“CROSSOVER”: WHO'S ON TOP?
fig. 8-5 Scene from Einstein on the Beach by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson.
Yet not even Music for 18 Musicians marked the crest of the minimalist wave. That decisive moment came on Sunday, 21 November 1976, seven months after the premiere of 18, when Einstein on the Beach, a four-act opera by Philip Glass (b. 1937), composed in collaboration with the avant-garde theater director and stage designer Robert Wilson (b. 1941), played to a packed Metropolitan Opera House in New York. The wildly enthusiastic audience, perhaps needless to say, did not consist of Met subscribers. Instead, it was as if the “downtown” New York arts scene—painters, conceptual artists, experimental theater hands, art-rockers and their fans, along with a scattering of curious “classical” musicians who felt distinctly like onlookers—had migrated northward and invaded the precincts of high art for a night. “Who are these people?”43 one of the opera house administrators supposedly asked Glass. “I've never seen them here before.” As Glass tells the story, “I remember replying very candidly, ‘Well, you'd better find out who they are, because if this place expects to be running in twenty-five years, that's your audience out there.’”
- Citation (MLA):
- Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 8 A Harmonious Avant-Garde?." The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press. New York, USA. n.d. Web. 30 Nov. 2023. <https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume5/actrade-9780195384857-div1-008010.xml>.
- Citation (APA):
- Taruskin, R. (n.d.). Chapter 8 A Harmonious Avant-Garde?. In Oxford University Press, Music in the Late Twentieth Century. New York, USA. Retrieved 30 Nov. 2023, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume5/actrade-9780195384857-div1-008010.xml
- Citation (Chicago):
- Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 8 A Harmonious Avant-Garde?." In Music in the Late Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press. (New York, USA, n.d.). Retrieved 30 Nov. 2023, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume5/actrade-9780195384857-div1-008010.xml
