Shaun de Waal : CD of the week
It is not in order to denigrate him that one argues Philip Glass has found his perfect medium in the film score. His operas -and opera has long been seen as a pinnacle of the Western art-music tradition -are long and boring to listen to; Glass’s minimalist penchant for repetition can become quite maddening as the hours pass.
Glass has already done notable work in film, the most unusual being his scores for the movies Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi, which were composed of a barrage of images rather than an organised narrative. Highlighting environmental issues, they would not have worked at all without music that propelled the montage and made it all seem to hang together. Glass’s score more than fulfilled such a brief.
He has also composed soundtracks for more conventional films:his score for Paul Schrader’s Mishima is the most compelling thing about the film. His work on Martin Scorsese’s film about the Dalai Lama, Kundun (CD released on Nonesuch), continues in that vein, though it is more lushly orchestrated and more ethereal than the pounding Mishima soundtrack.
Glass’s study of Eastern music in the late Sixties and early Seventies had a profound influence on him, and he is a practising Buddhist. Yet hedoes little that is self-consciously Eastern in the music for Kundun, despite the use of the odd Tibetan instrument and a choir of Buddhist monks. His compositional techniques are, however, appropriately outside Western modes of harmony and structure, and the shimmering, flowing pieces that make up Kundun’s soundtrack are ravishingly gorgeous.
The fact that James Horner’s Titanic score got the Oscar instead is an outrage.