There Are Those Who Believe That Minimalist Music Here Began Out There

So I’m watching Battlestar Galactica (the, cough cough, new one, which, as the ads constantly remind us, is, ahem, considered by critics The Best Show on TV), & at one point the Starbuck character is on the Colonial homeworld enjoying a brief & unusual respite from the nonstop action, so she pulls out some kind of futuristic cassette and plays it on some kind of futuristic stereo and explains to her fellow on-the-run soldier that this is music her father wrote & recorded. It’s a melancholy solo piano piece, and it’s a nice underplayed moment, and, and – and wait a minute, this is Philip Glass, Solo Piano!

It was a tad distracting.

“Metamorphosis” was originally written for a stage version of the Kafka novel; away from that context (or the Galactica context), it’s pretty but strong, low-key but not formless. It’s notable, I think, in that it asks nothing from you but gives a lot, more so the more you listen. Or maybe it doesn’t ask but quietly demands; a lot of ambient-type music just drifts away & sticks to the wallpaper, but here the simplicity of arrangement & firmness of composition actually command your attention, until without even realizing it you’ve pulled something up out of yourself & joined it to what you’re hearing.

All of which is to say that you don’t have to be separated from the Colonial fleet & hiding out from marauding Cylons to enjoy it. Nor do you have to awake one morning from uneasy dreams to find yourself transformed in your bed into a gigantic insect. (Though either scenario might of course help.)

• Philip Glass, “Metamorphosis One”