Philip Glass

Music in Twelve Parts

About this Album

This CD box set is now available for sale in the Nonesuch Store; however, free, instant album MP3 downloads, included with other discs in the Store, are not currently available with box sets.

Music in Twelve Parts, written by Philip Glass between 1971 and 1974, is a deliberate, encyclopedic compendium of some techniques of repetition the composer had been evolving since the mid 1960s. It holds an important place in Glass's repertory—not only from a historical vantage point (as the longest and most ambitious concert piece for the Philip Glass Ensemble) but from a purely aesthetic standard as well, because Music in Twelve Parts is both a massive theoretical exercise and a deeply engrossing work of art. This evening-length piece, presented here on three CDs, represents, according to Glass himself, the culmination of his Minimalist period. The New York Times calls it "monumental" and recommends this set as the best recorded version of Glass's landmark work.

After the piece's 2009 West Coast premiere, some 35 years delayed, the San Jose Mercury News exclaimed that with Music in Twelve Parts, Glass's writing leads "toward a new euphoric breakthrough." The paper described it this way: "There is a Baroque intricacy at work, a micro-level of interlocking gears, as well as a larger, tranced-out story line: the landscape, the percolating groove, the spaciousness of the piece, which feels improvisational, related to pulsing, early '70s jams by, say, Miles Davis or even the Grateful Dead."

"For a full-body immersion in the early compositional world of Philip Glass, you can't do much better than Music in Twelve Parts," says the San Francisco Chronicle. The issues the composer addresses in the piece "are endlessly productive and nuanced. And to hear a composer lay out his palette in such richly evocative detail is a rare and rewarding delight."