LONGREADS: Philip Glass' Speech from Dance Magazine Awards

As it turns out, Philip Glass's speech at the Dance Magazine Awards 2013 wasn't as improvised as his score to Harry Smith's Early Abstractions at the Film-Makers' Cooperative Benefit back in September.

And the following LONGREADS from the world's most famous minimalist composer is certainly more candid than the one he added his imprimatur to for the Minnesota Orchestra's plight a monthly earlier. 

Transcribed below, then, by Wendy Perron, Classicalite's #longform vertical wanted to give you yet another side of Glass. 

After all, at 76 years old, Philip Glass is at least as much elder statesmen of the arts--dance especially--as he was l'enfant terrible of Uptown New York... 

When I first went to Juilliard, it was 1957, and the first thing I asked myself as a 20-year-old writing music, was, Who wants this music? Who am I writing for?

At Juilliard at that time there were two companies: The Martha Graham company was teaching there, and José Limón, and he himself was also there. Within weeks, I was writing music for dancers. Not only was I writing for them, but Louis Horst was teaching choreography at the time, so when I wrote a piece of music for dancers in the class, I had to come in and play for them too-which was actually quite scary. I was more afraid of him than anybody else.

So I began in the dance world, and the funny thing is that it's been with me for most of my life. Later when I was working for professional dance companies...One time I was on the road with Lucinda Childs and the company had a dance class every day. I just put on some sweat pants and went and took classes with them. I couldn't really do it at all. But after they stopped laughing and forgot I was there, I still did it. What was I trying to do? There was no way I could do it, but I wanted to be on the stage with them; I wanted to know what it would feel like to be a dancer. It felt in a funny way that by some strange [muffled] I ended up being a composer. I used to say laughingly to my friends that I was a failed dancer who became a composer. Which is kind of a joke, and yet in another way, I thought the dance world was my great ally in the world of music.

I think scarcely a year passed when I wasn't doing a ballet for somebody. Not only was I writing new pieces, but I discovered that a lot of people were using the music. Sometimes someone would say, 'I'd like to use your music for a dance; would you like to see my work?' And I would say, 'Oh no no no no no...just take it.' I never felt that I could audition a dance company. I just wanted them to use the music.

Even today, I have two dance projects on my desk right now, I haven't started them yet, but I'm still working for dance. I would say that for me, of theater and dance and music and poetry and film, the world I'm closest to is the world of dance. I find the impermanence of dance is deeply moving. The great poets in my life have been actual people who wrote poetry-Allen Ginsburg, people like that-and the other poets are the dancers because they are the most dedicated people. The work, it disappears. We give our lives to it, and I give my music to it freely and lovingly. It's there for the moment that it lives in and...it's gone. It's the most profound dedication to the arts that I know.

Thank you Dance Magazine and all of you here, thank you for what you've given to me.