MAGNUSSEN:

Good afternoon. I'm very pleased to welcome my guests, composer Philip Glass and pianist Bruce Brubaker.

Bruce Brubaker has been teaching at The Juilliard School for quite a few years.  He is now Professor at New England Conservatory and has been quite active in taking the concept of the piano recital to new ground.

Composer Philip Glass has been very active not only in opera, but chamber music, film, dance… you name it.   I heard you perform, Philip, at the "Great Day in New York" celebration, put on by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (which Fred Sherry directed).   And the whole series of events was a kind of coming together of the many different stylistic tendencies in the new music scene.   With that in mind, I would like to start our conversation with a question.

Are we living in a Golden Age of new music?

GLASS:

(to audience) I was just talking with Jon before – Jon is writing an opera and I am writing an opera – and I was telling him that I spoke to my copyist a few days ago, and I said, “Look, I am going to have Act One ready, when can I send it over?” He said, “Well, don't send it right away, because I am working on two other operas right now.”   I said, “My God, is there a boomlet going on in the opera world?”   He said, “Well, there are a lot of operas being written and people are producing them.”

You see, by the time an opera gets to the copyist, that's when you start spending money.   Nothing is serious until the copyist is involved, then you know it's for real.   So I thought, “Now I am getting worried.   I have to get the first act done by sometime in January and the guy's too busy.”    He said, “Don't worry, I'll hire some other people.”   But I am finding – well, especially we've been talking about opera – but, when I began writing operas some time ago, I was the only composer I knew writing an opera; these days I don't know any composer not writing an opera.   There are a lot of people writing operas.

But it's also good, because that means there may be 12 to 20 opera companies in this country that will look at a work of Jon's, that he can show the music to, and that would not have been true in 1975, 30 years ago it wouldn't have been true.

Then there's another part of it, too. Young composers – I mean younger than you – people who I meet in their twenties, who are in the process of liberating themselves totally from any idea of working in a specific genre.   They are very active working – they could be writing film music or concert music or band music – and they are often doing all of these things.    So that the career that these people might have is far different from what people imagined the composer's career would be like 30 years ago.   They might not automatically think about teaching; they might think about working in other applied kinds of practical music making - film is one, theater, dance… all this stuff.

So, I don't know.   When you say there's a Golden Age, that would imply also that there's a level of quality we're talking about.   And I would say there is a decent level of quality.   I've been working with a series for young composers called “Music At The Anthology”, began at the Anthology Film Archives of New York.”   We do a week of concerts every year – we do about 30 composers – and on any night that I go, if there are four or five pieces, I probably will like three or four of them.   There may be one I don't like, which is really amazing.   It's not just a question of quantity, though, I think the quality is interesting.

The funny thing is, I don't know how anyone makes a living at this.   I don't know what they are doing – I don't know what I did – but if we are just talking about making music, and listening to music, there's certainly more going on than there was 30 years ago, and in a more interesting way.

BRUBAKER:

I wonder if it isn't part of a change in society too. It seems to me that 30 years ago, the nature of concert music, classical music -- I don't know what to call it anymore -- was a little bit more regimented. One automatically thought of composers getting academic jobs. Now, it seems like those boundaries have come down -- a little bit anyway.

GLASS:

Certainly, however, as a country, as a culture – America is a very harsh environment for an artist to work in.   It's even worse now than it used to be.   At least during the Clinton years there would be concerts at the White House; I don't think there's been a concert in the White House in four years.   Maybe there has been, but I remember hearing Denise Graves – my sister was invited to go, because she was connected to one of the embassies, and we went to hear Denise Graves there – and I liked her and I invited her to do a recording with me.   But, this is a country which…

BRUBAKER:

People usually come to the White House after they get the job, you know.

GLASS:

Well, we'll see what happens. Anyway, the point is that America as a culture has never been particularly interested in the art business.   However, an interesting thing has happened: there's film.  A lot of younger composers have gotten interested in the kinds of music which have a larger audience, like film.   A lot of young composers who have aspirations to doing art music would also like to do film music.