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Lead book review

Plumber, taxi driver, mystic, musician — the many facets of Philip Glass

Philip Hensher revels in the smallest details of the composer’s memoir, while admitting he is no fan of the music

11 April 2015

9:00 AM

11 April 2015

9:00 AM

Words without Music Philip Glass

Faber, pp.432, £22.50, ISBN: 9780571323722

Philip Glass is by now surely up there in the Telemann class among the most prolific composers in history. There must be an explanation, preferably a non-defamatory one, for how his technique has enabled him to produce such an enormous quantity of music. A glance at my iPod shows that Varese’s collected works are over in 150 minutes: Berg, Ravel and Debussy each managed to produce between ten and 15 hours of music at most.

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