The Toltec culture is an archaeological Mesoamerican culture that dominated a state centered in Tula, Hidalgo in the early post-classic period of Mesoamerican chronology (ca 800-1000 CE). The later Aztec culture saw the Toltecs as their intellectual and cultural predecessors and described Toltec culture emanating from Tollan (Nahuatl for Tula) as the epitome of civilization, indeed in the Nahuatl language the word "Toltec" came to take on the meaning "artisan". The Aztec oral and pictographic tradition also described the history of the Toltec empire giving lists of rulers and their exploits. Among modern scholars it is a matter of debate whether the Aztec narratives of Toltec history should be given credence as descriptions of actual historical events. While all scholars acknowledge that there is a large mythological part of the narrative some maintain that by using a critical comparative method some level of historicity can be salvaged from the sources, whereas others maintain that continued analysis of the narratives as sources of actual history is futile and hinders access to actual knowledge of the culture of Tula, Hidalgo. Other controversy relating to the Toltecs include how best to understand reasons behind the perceived similarities in architecture and iconography between the archaeological site of Tula and the Maya site of Chichén Itzá - as of yet no consensus has emerged about the degree or direction of influence between the two sites.

Aztec view

The word "Toltecatl" (Toltec) was originally used by the Nahua in contrast to the word "chichimeca" which describe their own prehistory as a nomadic hunter-gatherer people which later adopted the more "civilized," urban lifestyle described with the term ''Toltecayotl'' "Toltecness". Etymologically Toltecatl is derived from the Nahuatl language placename "Tollan" "place of reeds", which to the Aztecs signified "metropolis". The Aztecs also saw the Toltecs as their own predecessors whom they glorified in order to be able to legitimize their own structures of power by claiming royal descent from Toltec lineages. The Florentine Codex describes the Aztec view of the Toltecs like this:

"''The Tolteca were wise. Their works were all good, all perfect, all wonderful, all marvelous... They invented the art of medicine... And these Tolteca were very wise; they were thinkers, for they originated the year count... These Tolteca were righteous. They were not deceivers. Their words [were] clear words . . . They were tall; they were larger [than the people today]... They were very devout... They were rich.'' (Sahagún, 1950–1982: book 10, 165–170)"

Archaeology

Some archaeologists such as Richard Diehl, argue for the existence of a Toltec archaeological horizon characterized by certain stylistic traits associated with Tula, Hidalgo and extending to other cultures and polities in Mesoamerica. Traits associated with this horizon are: The Mixteca-Puebla style of iconography, Tohil plumbate ceramic ware and Silho or X-Fine Orange Ware ceramics. The presence of stylistic traits associated with Tula in Chichén Itzá is also taken as evidence for a Toltec horizon. Especially the nature of interaction between Tula and Chichén Itzá has been controversial with Scholars arguing for either military conquest of Chichén Itzá by Toltecs, Chichén Itzá establishing Tula as a colony or only loose connections between the two. The existence any meaning of the Mixteca-Puebla art style has also been questioned.

A contrary viewpoint is argued in a 2003 study by Michael E. Smith and Lisa Montiel who compare the archaeological record related to Tula Hidalgo to those of the polities centered in Teotihuacan and Tenochtitlan. They conclude that relative to the influence exerted in Mesoamerica by Teotihuacan and Tenochtitlan, Tulas influence on other cultures was negligible and was probably not deserving of being defined as an empire. While Tula does have the urban complexity expected of an imperial capital its influence and dominance was not very far reaching. Evidence for Tula's participance in extensive trade networks has been uncovered, for example the remains of a large obsidian workshop.

History of research

The debate about the nature of the Toltec culture goes back to the late 19th century. Mesoamericanist scholars such as Veitia, Manuel Orozco y Berra, Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, Francisco Clavigero all read the Aztec chronicles and believed them to be realistic historic descriptions of pan-Mesoamerican empire based at Tula, Hidalgo. This historicist view was first challenged by Daniel Garrison Brinton who argued that the "Toltecs" as described in the Aztec sources were merely one of several Nahuatl speaking citystates in the postclassic period, and not a particularly influential one at that. He attributed the Aztec view of the Toltecs to the "tendency of the human mind to glorify the good old days", and the confounding of the place of Tollan with the myth of the struggle between Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca. Désiré Charnay, the first archaeologist to work at Tula, Hidalgo, defended the historicist views based on his impression of the Toltec capital, and was the first to note similarities in architectural styles between Tula and Chichén Itza. This led him to posit the theory that Chichén Itzá had been violently taken over by a Toltec military force under the leadership of Kukulcan. Following Charnay the term ''Toltec'' has since been associated with the influx of certain Central Mexican cultural traits into the Mayan sphere of dominance that took place in the late classic and early Postclassic periods; the Postclassic Mayan civilizations of Chichén Itzá, Mayapán and the Guatemalan highlands have been referred to as "Toltecized" or "Mexicanized" Mayas.

