Glass

What you hear depends on how you focus your ear. We're not talking about inventing a new language, but rather inventing new perceptions of existing languages. — Philip Glass

I don't think I'm capable of making radical changes, but over a period of four or five years you can perceive very big changes, and they seem rather small at the time. — Philip Glass

A new language requires a new technique. If what you're saying doesn't require a new language, then what you're saying probably isn't new. — Philip Glass

I think I'm really part of a whole generational movement in a way. I think a lot of other people since and during this time have gotten interested in writing what we can still call experimental music. It's not commercial music. And it's really a concert music, but a concert music for our time. And wanting to find the audience, because we've discovered the audience is really there. Those became really clear with Einstein on the Beach. — Philip Glass

Life Lessons by Philip Glass

1. Philip Glass has taught us the importance of dedication and hard work, as he has worked tirelessly for decades to create and perform his music.
2. He has also shown us the power of collaboration and how it can help to create something bigger than the individual.
3. Lastly, he has demonstrated that creativity can come from unexpected sources, and that it is possible to create something unique and beautiful from the most unlikely of sources.