(Please note that we have used some artistic license showing the
above illustrations. The actual CD comes in a cardboard slip cover with just
the picture of the car in the desert and nothing more. Sliding this aside,
the purchaser discovers the CD with a very stark booklet front page
design showing only the words Philip Glass and Koyaanisqatsi printed in blue
on a yellow background)
Made in 1983,by filmmaker,Godfrey Reggio, Koyaanisqatsi (pronounced
Ko-YAWN-is-SCOTS-ee), was a film completely without narrative, without any
identifiable character and without dialogue. It was simply a cavalcade of
awesome visions - clouds rushing across a New Mexico desert, the dynamiting
of a failed housing project in St Louis, people swarming out of Grand Central
Station, and crowded traffic on a Los Angeles freeway. As Tim Page says in
his very helpful notes, "Although Koyaanisqatsi was intended at least in
part as an indictment of late-20th century Western society (the title is
Hopi for "life out of balance"), it is one of the paradoxes that the images
of a supposedly crazy, hard-driven over-the-top America are so vibrant and
captivating - probably the most exhilarating (and curiously affirmative)
passages in the film.
The original recording of Koyaanisqatsi was issued on LP now with the advent
of CD it has been possible to include about half an hour's more music - material
that hitherto has been available only with the film. Furthermore as Glass,
himself, admits in the 1970s and 1980s his ensemble was in the process of
creating a musical language - "now we're fluent in it."
The opening, title, movement begins with a deep pedal droning on the organ
followed by a gloomy meditation on the word Koyaanisqatsi by deep male voice(s).
Throughout there is the usual Glass tendency to compose material using simple
music cells with repetition relieved from monotony by subtly shifting modulations
and harmonies and the introduction of new instrumentation. The second movement
is a slow moving and introspective piece with long-held sighing notes for
cellos with staccato one note then increasingly complex flute punctuations;
the movement lives up to its name "Organic" for it might be seen to imply
the slow steady growth of a plant. "Cloudscape" is a shimmering vehicle for
muted brass as if one is viewing a landscape fudged by heat haze - a very
colourful evocation and there is some very inventive writing for brass including
bass trombone and tuba. "Resource" sounds like fairground roundabout music
before the saxophone comments and you suddenly have the impression that you
are listening to a steam train labouring up a gradient then speeding along
the track (that is the most appealing thing about Glass's music it really
fires one's imagination). The idyllic a capella lyricism of "Vessels"
demonstrates Glass's equal facility for writing very effectively and
imaginatively for voices. The multi-part voices move against each other with
impressive inventiveness and great clarity and transparency. "Pruit Igoe"
has an ecclesiastical feel like Vessels but it becomes increasingly agitated
and in turmoil as all Glass's instrumental and choral forces smash the serenity
of the opening string meditation. "The Grid" is longest and most impressive
section for full chorus and ensemble. Quoting Page again, "It begins simply
enough in a rather old-fashioned manner, the brass puttering along with
near-Elgarian[?] pomp. A few minutes on, however, one of Glass's trademark
bright, rapid arpeggiated passages for keyboard and woodwinds cuts fiercely
into the action, and the music is transformed. For the rest of its twenty-one
minutes and twenty-three sections, The Grid might as well have been titled
The Dervish as it whirls furiously and exhaustively through hundreds of
reiterations all varied just enough to sustain the listener's interest."
The final "Prophesies" is another substantial 14 minute piece with a nice
solo organ introduction with added voices and predominantly gentle
Fauré-like sonorities before the return of the mournful Koyaanisqatsi
chant that opened the work.
There is also a very considerable bonus CD, "Glass Jukebox" supplied with
Koyaanisqatsi. It is considerable not only in playing time but also in the
quality of the music selections from earlier Nonesuch recordings. These are:-
"Secret Agent and Roast Beef" plus "Trust" from Joseph Conrad's The
Secret Agent
"Interlude" from Orphée Act II, Scene 5
"Living Waters" from Anima Mundi
"Runaway Horses"; and "Osamu's Theme: Kyoko's House" from
Mishima
"Knee 3" and "Dance 2" from Einstein on the Beach
"New Cities in Ancient Lands, Africa and New Cities in Ancient Lands, India";
and "The Unutterable" from Powaqqatsi
"Mishima/Closing" from String Quartet No. 3 "Mishima
"Promenade dans le Jardin" from La Belle et la Bête
"Part 2" from Music in 12 Parts
"Movement 5" from String Quartet No. 5
"Song No 15, Father Death Blues (from Don't Grow Old)" from
Hydrogen Jukebox
Reviewer
Ian Lace
OST [73:23] Jukebox
(bonus CD - selections from Glass's Nonesuch recordings)
[73:46]