The historicist school of thought persisted well in to the 20th century, represented in the works of scholars such as David Carrasco, Miguel León Portilla, Nigel Davies and H. B. Nicholson which all held the Toltecs to have been an actual ethnic group. This school of thought connected the "Toltecs" to the archaeological site of Tula, which was taken to be the Tollan of Aztec myth. This tradition assumes that much of central Mexico was dominated by a "Toltec empire" between the 10th and 12th century CE. The Aztecs referred to several Mexican citystates as Tollan, "Place of Reeds", such as "Tollan Cholollan". Historian Enrique Florescano has argued that the "original" Tollan was probably Teotihuacán, and that the Mayan sources refer to Chichén Itzá when talking about the mythical place Zuyua (Tollan).

Many historicists such as H. B. Nicholson (2001 (1957)) and Nigel Davies (1977) were fully aware that the Aztec chronicles were a mixture of mythical and historical accounts, this led them to try to separate the two by applying a comparative approach to the varying Aztec narratives. For example they seek to discern between the deity Quetzalcoatl and a Toltec ruler often referred to as Topiltzin Ce Acatl Quetzalcoatl.

Toltecs as myth

In recent decades the historicist position has fallen out of favor for a more critical and interpretive approach to the historicity of the Aztec mythical accounts based on the original approach of Brinton. This approach applies a different understanding of the word Toltec to the interpretation of the Aztec sources, interpreting it as largely a mythical and philosophical construct by either the Aztecs or Mesoamericans generally that served to symbolize the might and sophistication of several different civilizations during the Mesoamerican Postclassic period.

Scholars such as Michel Graulich (2002) and Susan D. Gillespie (1989) maintain that the difficulties in salvaging actual historic data from the Aztec accounts of Toltec history are too great to overcome. For example, there is not one supposed Toltec ruler identified with Quetzalcoatl, but two: the first ruler and founder of the Toltec dynasty, and the last ruler, who saw the end of the Toltec glory and was forced into humiliation and exile. The first is described as a valiant triumphant warrior, but the last as a feeble and self-doubting old man. This causes Graulich and Gillespie to suggest that the general Aztec cyclical view of time, where events repeated themselves at the end and beginning of cycles or eras was being inscribed into the historical record by the Aztecs, making it futile to attempt to distinguish between a historical Topiltzin Ce Acatl and a Quetzalcoatl deity. Graulich argues that the Toltec era is best considered the fourth of the Five Aztec mythical "Suns" or ages, the one immediately preceding the fifth sun of the Aztec people, presided over by Quetzalcoatl. This causes Graulich to consider that the only possibly historical data in the Aztec chronicles are the names of some rulers and possibly some of the conquests ascribed to them.

Further more among the Nahuan peoples the word "Tolteca" was synonymous with artist, artisan or wise man, and "''toltecayotl''" "Toltecness" meant art, culture and civilization and urbanism—and was seen as the opposite of "''Chichimecayotl''" "Chichimecness", which symbolized the savage, nomadic state of peoples who had not yet become urbanized. This interpretation argues that any large urban center in Mesoamerica could be referred to as "Tollan" and its inhabitants as Toltecs—and that it was common practice among ruling lineages in Postclassic Mesoamerica to strengthen claims to power by claiming Toltec ancestry. Mesoamerican migration accounts often state that Tollan was ruled by Quetzalcoatl (or ''Kukulcan'' in Yucatec and ''Gukumatz'' in K'iche'), a godlike mythical figure who was later sent into exile from Tollan and went on to found a new city elsewhere in Mesoamerica. Claims of Toltec ancestry and a ruling dynasty founded by Quetzalcoatl have been made by such diverse civilizations as the Aztec, the Quiché and the Itza' Mayas.

While the skeptical school of thought does not deny that cultural traits of a seemingly central Mexican origin have diffused into a larger area of Mesoamerica, it tends to ascribe this to the dominance of Teotihuacán in the Classic period and the general diffusion of cultural traits within the region. Recent scholarship, then, does not see Tula, Hidalgo as the capital of the Toltecs of the Aztec accounts, but rather takes "Toltec" to mean simply an inhabitant of Tula during its apogee. Separating the term "Toltec" from those of the Aztec accounts, it attempts to find archaeological clues to the ethnicity, history and social organization of the inhabitants of Tula.

Misconception

There is a popular urban legend which states, "The Toltecs, Seventh-century native Mexicans, went into battle with wooden swords so as not to kill their enemies." In fact, the Toltecs were 9th-11th century Mesoamericans who went into battle with shorter versions of the Aztec macuahuitl, wooden swords with obsidian fragments embedded in their sides, deadly weapons which were reputedly capable of decapitating a horse.

