Tuesday, February 08, 2005

"The Hours" by Phillip Glass

This piece is incredibly melancholy and pensive. It gives feeling of an intertwining, never-ending, circular journey. This is captured because of the weak phrase structure in the music. There are no structural phenomena or pauses to give any sounds cadences, so the flow of the music never stops. Just as you begin to hear the end of a phrase it moves on to the next without any pause. The piece maintains the same underlying structure for the entire piece, with various motives returning throughout. It gives the sense of the inescapable. While the same chord progression returns through the whole piece, the music retains interest from what is put on top of it. The density, timbre, and texture change throughout. The music randomly and continuously changes from any combination of strings, piano, and bells or each being played alone. The strings are mostly always sounded, usually playing the chordal progression alone or underneath another instrument. The piano and bells each have different rhythmic and melodic motives that come in and out with no clear pattern

No comments: