In fact, I start to get his music at precisely the point where his first acolytes fall away. The 1980 operaSatyagraha, which recently returned to the Metropolitan Opera in a spectacular production by Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch, is not exactly traditional music drama, but it does feature seductive melodies winding above gentle brooks of harmony. Instead of the juiced, serrated sounds of the early years, this score has a quiet, gilded beauty. In place of radical erasures, Glass’s score evokes Bruckner, Lou Harrison, Ravel’s Bolero, and medieval polyphony, among other precedents and allusions.
Of course, I much prefer Akhnaten and Einstein on the Beach to Satyagraha. I'm not much for "gentle brooks of harmony." Lou Harrison and Bruckner are ok, though...
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