Notes

References

: |authorlink=Daniel Garrison Brinton|title=Were the Toltecs an Historic Nationality?|journal=Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society|volume=24|issue=126|year=1887|pages=229–241}} : |year=1982 |title=Quetzalcoatl and the Irony of Empire: Myths and Prophecies in the Aztec Tradition |location=Chicago, IL |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=0-226-09487-1 |oclc=0226094871}} :|authorlink=Désiré Charnay|title=La Civilisation Tolteque|journal=Revue d'Ethnographie|volume=iv|pages=281|year=1885}} : |authorlink=Nigel Davies (historian)|year=1977|title=The Toltecs: Until the Fall of Tula |series=Civilization of the American Indian series, |location=Norman |publisher=University of Oklahoma Press |isbn=0-8061-1394-4}} : |authorlink=Nigel Davies (historian)|year=1980 |title=The Toltec Heritage: From the Fall of Tula to the Rise of Tenochtitlan |series=Civilization of the American Indian series, |location=Norman |publisher=University of Oklahoma Press |isbn=0-8061-1505-X |oclc=5103377}} : |authorlink=Richard Diehl|title=Tula: The Toltec Capital of Ancient Mexico.|publisher=Thames & Hudson|location=New York|year=1983}} : |authorlink=Richard Diehl|chapter=The toltec Horizon in Mesoamerica: New perspectives on an old issue|title=Latin American horizons: a symposium at Dumbarton Oaks, 11th and 12th October 1986|year=1993|editors=Don Stephen Rice|publisher=Dumbarton Oaks}} : |year=1999 |title=The Myth of Quetzalcoatl|others=Lysa Hochroth (trans.), Raúl Velázquez (illus.) |edition=translation of ''El mito de Quetzalcóatl'' original Spanish-language |location=Baltimore, MD|publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press|isbn=0-8018-7101-8 |oclc=39313429}} : |authorlink=Susan D. Gillespie|year=1989|title=The Aztec Kings: The Construction of Rulership in Mexica History |location=Tucson |publisher=University of Arizona Press |isbn=0-8165-1095-4 |oclc=60131674}} :|title=Los reyes de Tollan|journal=Revista Española de Antropología Americana|year=2002|volume=32|pages=87–114}} : |title=Tula of the Toltecs: excavations and survey|publisher=University of Iowa Press|year=1989}} : |authorlink=Paul Kirchhoff|year=1985|chapter=El imperio tolteca y su caída. In Mesoamérica y el centro de México: Una antología|editors=Jesús Monjarás-Ruiz, Rosa Brambila, and Emma Pérez-Rocha (eds.)|pages=249–272|publisher=Instituo Nacional de Antropología e Historia|location=Mexico City}} : |authorlink=Mary Miller |coauthors=and |year=1993 |title=The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya: An Illustrated Dictionary of Mesoamerican Religion |publisher=Thames & Hudson |location=London |isbn=0-500-05068-6 |oclc=27667317}} : |authorlink=Bernardino de Sahagún |year=1950–82 |origyear=ca. 1540–85 |title=Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, 13 vols. in 12 |edition=translation of ''Historia General de las Cosas de la Nueva España'' |others=Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J.O. Anderson (eds., trans., notes and illus.) |series=vols. I-XII |location=Santa Fe, NM and Salt Lake City |publisher=School of American Research and the University of Utah Press |isbn=0-87480-082-X |oclc=276351}} : |authorlink=Michael E. Smith |year=2007|chapter=Tula and Chichén Itzá: Are We Asking the Right Questions?|title=Twin Tollans: Chichén Itzá, Tula, and the Epiclassic to Early Postclassic Mesoamerican World|editors=Kowalski, Jeff Karl and Kristin-Graham, Cynthia. Washington (eds.)|location=Washington DC|publisher= Dumbarton Oaks|pages=579–617|url=http://works.bepress.com/michael_e_smith/8}} : |authorlink=Michael E. Smith |year=1984 |title=The Aztlan Migrations of Nahuatl Chronicles: Myth or History? |url=http://www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9/1-CompleteSet/MES-84-Aztlan.pdf |format=PDF online facsimile |journal=Ethnohistory |volume=31 |issue=3 |pages=153–186 |location=Columbus, OH |publisher=American Society for Ethnohistory|issn=0014-1801 |oclc=145142543 |doi=10.2307/482619 |jstor=482619}} : and |title=The Archaeological Study of Empires and Imperialism in Prehispanic Central Mexico|journal=Journal of Anthropological Archaeology|volume=20|pages=245–284|year=2001| url=http://works.bepress.com/michael_e_smith/13|doi=10.1006/jaar.2000.0372 }} : and |title=Waves of Influence in Postclassic Mesoamerica? A Critique of the Mixteca-Puebla Concept|journal=Anthropology|volume=4|issue=2|pages=15–50 |url=http://www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9/1-CompleteSet/MES-80-CHS-WavesofInfl.pdf}} : |coauthors=|title=The Return of Quetzalcoatl|journal=Ancient Mesoamerica|volume=9|issue=2|year=1998|pages=183–232|publisher=Cambridge University Press|doi=10.1017/S0956536100001954}} : |authorlink=Mariano Veytia |year=2000 |origyear=1836 |title=Ancient America rediscovered: including an account of America's first settlers who left from the biblical tower of Babel at the time of the confusion of tongues |editor=Donald W. Hemingway and W. David Hemingway (compilation and eds.) |others=Ronda Cunningham (trans.) |edition=Translation of the first 23 chapters of Book 1 of the Veytia's ''Historia antigua de Mexico'', 1st English |location=Springville, UT |publisher=Bonneville Books |isbn=1-55517-479-5 |oclc=45203586}}

