In Conversation with Philip Glass
Join us as we follow the hammering drums and funeral cortege of Amenhotep III to enter the enthralling world of Philip Glass with this riveting opening scene from the opera AKHNATEN, performed by Indiana University Opera in February of 2013:
Philip Glass in his composing studio, where the interview that follows with Theresa Treadway Lloyd was conducted.
This three-act opera composed in 1983 by Philip Glass chronicles the reign of Egyptian pharaoh Akhnaten, the first advocate of monotheism. This topic had particular appeal to mezzo-soprano Theresa Treadway Lloyd. In addition to her own membership with the Rosicrucian Order since her early 20’s, the singer had travelled to Egypt to visit antiquities related to Akhnaten and Nefertiti. This keen interest in the subject combined with her deep admiration for the music of Philip Glass compelled the singer, at the time living in New York City, to reach out to the composer to request an interview.
What followed in this conversation from 1984 — and what we’re privileged to share here — was a fascinating discussion on a wide array of topics, ranging from the composing process and the source of musical inspiration---to spirituality in music and the subjects of dreams and the subconscious.
Terry was gratified by the openness of Philip Glass and his unguarded responses to her wide-ranging questions. A part of this was due, no doubt, to the engaging personality of the interviewer herself. And some of it may have been owing to the composer’s delight at the gift of local Adirondack salmon caviar presented to him by Terry upon her arrival at his home for the interview.
Here now, divided into nine separate chapters: the never-before-heard interview of Philip Glass conducted by Theresa Treadway Lloyd in the fall of 1984, along with a variety of images, select musical examples and additional commentary:
Philip Glass, a youthful portrait
Setting The Scene, The Early Years
“My father had a record store in Baltimore… and I listened to a lot of music working at that store…”
“…Now, you have to remember in the 1940s we didn’t have big Virgin Megastores or Sam Goody record shops. We didn’t have a music store like that. It was like a mom-and-pop candy store. In the back of the store he fixed radios, and in the front of the store he sold records.”
Turning To Composition
“It was very difficult at the beginning because I didn’t have any training in composition at all so I learned about music by reading music in the library and studied scores of what I thought was modern music…”
Studying With Nadia Boulanger
“She was seventy-three when I was studying with her. She lived into her nineties so she was far from being finished as a teacher. She had a lot of fire in her left at that point…I’m sure that I couldn’t write the music that I’m writing today without that (training), it simply would be too difficult to do…”
Famed teacher Nadia Boulanger in the 1960's, with still “a lot of fire in her left." Click to enlarge
The mid-1960’s in Paris were formative years for Philip Glass. On one hand, he was immersed in rigorous training in the fundamentals of Western music under the intensive supervision of master teacher Nadia Boulanger. But in addition, while earning pocket money during his studies, doing notation and conducting for a recording session for the soundtrack of Conrad Rook's film Chappacqua, Glass was introduced to another “master,” Indian musician Ravi Shankar. Shankar opened the eyes and ears of Philip Glass to a world beyond Western musical traditions and, in a sense, liberated him to develop the rhythmically-driven music that was later to become identified as his signature “minimalist” style.
Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass
Shankar had composed the score to the film and was directing his ensemble from the sitar. He recalls: "From the very first moment I saw such interest from him - he was a young man then - and he started asking me questions about ragas and talas and started writing down the whole score, and for the seven days he asked me so many questions. And seeing how interested he was I told him everything I could in that short time."
For his part, Glass responds: "It was possible to graduate from a major Western conservatory, in my case Juilliard, without exposure to music from outside the Western tradition. World music was completely unknown in the mid-60's."
In recognition of this unique collaboration from the 60’s, the Private Music record label brought these two talents back together in 1989 for a rare recording venture, an album entitled Passages comprised of co-written compositions by Philip Glass and Ravi Shankar. Here now is Ragas in a Minor Scale on a theme by Philip Glass with variations by Ravi Shankar:
Ragas in a Minor Scale on a theme by Philip Glass with variations by Ravi Shankar. Paintings by Claude Lorrain (1660 - 1682)
On Spirituality and The Source of Music
The friendship forged between Philip Glass and Ravi Shankar continued to resonate through the years and even came up in this 1984 discussion between Glass and Theresa Treadway Lloyd when “spirituality and the source of musical inspiration” arose as a topic:
“I was talking to Ravi Shankar years and years ago when I first met him…he said that the music comes somewhere from within him and he described it as a river that flows from him.”
