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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

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I Was A Regular

Philip Glass

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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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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.

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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.

It Takes About A Year To Write An Opera For Me, But Not A Really A Year Of Writing. I'm Touring At The Same Time, And I'm Playing, Sometimes Doing Smaller Projects.[the Opera] Akhnaten Fits In With Gandhi And Einstein, So That Forms A Trilogy In A Way.i Picked People Who Were These Kind Of Larger Than Life Characters, Who Kind Of Changed The World They Lived In By Almost The Force Of Their Personality And Their Inventiveness. People That I Think Not Only Do I Admire But I Think They're Admirable People.

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.

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.

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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.

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I Don't Know What I'm Doing And It's The Not Knowing That Makes It Interesting.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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