External links

Category:Mesoamerican cultures Category:Pre-Columbian cultures of Mexico Category:Pre-Columbian cultures Category:Classic period in the Americas

ar:تولتك be:Тальтэкі bg:Толтеки ca:Civilització tolteca cs:Toltékové cy:Toltec da:Tolteker de:Tolteken es:Cultura tolteca eo:Toltekoj fa:تولتک fr:Toltèques fy:Tolteken hr:Tolteci it:Toltechi ka:ტოლტეკები lv:Tolteki lt:Toltekai hu:Toltékok ms:Toltec nah:Tōltēcatl nl:Tolteken ja:トルテカ帝国 no:Toltekere pl:Toltekowie pt:Toltecas ro:Toltec ru:Тольтеки simple:Toltec sk:Toltékovia sr:Толтеци sh:Tolteci fi:Tolteekit sv:Tolteker tr:Toltekler uk:Тольтеки zh:托尔特克

Coordinates	16°48′″N96°09′″N
name	Miguel Ángel Ruiz
pseudonym	Don Miguel Ruiz
birth date	1952
birth place	Mexico
occupation	Author, Teacher, Shaman
nationality	Mexican
genre	New Age
subject	Motivational, Metaphysics
Notableworks	''The Four Agreements''
website	http://www.miguelruiz.com }}

Don Miguel Ángel Ruiz (born 1952), better known as Don Miguel Ruiz, is a Mexican author of New Age spiritualist and neoshamanistic texts. His teaching is significantly influenced by the work of Carlos Castaneda.

His most famous and influential work, ''The Four Agreements'', was published in 1997 and has sold around 4 million copies. It was featured on the ''Oprah'' television show, and advocates personal freedom from agreements and beliefs that we have made with ourselves and others that are creating limitation and unhappiness in our lives. Ultimately, it is about finding one's own integrity, self-love, and peace by way of absolving oneself from responsibility for the woes of others. The Four Agreements are:

# Be Impeccable With Your Word. # Don't Take Anything Personally. # Don't Make Assumptions. # Always Do Your Best.

Ruiz also wrote a companion book to ''The Four Agreements''. He then wrote several other books, including ''The Voice of Knowledge'', ''Prayers'', and ''The Mastery of Love''.

Ruiz has subsequently released a sequel, ''The Fifth Agreement'', which adds a further agreement:

:5. Be Skeptical but Learn to Listen.

In Mary Carroll Nelson's ''Beyond Fear'', he discusses some of his beliefs through a series of interviews, including his belief in the legend of Atlantis; his belief that the sun entered its sixth age on January 11, 1992, which should lead to a new age for humanity; and his belief in the spiritual power of the pyramid of the sun at Teotihuacan. He can speak English. He often lectures and leads retreats in the United States. Many of his students are American. In 2002 he suffered a massive heart attack, and spent nine weeks in a coma, but recovered although he was in pain for the next 8 years. He has handed the Eagle-Knight lineage over to his son Don José Luis. On October 9, 2010, Ruiz received a heart transplant at a hospital in Los Angeles, California. He was at a retreat in Wimberley, Texas, at the Lotus Ranch when he found out that a heart was available and had to charter a plane to get back to Los Angeles.

Works

''The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Wisdom (A Toltec Wisdom Book)'', 1997, Amber-Allen Publishing, ISBN 978-1-878424-31-0

''The Mastery of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship (Toltec Wisdom Book)'', 1999, Amber-Allen Publishing, ISBN 978-1-878424-42-6

''The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, A Toltec Wisdom Book'' [Special Edition], 2001, Amber-Allen Publishing, ISBN 1878424505

''Prayers: A Communion with Our Creator (Toltec Wisdom)'', 2001, Amber-Allen Publishing, ISBN 978-1-878424-52-5

''Wisdom from the Four Agreements (Charming Petites)'', 2003, Peter Pauper Press, ISBN 088088990X

''Wisdom from the Mastery of Love (Charming Petites)'', 2003, Peter Pauper Press, ISBN 0880884258

