1964–1966: Paris . In 1964, Glass received a
Fulbright Scholarship; his studies in Paris with the eminent composition teacher
Nadia Boulanger, from autumn of 1964 to summer of 1966, influenced his work throughout his life, as the composer admitted in 1979: "The composers I studied with Boulanger are the people I still think about most—
Bach and
Mozart." Glass later wrote in his autobiography
Music by Philip Glass in 1987 that the new music performed at
Pierre Boulez's
Domaine Musical concerts in Paris lacked any excitement for him (with the notable exceptions of music by
John Cage and
Morton Feldman), but he was deeply impressed by new films and theatre performances. His move away from modernist composers such as Boulez and
Stockhausen was nuanced, rather than outright rejection: "That generation wanted disciples and as we didn't join up it was taken to mean that we hated the music, which wasn't true. We'd studied them at Juilliard and knew their music. How on earth can you reject
Berio? Those early works of Stockhausen are still beautiful. But there was just no point in attempting to do their music better than they did and so we started somewhere else." During this time, he encountered revolutionary films of the
French New Wave, such as those of
Jean-Luc Godard and
François Truffaut, which upended the rules set by an older generation of artists, and Glass made friends with American visual artists (the sculptor
Richard Serra and his wife
Nancy Graves), actors and directors (
JoAnne Akalaitis,
Ruth Maleczech,
David Warrilow, and
Lee Breuer, with whom Glass later founded the experimental theatre group
Mabou Mines). Together with Akalaitis (they married in 1965), Glass in turn attended performances by theatre groups including
Jean-Louis Barrault's
Odéon theatre,
The Living Theatre and the
Berliner Ensemble in 1964 to 1965. These significant encounters resulted in a collaboration with Breuer for which Glass contributed music for a 1965 staging of
Samuel Beckett's
Comédie (
Play, 1963). The resulting piece (written for two
soprano saxophones) was directly influenced by the play's open-ended, repetitive and almost musical structure and was the first one of a series of four early pieces in a minimalist, yet still
dissonant, idiom. Glass then left Paris for northern India in 1966, where he came in contact with
Tibetan refugees and began to gravitate towards
Buddhism. He met
Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th
Dalai Lama, in 1972, and has been a strong supporter of the Tibetan independence ever since.
1967–1974: Minimalism: From Strung Out to Music in 12 Parts Shortly after arriving in New York City in March 1967, Glass attended a performance of works by
Steve Reich (including the ground-breaking minimalist piece
Piano Phase), which left a deep impression on him; he simplified his style and turned to a radical "
consonant vocabulary". Between summer of 1967 and the end of 1968, Glass composed nine works, including
Strung Out (for amplified solo violin, composed in summer of 1967),
Gradus (for solo saxophone, 1968),
Music in the Shape of a Square (for two flutes, composed in May 1968, an homage to
Erik Satie),
How Now (for solo piano, 1968) and
1+1 (for amplified tabletop, November 1968) which were "clearly designed to experiment more fully with his new-found minimalist approach". The first concert of Glass's new music was at
Jonas Mekas's Film-Makers Cinemathèque (
Anthology Film Archives) in September 1968. This concert included the first work of this series with
Strung Out (performed by the violinist Pixley-Rothschild) and
Music in the Shape of a Square (performed by Glass and Gibson). The musical scores were tacked on the wall, and the performers had to move while playing. Glass's new works met with a very enthusiastic response by the audience which consisted mainly of visual and performance artists who were highly sympathetic to Glass's reductive approach. Apart from his music career, Glass had a
moving company with his cousin, the sculptor Jene Highstein, and also worked as a plumber and
cab driver (during 1973 to 1978). He recounts installing a dishwasher and looking up from his work to see an astonished
Robert Hughes,
Time magazine's art critic, staring at him. During this time, he made friends with other New York-based artists such as
Sol LeWitt,
Nancy Graves,
Michael Snow,
Bruce Nauman,
Laurie Anderson, and