To my mind, “the river of music that flows through me” that Philip Glass speaks of when articulating the notion of musical inspiration is evident in his exquisite Etudes for piano. Here are two examples, Etudes No. 9 and No. 20, featuring pianist Maki Namekawa:
On Composing
“It wasn’t until I was thirty…that the music began to flow in a very natural way.”
Pictured: Philip Glass at a performance for Art on the Beach on the World Trade Center landfill in the Hudson River. “I catch a skywriter writing an ad for a glass company,” writes the photographer of the scene.
“Glass in the Sky" (1977) by Richard Landry
On Writing Opera
As the discussion on composing and the creative process proceeds, Glass cites, as an example, his work on the opera Satyagraha, an epic three-act work on the life of Mahatma Gandhi.
“The literary aspect or the research aspect precedes the music… This is a long process. It takes several years to do…Writing the opera can be done in as little as seven or eight months… but you can also say that I’ve been writing the opera for three years…”
The scenes that follow, from the 2018 LA Opera production of Satyagraha, lend an idea of the scope and scale of the work:
Richard Croft as M.K. Gandhi in the 2013 Metropolitan Opera telecast of Satyagraha by Philip Glass. Click to enlarge
Composing and the Subconscious
The "active work" of reading and research precedes the writing of the music.
As the dialogue turns to the subject of creativity and the subconscious mind, Philip Glass continues to use Satyagraha to serve as an example:
“In my waking hours, I’m very actively working on the subject of Gandhi…It’s through that active work that, I believe, ideas evolve…”
For all of the spectacle and elaborate choral ensembles of Satyagraha, it is the achingly beautiful Evening Song from Act III that makes a lasting impression for many, the simple melody emerging as the “hit tune” of the opera. Here’s a recording of that piece with Douglas Perry, tenor and the New York City Opera Orchestra conducted by Christopher Keene:
Sheet music for Evening Song as arranged for piano.
Preview from musicnotes.com
On Melody and Harmony
The seamless melding of melody and harmony in Evening Song sets the tone for the conversation between Philip Glass and Theresa Treadway Lloyd to continue:
“One can, in a very slight way, precede the other, but in effect, we experience them at the same time.”
On Beethoven: “Melody is the byproduct of the harmonic language that he uses.”
Glass on Schubert: "The melody seems to carry with it a harmonic language."
When this interview was conducted in 1984, Philip Glass had only just begun his foray into film scoring. But since that time, he has scored close to forty films, including feature releases such as The Hours, The Illusionist and Kundun. He was commissioned by Universal Pictures to create a new score for the 1931 horror classic Dracula and he re-imagined a trilogy of films by Cocteau as operas, adapting the dialogue from the film scripts as opera libretti. But it is Koyaanisqatsi, a 1982 experimental film that views the world and the effects of man upon nature and the environment, which remains one of his musical masterworks. As described by music critic Alex Ross, Koyaanisqatsi is “an awesomely dispassionate vision of the human world, beautiful and awful in equal measure.” The title of the film, based on the Hopi Indian word meaning “life out of balance,” may be no less easy to pronounce. But the relevance of Koyaanisqatsi today during this challenging time of coronavirus can’t be disputed. Here now, a segment from the film entitled “The Pulse”:
Composing and Dreams
The conversation between Philip Glass and Theresa Treadway Lloyd wraps up with a final statement by the composer on the creative process and the unconscious mind:
“What I’m arguing for is that there is a continuity of a creative process which starts from the unconscious and goes through to the conscious and I think that’s very evident. I don’t think that there’s any question about that at all.”
We come full circle now and conclude the interview as we began---with a scene from the excellent Indiana University Opera production of Akhnaten from 2013 featuring superb countertenor Nicholas Tamagna. In the Hymn to the Sun, Akhnaten sings praise to the only god, Aten, for giving life to everything, a prayer based upon an ancient text likely written by Akhnaten himself:
Illustration by Dugald Walter for "Kubla Khan or a Vision in a Dream, a Fragment" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
David Lloyd (1920-2013)
On a personal note, this article will appear in close proximity to the date of my thirtieth anniversary at The Sembrich. I arrived in Bolton Landing for the first time on August 1, 1990 on the invitation of David Lloyd. So this seems like an opportune time for me to pay a heartfelt tribute to David and the Lloyd family.
Long before he helped to establish Lake George Opera Festival or took over directorship of the Juilliard American Opera Center, David Lloyd led an illustrious career on the American music scene. He performed in Beethoven’s Ninth under Serge Koussevitsky and Handel’s Messiah under Leonard Bernstein. He portrayed Albert Herring at the invitation of Benjamin Britten and made his New York City Opera debut in Die Meistersinger, the first of a long list of performances with the company.
