Philip Glass, Ravi Shankar - Passages (1990)

Philip Glass, Ravi Shankar - Passages (1990)
EAC Rip | FLAC+CUE+LOG | 297 MB | no scans
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Classical/World | 55:45

Original music composed by Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass. Produced by Kurt Munkacsi, Ravi Shankar and Suresh Lalwani. Passages is a collaboration between Philip Glass and Ravi Shankar, each writing arrangements around themes written by the other.


1. Ravi Shankar - Offering (9:45)
2. Ravi Shankar - Sadhanipa (8:36)
3. Ravi Shankar - Channels And Winds (8:00)
4. Ravi Shankar - Ragas In Minor Scale (7:36)
5. Ravi Shankar - Meetings Along The Edge (8:10)
6. Ravi Shankar - Prashanti (13:38)


NOTES:
Offering. After a slow introduction saxophone plays the Shankar raga melody, subsequently enriched by the two other saxes. A long middle section in quicker tempo treats the material more freely in several parts, concluded with a shorter recapitulation of the opening theme.

Sadhanipa. The title based on the solfege notes (svaras): "SA DHA NI PA" from the Indian octave (saptaka) based on the first four tones of the Glass melody: "Do La Ti So" (D-B-C-A). An opening "ad lib" trumpet statement, echoed in the bass bamboo flute. Then the chamber orchestra develops the theme in 4/8-6/8-7/8. The Finale recapitulates the original Glass theme.

Channels and Winds. is an intrumental work with vocalists in A-B-A-B-A-B form which was conceived as a bridge between the two Shankar compositions based on the Glass melodies.

Ragas in Minor Scale. The Glass theme is introduced, after the veena introduction, by the cello. The opening section is in 6/8, middle section 4/8, closing in 4/8.

Meetings Along the Edge. A fast-paced work based on: 1) a "Middle Eastern" sounding Shankar theme in 7; 2) a seconf theme also by Ravi and also in 7 but of a somewhat different lenght; 3) A Glass theme in 4. Glass also added an Introduction and other rhythmic ideas. The themes are stated, blended and combined in the Finale.

Prashanti (Peacefulness). An extended orchestral work in two parts: Musical depiction of joyful people living in harmony. Slowly, greed, envy, hatred and violence creep into their contented lives. Out of this chaos a voice sings out in Vedic prayer:

"Hey Nath, hama para kripa kijiye. Door kara andhakar, gyan ka aloka dijiye, hinsa dwesh lobha bamese chhin lijiye, manamey prem shanti bhar dijiye."

(Oh, Lord. Be benevolent to us. Drive the darkness away. Shed upon us the light of wisdom. Take the jealousy, envy, greed and anger from us, and fill our hearts with love and peace.)

... and a feeling of spiritual awakening, peace and tranquillity descends upon people's minds.

This historic collaboration brings full circle a process which began when promising young American musician Philip Glass met Indian master Ravi Shankar in Paris in 1965. That week Glass, studying with the great Nadia Bulanger, was earning pocket money doing notation and conducting a recording session for the soundtrack of Conrad Rook's film "Chappacqua." The score's composer, Ravi Shankar, was directing his ensemble from the sitar.

Ravi recalls, "From the very first moment I saw such interest from him -he was a young man then¡ª and he started asking me questions about ragas and talas and started writing down the whole score, and for the seven days he asked me so many questions. And seeing how interested he was I told him everything I could in that short time."

"It was possible to graduate from a major Western conservatory, in my case Juilliard, " remembers Glass, "without exposure to music from outside the Western tradition. World music was completely unknown in the mid-60's."

"What the young Glass heard which lay beyond his conservatory hermeticity was RHYTHM, long out of fashion in the world of American academic post-Webernism, with its almost exclusive concern for harmonic organization. Indian music is based on melody, which would get you laughed at Princeton or Columbia, and rhythm, which, despite Stravinsky's efforts in works like "Le Sacre du Printemps" or "Les Noces" was considered "incidental" to constructing 12-tone rows and other serious contrapuntal matters.

So for someone to play for the budding composer an expressive, vital, respect-worthy music ¡ª based on 4,000 years of refining the interaction between the two forgotten elements of Western music¡ª must have been mildly astonishing at the very least. He realized that one could construct music on a rhythmic, as opposed to a harmonic, base.

Also, unlike most of the composers Glass had met up till that time, Ravi Shankar was a player, a composer/performer, whose authority arose from intimate hands-on contact with the music itself, and the other musicians, with whom he regularly shared a vibrating column of air. Glass became a student of Shankar's, Philip Glass today acknowledges "I owe a lot to Ravi; he was one of my teachers. "

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