Chuck Close (who created a now-famous portrait of Glass). (Glass returned the compliment in 2005 with
A Musical Portrait of Chuck Close for piano.) With
1+1 and
Two Pages (composed in February 1969), Glass turned to a more "rigorous approach" to his "most basic minimalist technique, additive process", pieces which were followed in the same year by
Music in Contrary Motion and
Music in Fifths (a kind of homage to his composition teacher
Nadia Boulanger, who pointed out "
hidden fifths" in his works but regarded them as cardinal sins). Eventually Glass's music grew less austere, becoming more complex and dramatic, with pieces such as
Music in Similar Motion (1969), and
Music with Changing Parts (1970). These pieces were performed by the
Philip Glass Ensemble in the
Whitney Museum of American Art in 1969 and in the
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1970, often encountering hostile reaction from critics, In 1970, Glass returned to the theatre, composing music for the theatre group
Mabou Mines, resulting in his first minimalist pieces employing voices:
Red Horse Animation and
Music for Voices (both 1970, and premiered at the
Paula Cooper Gallery). After differences of opinion with Steve Reich in 1971, Though he finds the term minimalist inaccurate to describe his later work, Glass does accept this term for pieces up to and including
Music in 12 Parts, excepting this last part which "was the end of minimalism" for Glass. As he pointed out: "I had worked for eight or nine years inventing a system, and now I'd written through it and come out the other end." As with
Another Look at Harmony, "
Einstein added a new functional harmony that set it apart from the early conceptual works". In spring 1978, Glass received a commission from the
Netherlands Opera (as well as a
Rockefeller Foundation grant) which "marked the end of his need to earn money from non-musical employment". With the commission Glass continued his work in music theater, composing his opera
Satyagraha (composed in 1978–1979, premiered in 1980 at Rotterdam), based on the early life of
Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa,
Leo Tolstoy,
Rabindranath Tagore, and
Martin Luther King Jr. For
Satyagraha, Glass worked in close collaboration with two "
SoHo friends": the writer
Constance deJong, who provided the libretto, and the set designer Robert Israel. This piece was in other ways a turning point for Glass, as it was his first work since 1963 scored for symphony orchestra, even if the most prominent parts were still reserved for solo voices and chorus. Shortly after completing the score in August 1979, Glass met the conductor
Dennis Russell Davies, whom he helped prepare for performances in Germany (using a piano-four-hands version of the score); together they started to plan another opera, to be premiered at the
Stuttgart State Opera. (Glass also composed a prestigious work for chorus and orchestra for the opening of the Games,
The Olympian: Lighting of the Torch and Closing). The Cologne section premiered at the
Cologne Opera in January of 1984, the Rome section in March 1984 at the
Opera di Roma. The planned premiere of the complete
the CIVIL warS in Los Angeles was cancelled. Glass's and Wilson's opera includes musical settings of Latin texts by the 1st-century-Roman playwright
Seneca and allusions to the music of
Giuseppe Verdi and from the
American Civil War, featuring the 19th century figures
Giuseppe Garibaldi and
Robert E. Lee as characters. In the mid-1980s, Glass produced "works in different media at an extraordinarily rapid pace". Projects from that period include music for dance (
Glass Pieces choreographed for
New York City Ballet by
Jerome Robbins in 1983 to a score drawn from existing Glass compositions created for other media including an excerpt from
Akhnaten; and
In the Upper Room,
Twyla Tharp, 1986), music for theatre productions
Endgame (1984) and
Company (1983). Beckett vehemently disapproved of the production of
Endgame at the
American Repertory Theater (Cambridge, Massachusetts), which featured
JoAnne Akalaitis's direction and Glass's
Prelude for timpani and double bass, but in the end, he authorized the music for
Company, four short, intimate pieces for
string quartet that were played in the intervals of the dramatization. This composition was initially regarded by the composer as a piece of
Gebrauchsmusik ('music for use')—"like salt and pepper ... just something for the table", as he noted. Eventually