''The Voice of Knowledge: A Practical Guide To Inner Peace'', 2004, Amber-Allen Publishing, ISBN 978-1-878424-54-9

''The Fifth Agreement: A Practical Guide to Self-Mastery'', 2010, Amber-Allen Publishing, ISBN 978-1-878424-68-6

References

External links

Toltec Teachings of Don Miguel Ruiz

Category:Mexican self-help writers Category:Mexican spiritual writers Category:New Age writers Category:Motivational speakers Category:Motivational writers Category:Metaphysics writers Category:1952 births Category:Living people Category:Mexican animists Category:Neoshamanism

bg:Мигел Руис cs:Miguel Ángel Ruiz de:Miguel Ruiz es:Miguel Ruiz fr:Miguel Ruiz mk:Мигел Руис

Coordinates	16°48′″N96°09′″N
name	Miguel I
more	Portugal
imgw	225px
succession	King of Portugal and the Algarves
reign	26 February 1828 - 6 May 1834
predecessor	Maria II
successor	Maria II
spouse	Princess Adelaide of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg
issue	Infanta Maria das NevesInfante Miguel II, Duke of BraganzaInfanta Maria TheresaInfanta Maria JosephaInfanta Adelgundes, Duchess of GuimarãesInfanta Maria AnneInfanta Maria AntoniaMaria da Assunção do Carmo de Bragança (illegitimate)
issue-link	#Marriages and descendants
issue-pipe	more...
full name	Miguel Maria do Patrocínio João Carlos Francisco de Assis Xavier de Paula Pedro de Alcântara António Rafael Gabriel Joaquim José Gonzaga Evaristo de Bragança e Bourbon
house	House of Braganza
father	John VI of Portugal
mother	Charlotte of Spain
birth date	26 October 1802
birth place	Queluz National Palace, Lisbon
death date	14 November 1866
death place	Bronnbach (Grand Duchy of Baden), Baden-Württemberg, Germany
place of burial	Franciscan Convent of Engelberg, Großheubach, Bavaria, Germany; moved in 1967 to the Monastery of São Vicente de Fora, Lisbon, Portugal
religion	Roman Catholicism }}

Dom Miguel I, sometimes Michael (26 October 1802, Lisbon – 14 November 1866, Bronnbach, Grand Duchy of Baden), was the King of Portugal between 1828 and 1834, the seventh child and second son of King John VI and his queen, Charlotte of Spain.

Following his exile as a result of his actions in the Abrilada, Miguel returned to Portugal as regent to his niece Maria da Glória (future Queen Maria II), and potential royal consort. As regent, he claimed the Portuguese throne in his own right, since according to the so-called Fundamental Laws of the Kingdom his older brother Peter IV and therefore the latter's daughter had lost their rights from the moment that Peter had made war on Portugal and become the sovereign of a foreign state (Brazil). This led to a difficult political situation, during which many people were killed, imprisoned, persecuted or sent into exile, and which culminated in the Portuguese Liberal Wars between authoritarian absolutists and progressive constitutionalists. In the end Miguel was forced from the throne and lived the last 32 years of his life in exile.

Biography

Miguel Maria do Patrocínio João Carlos Francisco de Assis Xavier de Paula Pedro de Alcântara António Rafael Gabriel Joaquim José Gonzaga Evaristo, the second son, of King John VI and Charlotte/Carlota Joaquina, was born in the Palace of Queluz, Lisbon. Some sources have suggested that Miguel I could be the illegitimate son from an adulterous affair between his mother, Queen Charlotte, and one of her alleged lovers. Apparently sources close to King John VI confirmed as much by asserting that he had not had sexual relations with his wife for two and a half years prior to Miguel's birth (a period when his parents carried out a ''conjugal war'', during which they were involved in permanent conspiracies, and only encountered each other in rare official circumstances).

But despite the gossip, Miguel was always considered to be a son of the king, by the king, by his mother, by the rest of the family, by the court, and by the church. The "illegitimate child theories" may have had their origins in the writings of pro-liberal propagandists or royalists who wanted to denigrate the queen and undermine the claims of Miguel and of his descendants to the Portuguese throne.

What is clear, is that the Miguel was the queen's favourite child. After the death of her firstborn, it was Miguel who received most of her attention, rather than Peter, who was closer to his father,

In 1807, at the age of 5, Miguel accompanied the Royal Family to Brazil in order to escape from the first Napoleonic invasion of Portugal; At sixteen he was seen galloping around Mata-Carvalos, knocking off the hats of passers-by with his riding crop. He spent most of his time with a rowdy band of half-caste or Indian farm-hands. In general, Miguel was spoiled by the queen and her royal household; and clearly influenced by the base tendencies of others. The Duke of Palmela described him as:

:''"a good man when among good men, and when among the bad worse then they"''

Revolt

Miguel was an avowed conservative and admirer of Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, who had referred to the liberal revolutions in the 1820s as unrealistic and without any historical roots:

:''"A people who can neither read nor write, whose last word is the dagger — fine material for constitutional principles!...The English constitution is the work of centuries....There is no universal recipe for constitutions."''

