Philip Glass Settles Some Old Scores

Minimalist Composer Had a Lot in Common With Uncle Harry

By Eileen Reynolds at The Jewish Daily Forward

Channeling the good Jewish son he never quite was, Philip Glass gives the first line of his new memoir to his mother: “If you go to New York City to study music,” she warns her youngest on the occasion of his graduation from the University of Chicago in 1957, “you’ll end up like your uncle Harry, spending your life traveling from city to city and living in hotels.”

Arriving in the quiet that followed the hoopla surrounding his 75th birthday in 2012 (an occasion marked by the premiere of his Ninth Symphony at Carnegie Hall, a grand international tour of the five-hour modern classic “Einstein on the Beach,” a slew of interviews, and the requisite grumbling by critics insisting he’d long since lost his edge), Glass’s memoir “Words Without Music” is less a told-you-so victory lap (“Look, Ma — I’m the world’s most famous living composer!”) than an exploration of the many ways in which his mother’s prediction rings true.

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