Company was published as Glass's
String Quartet No. 2 and in a version for string orchestra, being performed by ensembles ranging from student orchestras to renowned formations such as the
Kronos Quartet and the
Kremerata Baltica. This interest in writing for the
string quartet and the string orchestra led to a chamber and orchestral film score for
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (
Paul Schrader, 1984–85), which Glass recently described as his "musical turning point" that developed his "technique of film scoring in a very special way". Glass also dedicated himself to vocal works with two sets of songs,
Three Songs for chorus (1984, settings of poems by
Leonard Cohen,
Octavio Paz and
Raymond Lévesque), and a song cycle initiated by
CBS Masterworks Records:
Songs from Liquid Days (1985), with texts by songwriters such as
David Byrne,
Paul Simon, in which the
Kronos Quartet is featured (as it is in
Mishima) in a prominent role. Glass also continued his series of operas with adaptations from literary texts such as
The Juniper Tree (an opera collaboration with composer
Robert Moran, 1984),
Edgar Allan Poe's
The Fall of the House of Usher (1987), and also worked with novelist
Doris Lessing on the opera
The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 (1985–86, and performed by the
Houston Grand Opera and
English National Opera in 1988).
1987–1991: Operas and the turn to symphonic music Compositions such as
Company,
Facades and String Quartet No. 3 (the last two extracted from the scores to
Koyaanisqatsi and
Mishima) gave way to a series of works more accessible to ensembles such as the
string quartet and
symphony orchestra, in this returning to the structural roots of his student days. In taking this direction his
chamber and orchestral works were also written in a more and more traditional and lyrical style. In these works, Glass often employs old musical forms such as the
chaconne and the
passacaglia—for instance in
Satyagraha, and
Songs and Poems for Solo Cello (2006). A series of orchestral works originally composed for the concert hall commenced with the three-movement
Violin Concerto No. 1 (1987). This work was commissioned by the
American Composers Orchestra and written for and in close collaboration with the violinist
Paul Zukofsky and the conductor Dennis Russell Davies, who since then has encouraged the composer to write numerous orchestral pieces. The Concerto is dedicated to the memory of Glass's father: "His favorite form was the violin concerto, and so I grew up listening to the
Mendelssohn, the
Paganini, the
Brahms concertos. ... So when I decided to write a violin concerto, I wanted to write one that my father would have liked." Among its multiple recordings, in 1992, the Concerto was performed and recorded by
Gidon Kremer and the
Vienna Philharmonic. This turn to orchestral music was continued with a symphonic trilogy of "portraits of nature", commissioned by the
Cleveland Orchestra, the
Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, and the
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra:
The Light (1987),
The Canyon (1988), and
Itaipu (1989). While composing for symphonic ensembles, Glass also composed music for piano, with the cycle of five movements titled
Metamorphosis (adapted from music for a theatrical adaptation of
Franz Kafka's
The Metamorphosis), and for the
Errol Morris film
The Thin Blue Line, 1988. In the same year Glass met the poet
Allen Ginsberg by chance in a book store in the
East Village of New York City, and they immediately "decided on the spot to do something together, reached for one of Allen's books and chose
Wichita Vortex Sutra", a piece for reciter and piano which in turn developed into a music theatre piece for singers and ensemble,
Hydrogen Jukebox (1990). Glass also returned to chamber music; he composed two String Quartets, (
No. 4 Buczak in 1989 and No. 5 in 1991), and chamber works which originated as incidental music for plays, such as
Music from "The Screens" (1989/1990). This work originated in one of many theater music collaborations with the director
JoAnne Akalaitis, who originally asked the
Gambian musician
Foday Musa Suso "to do the score [for
Jean Genet's
The Screens] in collaboration with a western composer". Glass had already collaborated with Suso in the film score to
Powaqqatsi (
Godfrey Reggio, 1988).
