We call Einstein on the Beach an opera largely because we have no better name for what it is. In 1975, Philip Glass, perhaps the most famous composer from the school of minimalism-which attempts to uncover the beauty in repetition and slight variation-wrote Einstein on the Beach, an opera in four acts and by far one of his longest works.
Let's zip forward 150 years to another "operatic" work. Organ2/ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible) - John Cage In the seemingly silent concert hall, a symphony of new noises start to emerge that we took for granted moments ago: coughs, the squeaking of your seat as you slightly move, and even the guy scratching his head 30 feet away become a part of this score. When Cage wrote 4'33", he seems to have intended for us to turn our attention not to the music on stage, but to the music and sound we all make as we watch this performance. With a stopwatch set for exactly four minutes and thirty-three seconds, he sits in complete silence, occasionally opening and closing the keyboard to indicate the various "movements" of the piece. It's easy to see why: to perform the piece, a pianist walks on stage, opens the lid of a grand piano, sits down at it, and then lowers the lid. In the last 50-odd years, John Cage's personal favorite work, 4'33" has become something of a running joke and subject of derision in the music world. But over the centuries, hundreds of composers have tested the boundaries of musical expression in strange and unique ways. Lawrence, Lawrence UniversityĬlassical music seems to have a reputation for being straight-laced, stuffy, and obsessed with rules.