Learning about other composers

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I like learning about other composers, particularly living composers. It’s rather like getting a sense about what the current trends are in classical music from the people writing in the industry. Several composers and I have started exchanging emails (on a not so regular basis) along with score snippets and comments of said snippets. But some composers are a bit beyond me to feel comfortable just dropping them an email. So, I rather depend on other ways to learn about the processes these composers go through when composing music.

Philip Glass is releasing a book, ‘Glass Box: a Nonesuch Retrospective' is to be released on 22 September. I’ve put it on my birthday wish list, for any of you who might want to get me something for my forty-sixth birthday (10 October). Fiona Sturges, of The Independent gives a good preview of the book.

It’s interesting the number of people Mr Glass has collaborated with. He’s worked with other famous writers as well as big name pop composers (David Bowie). He has also written in a number of different forms, from opera to symphony, song cycle to film. Wikipedia has a pretty fair sized article on Mr Glass, but I’ll be interested to see how much it changes with the publication of this book.

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