Music from "The Screens" is on occasion a touring piece for Glass and Suso (one set of tours also included percussionist
Yousif Sheronick ), and individual pieces found their way into the repertoire of Glass and the cellist Wendy Sutter. Another collaboration was a collaborative recording project with
Ravi Shankar, initiated by
Peter Baumann (a member of the band
Tangerine Dream), which resulted in the album
Passages (1990). In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Glass's projects also included two highly prestigious opera commissions based on the life of explorers:
The Voyage (1992), with a libretto by
David Henry Hwang, was commissioned by the
Metropolitan Opera for the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America by
Christopher Columbus; and
White Raven (1991), about
Vasco da Gama, a collaboration with Robert Wilson and composed for the closure of the
1998 World Fair in Lisbon. Especially in
The Voyage, the composer "explore[d] new territory", with its "newly arching lyricism", "
Sibelian starkness and sweep", and "dark, brooding tone ... a reflection of its increasingly
chromatic (and
dissonant) palette", as one commentator put it.
1991–1996: Cocteau trilogy and symphonies , Italy in 1993 After these operas, Glass began working on a symphonic cycle, commissioned by the conductor
Dennis Russell Davies, who told Glass at the time: "I'm not going to let you ... be one of those opera composers who never write a
symphony". Glass responded with a pair of three-movement symphonies (
"Low" [1992], and
Symphony No. 2 [1994]); his first in an ongoing series of symphonies is a combination of the composer's own musical material with themes featured in prominent tracks of the David Bowie/Brian Eno album
Low (1977), whereas Symphony No. 2 is described by Glass as a study in
polytonality. He referred to the music of
Honegger,
Milhaud, and
Villa-Lobos as possible models for his symphony. With the Concerto Grosso (1992),
Symphony No. 3 (1995), a Concerto for Saxophone Quartet and Orchestra (1995), written for the
Rascher Quartet (all commissioned by conductor Dennis Russell Davies), and
Echorus (1994/95), a more transparent, refined, and intimate chamber-orchestral style paralleled the excursions of his large-scale symphonic pieces. In the four movements of his Third Symphony, Glass treats a 19-piece string orchestra as an extended chamber ensemble. In the third movement, Glass re-uses the chaconne as a formal device; one commentator characterized Glass's symphony as one of the composer's "most tautly unified works". The third Symphony was closely followed by a fourth, subtitled
Heroes (1996), commissioned the
American Composers Orchestra. Its six movements are symphonic reworkings of themes by Glass, David Bowie, and Brian Eno (from their album
"Heroes", 1977); as in other works by the composer, it is also a hybrid work and exists in two versions: one for the concert hall, and another, shorter one for dance, choreographed by
Twyla Tharp. Another commission by Dennis Russell Davies was a second series for piano, the
Etudes for Piano (dedicated to Davies as well as the production designer
Achim Freyer); the complete first set of ten Etudes has been recorded and performed by Glass himself.
