Three Academy Award nominations and over 30 film scores after that initial meeting, Glass' impressive film music career brought him to the Hopkins Center on Thursday for "An Evening of Films and Discussion with Philip Glass."
"We wanted him to come here in the context of all the film scoring that he's done, which is a wholly remarkable career of his," Hopkins Center programming director Margaret Lawrence said in an interview with The Dartmouth. "To me, what I think his impact has been in terms of film music, it's that his music has a kind of relentless and haunting quality that doesn't intrude on the movie. It's not like an action or violence narrative kind of music that you might hear in adventure films. It's a more subtle music, but it's a music that has an amazing way of amplifying and making more profound the images of the film."
Glass' film scores add to the legacy of a composer who also has over 20 operas, eight symphonies, and numerous concertos, solo piano works and string quartets to his name.
At the event, the audience first saw two examples of Glass' compositions for the big screen: "Anima Mundi," a documentary focusing on the natural world, and "Evidence," a short film about the influence of technology on children.
Both films were directed by Reggio, now one of Glass' friends and key collaborators.
In "Evidence," the camera focuses for the entirety of the film on the faces of several children who are watching television. Glass said that the music for "Evidence" actually came from a piece he originally wrote for "Koyaanisqatsi."
"I don't know what I would've done if I'd started with the images," Glass said. "This one was the other way around."
"Anima Mundi," on the other hand, is similar to a program you would see on the Nature Channel, but without any commentary: A lion chases zebras across the plains, ostriches run in slow-motion across a desert, an octopus gracefully swims in the water, and so on, with what Lawrence called, "an amazing synchronicity in how the images are married to the music."
Both films are powerful collections of snapshots with neither dialogue nor narration. As a result, the images and the music take center stage.
Although most of the movies Glass has scored are of the no-narrative, no-plot variety, Glass has also found success scoring more "traditional" movies, earning Academy Award nominations for best original score for his music in "Kundun" (1997), "The Hours" (2002) and "Notes on a Scandal" (2006).
After the films, Glass joined Lawrence on stage for a conversation about his approach to composing music and the influence a score can have on the audience's perceptions of a film.
"The emotional content comes from the music," Glass said, "If you put a picture up and change the music, the picture has a different meaning. The emotional inflection always comes from the music."
Glass also discussed the realities of being an artist in America.
"In this country, how do we expect artists to live?" Glass asked. "We don't support them publicly. I consider myself fortunate that I can make music for a living."
Glass' musical career will likely continue for many years to come, further cementing his place as one of this century's most influential composers.
"He's not just a legendary artist who has changed the face of contemporary classical music, but he's an extraordinary thinker," Lawrence said, adding later, "Even if you don't know his work, this is somebody who has changed the face of our world's music in a lasting way and that's truly a unique opportunity."
Glass will return to the Hop for a chamber music performance on April 18.
