What is the shortest piece Philip Glass has ever written? It's quite possible it was the 17 second piece written for the web page GlassPages.org over 11 years ago.
I don't know how old the readers of Glass Notes are, but in the somewhat dark earlier days of the internet, us Philip Glass fans had no other source than the work of José Jiménez Mesa and his webpage glasspages.org (which is still up though not updated since 2002 when José started more serious work on the philipglass.com (the last version before the current incarnation)).
Glasspages might be a little antiquated, but it was a valuable resource at the time for those of us scrounging the dark corners of the World Wide Web looking for any bit of Philip Glass related information which when compared with today's standard, was very limited.
From Glass Pages:
"In the fall of 2000, by the way of Kurt Munkacsi, GlassPages' founder Jordi Petit commisioned a short piece of original music by Philip Glass in order to be heard by the users of this website. The result was a new 17 seconds Glass composition for brass quintet called Web Logo. This exciting piece bears a dedication For José, the current maintainer of this site (glasspages), José Jiménez.
Web Logo has been recorded by Michael Riesman, Philip Glass' long time colaborator. The following musicians played it:
- Timothy Malosh, flute
- Allen Blustine, clarinet
- William Rohdin, trumpet
- Sharon Moe, french horn
- Jim Pugh, trombone
Celebrating the transfer of GlassPages to the www.glasspages.org domain, the web masters of this site are proud to invite all our users to hear this original piece. You can download Web Logo in MP3 format:
- Please take into account that this piece is copyrighted and can solely be used by the users of GlassPages for their personal, non comercial use."
4 thoughts on ““Web Logo” – For José”
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Very cute (like a “polite” ‘Revolution in the Pentagon’)!
One of the things I really love about this site (‘Glass Notes’) is all the little quirky odd bits and pieces of Glass you post. I’m always hungry for new (old) bits of Glass I haven’t heard yet; it would be really cool if Orange Mountain Music could put together a compilation of such “ephemera” (such as music for advertising, and previously unrelated material from film scores, like ‘Hamburger Hill’, ‘A Brief History of Time’, ‘Mindwalk’, ‘The Baroness and the Pig’, and ‘Notes’ (the short film), etc.), it could be called ‘Glass Fragments’ or ‘Refractions’ (or some other such suitable pun!). I realise there would be licensing issues that might make such an idea unworkable in practise, but, again, that’s why this site is such a treasure trove for Glass hunters like myself!
(such)
It was awesome reading this, especially since I heard this piece on the GlassPages site before. It really was a terrific resource and I remember getting my first exposure to ‘Monsters of Grace’ trough one of the snippets I heard on the site. Got a kick out of seeing a list of everyone who participated in the recording.
I also remember asking a similar question to Brinkley’s some time ago. I wonder if it points to a greater than anticipated demand for this kind of material on behalf of Glass fans.
The closest that we’ve come to this kind of compilaton, is the “Music From Dunvagen” disk from mid 90s (The CD #5 of the FilmWorks series contained a few urelased tracks from short movies too).
“Music from Dunvagen” hasn’t been issued publicly though and is very hard to find (it remains, perhaps, my most sought after Glass CD). It actually contains some of the material, Brinkley Kactus mentioned above. It would be really cool if at least that material was made available in some form, since it’s already been recorded. In particular, I remember hearing a very-low quality piano(!) – I think – version of “Windcatcher” on the main site years ago and finding it absolutely gorgeous. Would be awesome to hear it again.
That is indeed a short piece but even shorter would probably be the custom ringtone that was auctioned off years ago as a benefit for the American Composer’s Orchestra. I’ve never heard the final ringtone but I imagine it was shorter than 17 seconds!
I remember this Tribute to Jose. Jose worked like crazy & spent tons of time accurately putting up the first Internet site on PG for Glasslovers such as myself & tons of other good people starved for Glass.
Jose, you deserve this Tribute, now & forever. Please know that we love you!