Miguel was 20 years old when he first challenged the liberal institutions established after the 1820 revolution, which may have been a part of a larger strategy of the queen. He was at the head of the 1823 counter-revolution, known as the Vilafrancada, which erupted on May 27, 1823 in Vila Franca de Xira. Early in the day, Miguel joined the 23rd Infantry Regiment, commanded by Brigadier Ferreira Sampaio (later Viscount of Santa Mónica) in Vila Franca, where he declared his support for an absolutist monarchy. He immediately he called on General Pampluna (later Marquis of Subserra) to join him and his cause. The general, not a fan of the liberal constitution, obeyed his summons and within five days controlled the insurrectionary forces. The prince, supported by the queen, went so far as to demand the abdication of the king, who, faithful to his earlier oath, wanted to maintain the 1822 Constitution, despite the growing support for absolutist forces in Vila Franca.

Miguel and the queen were interested in overthrowing the parliamentary system and, inspired by the return of the absolutist monarchy in Spain (where the Holy Alliance and French Army had intervened to destroy the liberal forces there) they exploited factionalism and plotted with outside reactionaries to overthrow the liberal Cortes. But General Pampluna was loyal to the king, and made it perfectly clear that he would do nothing to defy the monarch, and advised the prince to obey his father's summons. The king himself marched on Vila Franca where he received the submission of the troops and his son. But he also took advantage of the situation to abolish the 1822 Constitution and dismiss the Cortes. Many liberals went into exile. Although Miguel returned to Lisbon in triumph, the king was able to maintain complete control of power and did not succumb to the ultra-reactionary forces that supported his abdication.

After the events of the ''Vilafrancada'', Miguel was made Count of Samora Correia and appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Army (Generalissimo). But the queen could not tolerate the king's continuing benevolence towards liberals and moderates, nor that he continued to be influenced by and to support ministers such as Palmela and Pamplona, who were more moderate in their outlook.

The mysterious death of the Marquis de Loulé in Salvaterra on February 28, 1824, in which it was suspected that Miguel or his friends were involved, was a symptom of the instability of the period. Prince Miguel was always influenced by his mother; and two months later, on April 30, 1824, as Commander-in-Chief of the Army he gathered his troops and ordered them to arrest ministers and other important people under pretext that a masonic conspiracy to assassinate the king existed, and placed his father in protective custody and incommunicado at Bemposta, where Miguel could "defend and secure his life". The Abrilada, as this was to be known, worried many of the foreign powers. The foreign diplomatic corp (and in particular Marshal Beresford), realizing that the king was a prisoner of his son, traveled to Bemposta and was able to ferry the king away and on board a British warship, the ''Windsor Castle''. On board, the king summoned his son, whom he dismissed as Commander-and-Chief of the Army, and immediately exiling him Miguel accepted the proposal from his brother, swore to uphold the Constitutional Charter and, since the young Queen was only nine years old, waited until she would reach the age of marriage.

The regency under Isabella Maria was extremely unstable; discord reigned in the government, there were divisions within the municipal councils, rivalries between ministers and at one point, after the resignation of General Saldanha, a revolt in Lisbon. With Princess Isabella Maria dangerously ill, Peter resolved to entrust his brother Miguel with the kingdom, which Miguel was only too eager to accept. A decree was promulgated on July 3, 1827 that granted Miguel his new role, and he departed from Vienna for Lisbon.

On the trip back to Lisbon he stopped in England, arriving on December 30, 1827. He was met by the Duke of Clarence, the Admiral of the English Navy, and by other upper members of the English Court who had gathered at the dock to meet him. Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, then leading an unpopular Tory government, hoped that they could mold Miguel into accepting the constitutional framework that Peter IV had devised, and used this visit to facilitate the transition. After lunching at the Hospital Governor's home, he traveled to London with his entourage in regal carriages and, escorted by cavalry officers, to the Palace of Westminster where he was met by a throng of people. While in London he stayed at the palace of Lord Dudley, on Arlington Street where he entertained his new friends; he was received by the ministers, ambassadors and municipal officials of King George IV, and was generally feted by English nobility, attending concerts and pheasant hunts, and visiting public works (such as the Tamisa tunnel which was then under construction and, ironically, collapsed after his visit). On New Year's Eve he visited the King at Windsor Castle and was honored with a magnificent banquet. Later at Rutland House, Miguel received members of the Portuguese diaspora living in England, who presented him with a commemorative medallion. Throughout his visit he was generally well-received.