Bruce Brubaker and Dennis Russell Davies have each recorded the original set of six. Most of the Etudes are composed in the post-minimalist and increasingly lyrical style of the times: "Within the framework of a concise form, Glass explores possible sonorities ranging from typically Baroque passagework to Romantically tinged moods". Some of the pieces also appeared in different versions such as in the theatre music to Robert Wilson's
Persephone (1994, commissioned by the
Relache Ensemble) or
Echorus (a version of Etude No. 2 for two violins and string orchestra, written for Edna Mitchell and
Yehudi Menuhin 1995). Glass's prolific output in the 1990s continued to include operas with an opera
triptych (1991–1996), which the composer described as an "homage" to writer and film director
Jean Cocteau, based on his prose and cinematic work:
Orphée (1950),
La Belle et la Bête (1946), and the novel
Les Enfants terribles (1929, later made into a film by Cocteau and
Jean-Pierre Melville, 1950). In the same way the triptych is also a musical homage to the work of the group of French composers associated with Cocteau,
Les Six (and especially to Glass's teacher Darius Milhaud), as well as to various 18th-century composers such as
Gluck and
Bach whose music featured as an essential part of the films by Cocteau. The inspiration of the first part of the trilogy,
Orphée (composed in 1991, and premiered in 1993 at the
American Repertory Theatre) can be conceptually and musically traced to Gluck's opera
Orfeo ed Euridice (
Orphée et Euridyce, 1762/1774), One theme of the opera, the death of
Eurydice, has some similarity to the composer's personal life: the opera was composed after the unexpected death in 1991 of Glass's wife, artist
Candy Jernigan: "... One can only suspect that Orpheus' grief must have resembled the composer's own", K. Robert Schwartz suggests. For the second opera,
La Belle et la Bête (1994, scored for either the Philip Glass Ensemble or a more conventional chamber orchestra), Glass replaced the soundtrack (including
Georges Auric's film music) of Cocteau's film, wrote "a new fully operatic score and synchronize[d] it with the film". The final part of the triptych returned again to a more traditional setting with the "Dance Opera"
Les Enfants terribles (1996), scored for voices, three pianos and dancers, with choreography by
Susan Marshall. The characters are depicted by both singers and dancers. The scoring of the opera evokes Bach's
Concerto for Four Harpsichords, but in another way also "the snow, which falls relentlessly throughout the opera ... bearing witness to the unfolding events. Here time stands still. There is only music, and the movement of children through space" (Glass).
1997–2004: Symphonies, opera, and concertos In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Glass's lyrical and romantic styles peaked with a variety of projects: operas, theatre and film scores (
Martin Scorsese's
Kundun, 1997,
Godfrey Reggio's
Naqoyqatsi, 2002, and
Stephen Daldry's
The Hours, 2002), a series of five concerts, and three symphonies centered on orchestra-singer and orchestra-chorus interplay. Two symphonies,
Symphony No. 5 "Choral" (1999) and
Symphony No. 7 "
Toltec" (2004), and the song cycle
Songs of Milarepa (1997) have a meditative theme. The operatic Symphony No. 6
Plutonian Ode (2002) for soprano and orchestra was commissioned by the Brucknerhaus, Linz, and
Carnegie Hall in celebration of Glass's sixty-fifth birthday, and developed from Glass's collaboration with
Allen Ginsberg (poet, piano—Ginsberg, Glass), based on his poem of the same name. Besides writing for the concert hall, Glass continued his ongoing operatic series with adaptions from literary texts:
The Marriages of Zones 3, 4 and 5 ([1997] story-libretto by Doris Lessing),
In the Penal Colony (2000, after the
story by
Franz Kafka), and the chamber opera
The Sound of a Voice (2003, with David Henry Hwang), which features the
Pipa, performed by
Wu Man at its premiere. Glass also collaborated again with the co-author of
Einstein on the Beach,
Robert Wilson, on
Monsters of Grace (1998), and created a biographic
opera on the life of astronomer Galileo Galilei (2001). In the early 2000s, Glass started a series of five concerti with the
Tirol Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (2000, premiered by
Dennis Russell Davies as conductor and soloist), and the
Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and Orchestra (2000, for the timpanist Jonathan Haas). The
Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (2001) had its premiere performance in Beijing, featuring cellist
Julian Lloyd Webber; it was composed in celebration of his fiftieth birthday. These concertos were followed by the concise and rigorously neo-Baroque
Concerto for Harpsichord and Orchestra (2002), demonstrating in its transparent, chamber orchestral textures Glass's classical technique, evocative in the "improvisatory chords" of its beginning a
toccata of
Froberger or
Frescobaldi, and 18th century music. Two years later, the concerti series continued with
Piano Concerto No. 2: After Lewis and Clark (2004), composed for the pianist
Paul Barnes. The concerto celebrates the pioneers' trek across North America, and the second movement features a duet for piano and
Native American flute. With the chamber opera
The Sound of a Voice, Glass's Piano Concerto No. 2 might be regarded as bridging his traditional compositions and his more popular excursions to
World Music, also found in
Orion (also composed in 2004).
