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But as Glass's popularity and influence grow, so do the complaints of his critics. Some detractors find the hallmarks of the minimalist style -- short repetitive melodies, steady driving rhythms and harmonies that remain unchanged for minutes at a stretch -- unsophisticated and boring. Others view the minimalists, a school that includes Glass, Steve Reich and John Adams, as a passing aberration whose modish success, in this view, is based on pandering to an audience's simplistic appetites for melody and rhythm.
Among Glass's most implacable opponents are those who still subscribe to the conventional wisdom that has dominated contemporary music after World War II. According to this school of thought, the twelve-tone system of serialism, invented by Arnold Schoenberg and developed by his disciple Anton Webern, was the pinnacle toward which musical evolution had inevitably headed. Any composer who did not accept such a theory of history was considered a reactionary.
By the late '60s and early '70s, though, the consensus was coming apart. A telling blow was struck when Composer George Rochberg, a prominent serialist, made a clean break with the twelve-tone system in his neoromantic Third String Quartet. As the primacy of serialism came into question, adventurous young composers suddenly realized that further advances could be made. Glass was one of them. "I wanted to create music that spoke to me emotionally," he says. "I wanted my own voice."
Although that voice has grown increasingly complex with each new work, its foundation remains minimalism, derived from sources as disparate as classical Indian music, the Balinese gamelan, African drumming and rock 'n' roll. In * early pieces like Music for Voices (1970), Glass often worked with a single figure of no more than two or three notes that was repeated insistently and gradually lengthened. Lately he has begun writing longer, more conventional melodies that are less circumscribed by the rhythmic pulse. But the musical accents are indisputably 20th century, New York, American.
Glass attributes the development of both his technique and his aesthetic to his experience in opera, a form many progressive composers had given up for dead not too long ago. "Phil has a keen visual sense and a profound understanding of drama and theater, especially its visual content," says Director Wilson. "Because of him, all kinds of people who thought opera was something that belonged in the 19th century have come to appreciate it." Another prominent element in Glass's music is rock. In the late '70s Glass could often be found at rock clubs, checking out the latest new wave bands. The relationship has been reciprocal: groups such as the Talking Heads and King Crimson have been heavily influenced by Glass's sound.