After packing AJ off to preschool, I�m indulging a musical split personality this morning, perhaps a reflection of my mood on this rainy fall day. After listening to Philip Glass�s �Glassworks� album, I�ve moved on to Var�se�s �Arcana,� one of my favorite pieces of music for orchestra. �Glassworks� is one of the quietest pieces I can think of. Although there are some loud portions, their simplicity for me, at least, still encourages calm, in a Zen kind of way. Arcana, on the other hand, is incredibly loud and cacophonous. And just when you think it can�t get any louder, Var�se brings in the air raid sirens (It occurs to me that this statement may sound like a metaphor, but in fact, I mean it quite literally. Just look at a score if you don�t believe me.).

I first encountered the music of Philip Glass my sophomore year in high school. I had an English teacher who dabbled in avant-garde music. He gave a lecture-demonstration of American avant-garde music one evening and played the opening piece of �Glassworks� (entitled, appropriately enough, �Opening�) on a keyboard held in his lap as he sat in one of those funky Swedish ergonomic stools (He was also the only teacher at our very preppy school to have long hair and wear Birkenstocks year round. With socks.). I found Glassworks dazzling, not from complexity of composition or orchestration, but because it stripped away nearly all the elements that we think of when we think of music and left only the skeletal framework of conventions. For me, anyway, it is the musical equivalent of looking at the frame of a house that has been taken apart piece by piece. Or a Rothko painting.

�Glassworks� is a palate-cleanser for me. When my head is noisy, it reminds me how to listen to music. Var�se, on the other hand, is a cipher. His techniques vary widely from piece to piece, but his works for large orchestra like Arcana and Am�riques are the most complex. He is an heir to the school of composition that came down from Cocteau via Erik Satie, but with �better chops� and a more obsessive nature, exploring the limits of the definition of musical sound without entirely giving up conventions like the orchestra itself. Glass�s music actually sounds much closer to that of Satie (think the ever-popular �Gymnop�dies�). But Var�se is closer to the philosophical spirit, the politicized absurdism. Where Glass strips away, Var�se adds on, piling up contrasting timbres, dissonant pitch constructions, conflicting rhythms, dynamic extremes. If Glass�s music is the frame of the house, Var�se�s is the pieces that have been removed, jumbled in a heap. The structures are deliberately erratic. And Var�se has a flair for melodrama, although my sense of his work as melodramatic probably has something to do with the first time I ever heard �Arcana:� blaring through the semi-darkness of the courtyard of a ramshackle French chateau as part of an after-dinner listening session at the conservatory where I was studying composition. (How�s that for a run-on sentence!). And incidentally, �Arcana� was followed up by the soundtrack to the TV show, �Twin Peaks.� Our composition teacher was eclectic too.

There is something about the combination of �Glassworks� and �Arcana� that has always worked especially well for me. I know I seem to be pushing the metaphors today, but they are like a negative and a positive of the same image, each taking up space left by the other. Give them a listen and see what you think.

And incidentally, I now have a guestbook, so sign it if you're so inclined. Let me feel the love.

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