2005–2007: Songs and Poems Waiting for the Barbarians, an opera from
J. M. Coetzee's
novel (with the libretto by
Christopher Hampton), had its premiere performance in September 2005. Glass defined the work as a "social/political opera", as a critique on the
Bush administration's
war in Iraq, a "dialogue about political
crisis", and an illustration of the "power of art to turn our attention toward the human dimension of history". While the opera's themes are
Imperialism,
apartheid, and
torture, the composer chose an understated approach by using "very simple means, and the
orchestration is very clear and very traditional; it's almost
classical in sound", as the conductor Dennis Russell Davies notes. Two months after the premiere of this opera, in November 2005, Glass's
Symphony No. 8, commissioned by the
Bruckner Orchestra Linz, was premiered at the
Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City. After three symphonies for voices and orchestra, this piece was a return to purely orchestral and abstract composition; like previous works written for the conductor Dennis Russell Davies (the 1992
Concerto Grosso and the 1995 Symphony No. 3), it features extended solo writing. Critic
Allan Kozinn described the symphony's
chromaticism as more extreme, more fluid, and its themes and textures as continually changing, morphing without repetition, and praised the symphony's "unpredictable orchestration", pointing out the "beautiful flute and
harp variation in the melancholy second movement".
Alex Ross, remarked that "against all odds, this work succeeds in adding something certifiably new to the overstuffed annals of the classical symphony. ... The musical material is cut from familiar fabric, but it's striking that the composer forgoes the expected bustling conclusion and instead delves into a mood of deepening twilight and unending night."
The Passion of Ramakrishna (2006), was composed for the
Pacific Symphony orchestra, the Pacific Chorale and the conductor
Carl St. Clair. The 45 minutes choral work is based on the writings of Indian spiritual leader
Ramakrishna, which seem "to have genuinely inspired and revived the composer out of his old formulas to write something fresh", as one critic remarked, whereas another noted "The musical style breaks little new ground for Glass, except for the glorious
Handelian ending ... the composer's style ideally fits the devotional text". A cello suite, composed for the cellist
Wendy Sutter,
Songs and Poems for Solo Cello (2005–2007), was equally lauded by critics. It was described by Lisa Hirsch as "a major work, ... a major addition to the cello repertory" and "deeply Romantic in spirit, and at the same time deeply
Baroque". Another critic,
Anne Midgette of
The Washington Post, noted the suite "maintains an unusual degree of directness and warmth"; she also noted a kinship to a major work by
Johann Sebastian Bach: "Digging into the lower registers of the instrument, it takes flight in handfuls of notes, now gentle, now impassioned, variously evoking the minor-mode keening of
klezmer music and the interior meditations of
Bach's cello suites". Glass himself pointed out "in many ways it owes more to Schubert than to Bach". In 2007, Glass also worked alongside
Leonard Cohen on an adaptation of Cohen's poetry collection
Book of Longing. The work, which premiered in June 2007 in Toronto, is a piece for seven instruments and a vocal quartet, and contains recorded spoken word performances by Cohen and imagery from his collection.
Appomattox, an opera surrounding the events at the end of the American Civil War, was commissioned by the
San Francisco Opera and premiered on October 5, 2007. As in
Waiting for the Barbarians, Glass collaborated with the writer
Christopher Hampton, and as with the preceding opera and Symphony No. 8, the piece was conducted by Glass's long-time collaborator Dennis Russell Davies, who noted "in his recent operas the bass line has taken on an increasing prominence,... (an) increasing use of melodic elements in the deep register, in the
contrabass, the
contrabassoon—he's increasingly using these sounds and these textures can be derived from using these instruments in different combinations. ... He's definitely developed more skill as an orchestrator, in his ability to conceive melodies and harmonic structures for specific instrumental groups. ... what he gives them to play is very organic and idiomatic."