When David Lloyd sought me out in 1990 to take over as curator of The Sembrich for an ailing George Cornwell, he knew that, as a composer, I valued time spent at artist retreats such as the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. He reasoned that I would find in The Sembrich studio a similar creative atmosphere conducive to composing.
In fact, I very nearly missed the opportunity, since my opera A CHEKHOV TRILOGY was premiering at Chautauqua Opera that July. But David saw to it that the position remained waiting for me, enlisting his great-niece Emeline Orloff to sit in for me until my arrival on the 1st of August---just one of many generous gestures that I observed during the time that I was privileged to know David.
Terry Lloyd’s interview of composer Philip Glass, featured here today, might never have come about were it not for the inspiration of another member of the Lloyd family: David’s son, Timothy, a gifted composer who died tragically in his 20’s. While preparing this post, Terry Lloyd, David’s daughter-in-law, expressed that, in fact, it was Timmy and her deep respect and affection for him that compelled her own longtime commitment to American composers, performing and recording their music.
“My Timmy was always a hero to me,” wrote Terry in a recent email, “Showing his gift, and doing his gift (composing) at such a young age, and not letting anyone get in his way.”
So it seems appropriate to close here---in memory of David Lloyd and in tribute to the Lloyd family---with Love Song (Nahuati) from Four Native American Love Poems by Timothy Cameron Lloyd, Theresa Treadway Lloyd, mezzo-soprano and Marshall Williamson, piano:
On behalf of The Sembrich Board of Directors and staff, we’re pleased to acknowledge the generous sponsorship of this special four-part Alfred Z. Solomon Innovator Series by the Alfred Z. Solomon Charitable Trust.
In closing, we want to relay our sincere thanks to Tom and Terry Lloyd for affording us the opportunity to share this very special conversation with Philip Glass and for their invaluable assistance and support in bringing this idea to fruition.
We also want to express gratitude to our musical colleagues Alan Johnson, pianist, John Duykers, tenor and Meredith Arksey and members of the Silver Bay Quartet for the time and effort given to our previously scheduled program on Philip Glass, Words with Music. We hope to be able to bring this program to The Sembrich studio in the future.
Until next time,
Richard Wargo
Artistic Director
Always in pursuit of versatility, Theresa Treadway Lloyd views her career as an evolutionary process. By age 12, she was an accomplished piano soloist with her own roster of students in southwest Oklahoma. A full scholarship to the Sherwood Music School in Chicago, at age 15, further honed her skills in piano performance, theory and composition. This led her to her mentor at Oklahoma University, Jack Harrold, who discovered her rare and expressive vocal coloratura abilities. Under his guidance, Terry won several national voice competitions, resulting in an invitation to join the Metropolitan Opera Studios in 1970. Boris Goldovsky recognized Theresa’s unusual coloratura voice in 1973, engaging the young mezzo to his company of impeccably trained singing actors. Her Carnegie Hall debut was accorded raves by the New York press the following year, and her career expanded to include leading roles with major opera companies and symphonies across the nation. In 1980, the Anchorage Symphony featured her in a setting of her own work, Easy. Her repertoire includes all the leading mezzo-coloratura roles in operatic literature but Carmen (with more than 60 performances to her credit) best suits her dramatic temperament.
Theresa Treadway Lloyd as Carmen
A veritable ambassador of the arts, Ms. Lloyd was selected by Affiliate Artists, Inc. in 1972, which enhanced her promotional and communication skills for over a decade as she shared her craft with regional audiences. She has diversified her artistry to include composition. Five of her own vocal works were recorded by her on her first ORION “Master Recording” of contemporary American Art Songs entitled Blue Moods. During the 1990’s, several other of Theresa’s vocal compositions were premiered in concerts: New World Anthem with the Glens Falls Symphony; A Dream Sleep Sequence with the Luzerne Chamber Players, and Friendship with the Lake George Opera Festival.
The millennium has seen Theresa’s recording career expand to include the world premiere of the musical A Tale of Cinderella on Atlantic records, an album of gospel music recorded with Alan Mills called Tribute, another world premiere recording of Max Schubel’s Rubber Court recorded with the Polish National Radio Orchestra on Opus One Recordings, and a new CD of American Chamber Music released on the Albany Records label which recently re-released her album, Blue Moods, on CD. Meanwhile, she is the head of vocal studies at the Luzerne Music Center, and has served as an instructor in voice at Adirondack Community College for numerous years.