Regent

On January 13, 1828, Miguel departed London; after spending some time at Stratfield Saye, the country home of the Duke of Wellington, he travelled to Plymouth en-route to Lisbon. Due to bad weather, he was only able to transfer to the Portuguese frigate ''Pérola'' on February 9, which arrived in England accompanied by two British ships. On January 22, the ''Gazeta de Lisboa'' (English: ''Lisbon Gazette'') published an open letter from the ''Ministério da Justiça'' (English: ''Ministry of Justice'') which permitted any general demonstrations of jubilation (unless otherwise prohibited by law). The prince's ship arrived in Lisbon on February 22 and was met by cannon salvos from ships along the Tagus River and from the hilltops, beginning at two in the afternoon. The river was filled with ships when the ''Pérola'' arrived.

Although it was expected that the new regent would disembark at the Praça do Comércio, where a stage had been constructed, Miguel preferred to disembark in Belém. It is believed that Miguel's mother had sent a boatman to pick up the prince and with a message to see her upon arriving in Lisbon, in order to tell her where his loyalties lay. On shore the local population acclaimed their regent with cheers, while bells rang from some church towers and cheerful hymns were sung in the streets. There was a triumphal march to the Ajuda Palace, along streets adorned with silk banners, while the ladies of the city threw flowers. Everywhere there was a multitude of citizenry yelling ''"Viva o Senhor D. Miguel I nosso rei absoluto"'' (''''), while some interjecting cries of ''"death to D. Pedro"'' and ''"death to the liberal constitution"''.

But Miguel's role was clearly delineated by his first night in Lisbon: he would govern as regent in the name of the rightful sovereign of Portugal, Queen Maria II. On her reaching marriageable age, Miguel would be her consort. Furthermore, Miguel was obliged to govern in conformity with Peter's Constitutional Charter, something he accepted as a condition of the regency (even if he did not agree with its principles and favoured an absolute monarchy instead).

On February 26, in the main hall of the Ajuda Palace in the presence of both Chambers of the Cortes, the Royal Court and the diplomatic corp, as well as some of the Prince's colleagues from Brazil (carefully orchestrated by the Queen Dowager), the investiture began. At one o'clock Miguel, along with his sister, Infanta Isabella Maria, entered the chamber to formally hand over the Regency. After the spectacle of both of them in the same chair, the princess delivered the transitional oath and then left gracefully. Miguel was presented with the written oath to defend the Constitutional Charter along with a Bible, which caused him ''"...confusion and [he] seemed unable or unwilling to read it."'' It is also unclear whether he actually swore the oath, since there was no distinct enunciation of the words; nor did any one actually see him kiss the missal (since the Duke of Cadaval obscured the prince during this part of the ceremony).

On March 1 some citizens of Lisbon gathered at the palace to acclaim D. Miguel "Absolute King", infuriating many of the liberal politicians and residents. Invested in his new title of regent, he presented his Ministers of State in the evening: Nuno III Álvares Pereira de Melo (Duke of Cadaval), José António de Oliveira Leite de Barros (later Count of Basto), Furtado do Rio de Mendonça (7th Viscount of Barbacena & 2nd Count of Barbacena), José Luis de Sousa Botelho Mourão e Vasconcelos (Count of Vila Real) and the Count of Lousã. Within a week numerous moderate army officers had been dismissed and the military governors of the provinces replaced, as the Prince and Queen Dowager "cleaned house" of their old enemies and liberalist sympathizers.

King

On March 13, 1828 Miguel dissolved the Cortes without calling new elections, as stipulated in the Constitutional Charter. Some municipal councils, many nobles and clergy, and several important citizens requested that the regent revoke the Constitutional Charter and reign as king. Blood was first spilled by the liberals, when delegates from the University of Coimbra (who ostensibly traveled to Lisbon to present their compliments to Miguel) were murdered on March 18 by hot-headed Coimbran students. If, to liberals, the name of Miguel was despised, to the legitimists (the absolutists) it was venerated. But Miguel's reign was immediately marked by cruel, almost tyrannical, governance which some attribute to him personally; however some blame the injustices on his subordinates, while others attribute them to the malevolence of Queen Charlotte.

On May 3, 1828, the very nobles who had been nominated by Peter to the new Chamber of Peers met in the Palace of the Duke of Lafões, and invited Miguel to convoke a new cortes consisting of the Three Estates with a view to deciding the legitimate succession to the throne. Such a cortes met in June at Ajuda, where the Bishop of Viseu proposed that Miguel should assume the crown since "...the hand of the Almighty led Your Majesty from the banks of the Danube to the shore of the Tagus to save his people...". On July 7 D. Miguel was acclaimed as absolute ruler, and on July 15 the Three Estate Cortes closed.

