Metamorphosis

Slow, sombre and reflective, the seven pieces that Glass collected together for this solo piano album use the same compositional materials of repeating chord sequences that alternate with slowly oscillating pitches, faster arpeggiated figures and strategically placed bass notes that delineate emphatic cadences: the basic tools of the composer’s minimalist process. Broadly speaking, the textures get heavier and more complex as the pieces progress, but the essence of this music has a simplicity that connects with Glass’ Buddhist-based goal of creative purity; it isn’t hard to hear it as a latter-day response to the dreamlike stasis of keyboard scores by Erik Satie. Compiled from preexisting works in 1989, the album features five sections bearing the titles “Metamorphosis One–Five”, mostly originating in music written for a staging of Franz Kafka’s story The Metamorphosis, about a man who turns into an insect. The sixth, “Mad Rush”, began life as an organ prelude to a talk by the Dalai Lama; the seventh, “Wichita Vortex Sutra”, evokes a revivalist hymn and was written to accompany the reading of an antiwar poem by Allen Ginsberg.