2008–present: Chamber music, concertos, and symphonies in September 2008 , a 2016 oil on board portrait at the
Smithsonian Institution's
National Portrait Gallery in
Washington, D.C. in Denmark, 2017 Between 2008 and 2010, Glass continued to work on a series of chamber music pieces which started with
Songs and Poems: the
Four Movements for Two Pianos (2008, premiered by Dennis Russell Davies and
Maki Namekawa in July 2008), a
Sonata for Violin and Piano composed in "the
Brahms tradition" (completed in 2008, premiered by violinist Maria Bachman and pianist Jon Klibonoff in February 2009); a
String sextet (an adaption of the Symphony No. 3 of 1995 made by Glass's musical director Michael Riesman) followed in 2009.
Pendulum (2010, a one-movement piece for violin and piano), a second Suite of cello pieces for Wendy Sutter (2011), and
Partita for solo violin for violinist Tim Fain (2010, first performance of the complete work 2011), are recent entries in the series. Other works for the theater were a score for
Euripides'
The Bacchae (2009, directed by
JoAnne Akalaitis), and
Kepler (2009), yet another operatic biography of a scientist or explorer. The opera is based on the life of 17th century astronomer
Johannes Kepler, against the background of the
Thirty Years' War, with a libretto compiled from Kepler's texts and poems by his contemporary
Andreas Gryphius. It is Glass's first opera in German, and was premiered by the
Bruckner Orchestra Linz and Dennis Russell Davies in September 2009. LA Times critic
Mark Swed and others described the work as "
oratorio-like"; Swed pointed out the work is Glass's "most chromatic, complex, psychological score" and "the orchestra dominates ... I was struck by the muted, glowing colors, the character of many orchestral solos and the poignant emphasis on bass instruments". In 2009 and 2010, Glass returned to the concerto genre.
Violin Concerto No. 2 in four movements was commissioned by violinist
Robert McDuffie, and subtitled "The American Four Seasons" (2009), as an homage to
Vivaldi's set of concertos
The Four Seasons. It premiered in December 2009 by the
Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and was subsequently performed by the
London Philharmonic Orchestra in April 2010. The Double Concerto for Violin and Cello and Orchestra (2010) was composed for soloists Maria Bachmann and Wendy Sutter and also as a ballet score for the
Nederlands Dans Theater. Other orchestral projects of 2010 are short orchestral scores for films; to a multimedia presentation based on the novel
Icarus at the Edge of Time by
theoretical physicist Brian Greene, which premiered on June 6, 2010, and the score for the Brazilian film
Nosso Lar (released in Brazil on September 3, 2010). Glass also donated a short work,
Brazil, to the video game
Chime, which was released on February 3, 2010. In August 2011, Glass presented a series of music, dance, and theater performances as part of the Days and Nights Festival. Along with the Philip Glass Ensemble, scheduled performers include
Molissa Fenley and Dancers,
John Moran with
Saori Tsukada, as well as a screening of
Dracula with Glass's score. Other works completed since 2010 include
Symphony No. 9 (2010–2011),
Symphony No. 10 (2012), Cello Concerto No. 2 (2012, based on the film score to
Naqoyqatsi) as well as String Quartet No. 6 and No. 7. Glass's Ninth Symphony was co-commissioned by the Bruckner Orchestra Linz, the
American Composers Orchestra and the
Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. The symphony's first performance took place on January 1, 2012, at the
Brucknerhaus in Linz, Austria (Dennis Russell Davies conducting the Bruckner Orchestra Linz); the American premiere was on January 31, 2012, (Glass's 75th birthday), at Carnegie Hall (Dennis Russell Davies conducting the American Composers Orchestra), and the West Coast premiere with the
Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of
John Adams on April 5. Glass's Tenth Symphony, written in five movements, was commissioned by the
Orchestre français des jeunes for its 30th anniversary. The symphony's first performance took place on August 9, 2012, at the
