THE GLASS MENAGERIE

I don't remember when, exactly, it was that I first heard the music of Philip Glass on the radio—likely in the 1980s sometime—but I recall vividly what my initial reaction to it was: "Huh! That's odd. Someone's recorded the Arban's book!"

Joseph Jean Baptiste Laurent Arban (1825-1889) was the first celebrated virtuoso of the newly-invented valved brass instruments, principally the cornet (or "cornet a pistons" as it was first known) which is like a trumpet but with a more conical bore. Arban, who was appointed by Auber and Meyerbeer to the position of Professor of the Cornet a Pistons at the Paris Conservatory, taught his skills and compiled the method in a thick volume of etudes and exercises designed to develop technique on the instrument. There are pages and pages of lip exercises of formidable difficulty, and they comprise arpeggios done solely with the lip (no valves are moved)—Do-me-so-me, Do-me-so-me, Do-me-so-me, Do-me-so-me, Do-me-so-me, Do-me-so-me—on and on for pages. The more challenging exercises advance to Do-me-so-do-so-me, Do-me-so-Do-so-me, Do-me-so-Do-so-me, Do-me-so-Do-so-me, Do-me-so-Do-so-me. Then there's the wonderful, Do-so-me-do-me-so, Do-so-me-do-me-so, Do-so-me-do-me-so, Do-so-me-do-me-so-Do, (&c.)

Thus it was that I mistook the new art of Philip Glass for the lip exercises I had practiced so diligently in my youth, exercises known to brass players everywhere. (Secret knowledge for you: merely speak the words "the Arban's book" to a brass player and he'll assume you're one of them—it works if you're desperate for a place to stay for the night or need a drink.) I have long since abandoned wind instruments (owing to a profound lack of talent), but I still posses my copy of the Arban's Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet or Cornet (edited by American bandmaster Edwin Franko Goldman).

Imagine my reaction, then, when the radio announcer identified the piece NOT as page 23 of the Arban's book, but a new composition by someone named Philip Glass. I thought it was a joke and for several years derided Glass as a writer of finger exercises. But then, also in the 80s, the Metropolitan Opera of New York staged the Philip Glass opera "Einstein on the Beach." I always listen to the opera on Saturnday afternoon while doing my chores, and somehow that performance had an effect on me. How did it make me feel? Enchanted? Mesmerized? Dizzy? Dyspeptic? Whatever it was, I became a convert to minimalism from that afternoon onward.

Traditionalists may sneer at minimalism, and the Opera Quiz panel had much derision to shower on Philip Glass that afternoon (which made me even more sympathetic to his music), but it must be admitted that whatever it lacks in such things as thematic development, modulation and other traditional musical values, the music of Philip Glass certainly is effective, which is more than can be said of the serialists.

I never found it necessary, however, to purchase any CDs by Philip Glass, because I own a synthesizer that, if you set a .38-Special cartridge on a key, will automatically play arpeggios all day. Why should I purchase bottled water when the same thing comes out of the tap?

But I wanted the autograph of Philip Glass, and having no CD, what would I have this famous man sign? I had to think fast.