Grand Théâtre de Provence in
Aix-en-Provence under Dennis Russell Davies. The opera
The Perfect American was composed in 2011 to a commission from
Teatro Real Madrid. The libretto is based on a book of the same name by
Peter Stephan Jungk and covers the final months of the life of
Walt Disney. The world premiere was at the Teatro Real, Madrid, on January 22, 2013, with British
baritone Christopher Purves taking the role of Disney. The US premiere took place on March 12, 2017, in a production by
Long Beach Opera. It was met with mixed to negative reviews. His opera ''
, based on a play by Austrian playwright and novelist Peter Handke, Die Spuren der Verirrten'' (2007), premiered at the Musiktheater Linz in April 2013, conducted by Dennis Russell Davies and directed by
David Pountney. On June 28, 2013, Glass's piano piece
Two Movements for Four Pianos was premiered at the
Museum Kunstpalast, performed by
Katia and Marielle Labèque, Maki Namekawa, and Dennis Russell Davies. On January 17, 2014, Glass's collaboration with
Angélique Kidjo Ifé: Three Yorùbá Songs for Orchestra premiered at the
Philharmonie Luxembourg. In May 2015, Glass's Double Concerto for Two Pianos was premiered by
Katia and Marielle Labèque,
Gustavo Dudamel and the
Los Angeles Philharmonic. Glass published his memoir,
Words Without Music, in 2015. His
11th symphony, commissioned by the Bruckner Orchestra Linz, the
Istanbul International Music Festival, and the
Queensland Symphony Orchestra, premiered on January 31, 2017, Glass's 80th birthday, at Carnegie Hall, Dennis Russell Davies conducting the Bruckner Orchestra. On September 22, 2017, his Piano Concerto No. 3 was premiered by pianist
Simone Dinnerstein with the strings of the chamber orchestra
A Far Cry at
Jordan Hall at the
New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, Massachusetts. Glass's String Quartet No. 8 was premiered by the JACK Quartet at Centennial Concert Hall in Winnipeg, Canada on February 1, 2018. The work was commissioned by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra New Music Festival, the
Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, and
Carnegie Hall. Glass's
12th symphony was premiered by the
Los Angeles Philharmonic under
John Adams at the
Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles on January 10, 2019. Commissioned by the orchestra, the work is based on David Bowie's 1979 album
Lodger, it completes Glass's trilogy of symphonies based on Bowie's Berlin Trilogy of albums. In collaboration with stage auteur, performer and co-director (with Kirsty Housley)
Phelim McDermott, Glass composed the score for the new work
Tao of Glass, which premiered at the 2019
Manchester International Festival before touring to the 2020
Perth Festival. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Glass continued composing, with three major works for opera and symphony premiering in 2021 and 2022. Glass's opera
Circus Days and Nights was commissioned by Cirkus Cirkor. The libretto by
David Henry Hwang and Tilde Björfors is based on a book of poems by
Robert Lax. The world premiere was at the
Malmö Opera on May 29, 2021. Glass's Symphony No. 14 was premiered by the LGT Young Soloists at the
Royal College of Music in London on September 17, 2021. The work was commissioned by the orchestra.
Glass's Symphony No. 13 was premiered by the
National Arts Centre Orchestra under
Alexander Shelley at the
Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto on March 30, 2022. Commissioned by the orchestra, the work was written as a tribute to Canadian journalist
Peter Jennings.
Symphony No. 15, 'Lincoln,' was due to have its world premiere performed by the
National Symphony Orchestra on June 12, 2026, but Glass withdrew the performance from the
Kennedy Center, stating "the values of the Kennedy Center today are in direct conflict with the message of the Symphony." On November 7, 2023, Glass and
Artisan Books released
Philip Glass Piano Etudes: The Complete Folios 1–20 & Essays from Fellow Artists a nine-pound deluxe boxed set of Glass's piano etudes and
Studies in Time: Essays on the Music of Philip Glass. ==Influences and collaborations==