Shortly afterwards the military garrison in Oporto revolted, formed a provisional governmental junta, and marched on Coimbra to defend the liberal cause. But the general in command of these troops was indecisive, and Miguel was able to raise his own troops, create a battalion of volunteers and blockade Oporto. In Lagos a similar revolt was attempted, but immediately quashed when the liberal General Saraiva was shot by the Miguelist General Póvoas. On this occasion, João Carlos Saldanha (later Duke of Saldanha) and Pedro de Sousa Holstein (later 1st Duke of Palmela), who had arrived from England on board the British ship ''Belfast'' in order to lead constitutional forces, quickly re-embarked, judging the liberal cause lost. The liberal army escaped to deplorable conditions in Galicia where they awaited the next move. In the former regency's court there were few strong supporters of a constitutional monarchy; Princess Isabella Maria was supported by weak-willed ministers or incompetents and was personally too timid to stand up to Miguel. The liberal elite and their supporters escaped into exile. All of Portugal recognized the sovereignty of the monarch, except the islands of Madeira and Terceira; Madeira was easily subjugated, but Terceira remained faithful to the liberal cause.

The excess zeal of his supporters to prosecute the liberals would blacken the reputation of Miguel's regime. The imprudence that the Miguelist government showed in harassing English and French foreign nationals provoked them to protest. Eventually Admiral Albin Roussin, was ordered by Louis Philippe I (who, like England, could not obtain any diplomatic satisfaction), to take action; he sailed up the Tagus, captured eight Portuguese ships and forcibly imposed a treaty (July 14, 1831). But, Miguelist reprisals on liberals continued; most sentences were carried out within 24 hours. The 4th Infantry, in Lisbon, registered 29 executions on August 22 and 23, 1831, alone.

Liberal Wars

Only the island of Terceira in the Azores remained loyal to Queen Maria; the constitutional government continued to function there in exile. At first João Carlos Saldanha was unable to reach the island, owing to the hostility of an English cruiser, but the Count of Vila Flor (later Duke of Terceira) was more successful; he arrived on the island, rebuilt the defences and quickly beat back Miguel's forces (on August 11, 1829) as they were attempting to invade the island. By 1831 the liberals had taken over all the islands of the Azores.

Peter, after abdicating the imperial crown of Brazil, placed himself at the head of the Liberal Army (1831) and from the Azores launched an invasion of northern Portugal, landing at Mindelo, near Oporto which he quickly occupied. But Miguel's army was formidable, composed of the best troops, with dedicated volunteers and enthusiastic militiamen (although not, perhaps, the best senior officers). They easily encircled the city and lay siege to it. As the defense of Oporto persisted, Miguel resolved to visit his troops in April 1833. But in the meantime Lisbon fell into the hands of the Duke of Terceira, who had left Oporto earlier in the Liberal fleet commanded by Charles John Napier, disembarked in the Algarve and marched across the Alentejo to defeat the Miguelist General Teles Jordão (seizing the city on July 24). Napier, after defeating a Miguelist fleet off Cape St. Vincent, joined the Duke of Terceira in the north, taking control of the Tagus.

Miguel was assisted by the French General Bourmont, who, after the fall of Charles X of France came with many of his legitimist officers to the aid of the king of Portugal (that is, Miguel). He was later replaced by the Scottish General Ranald MacDonnell who withdrew the Miguelist army besieging Lisbond to the almost impregnable heights of Santarém, where Miguel established his base of operations. The battles continued in earnest. In Alcácer the Miguelist forces captured some ground but this was quickly lost to General Saldanha in Pernes and Almoster. The latter action (February 18, 1834) was the most violent and bloody of the civil war. In the end, politics sealed Miguel's fate: his alliance with Carlos of Spain alienated the sympathies of Ferdinand VII of Spain, who recognized Maria's claim to the Portuguese throne, and concluded a quadruple alliance with the queen and Peter as well as with the governments of France and England.

The Spanish General Rodil entered into Portugal while pursuing D. Carlos and his small force and at the same time the Duke of Terceira won the Battle of Asseiceira (16 May 1834) making D. Miguel's position critical. Miguel escaped Santarém and moved south-east in the direction of Elvas. While Miguel made for Évora, his generals voted in a council of war to suspend hostilities and sue for peace. Miguel accepted the decision.

After a three-year civil war, Miguel I was forced to abdicate at Evoramonte (26 May 1834). While Carlos was transported to England (he later secretly returned to Spain), Miguel embarked on 1 June 1834 on a British warship from Sines bound for Genoa; he lived in exile first in Italy, then in England, and finally in Germany. He never returned to Portugal.

Exile

In December 1834 the Portuguese Cortes banished Miguel and all his descendants from Portugal upon pain of immediate death. The Constitution of 1838 (article 98) categorically excluded the collateral Miguelist line from the throne (although with the return to the Constitutional Charter in 1842, this ceased to have force). The 1834 law remained in effect until repealed in May 1950. During his exile, he was known as Duke of Braganza, as well as Marquis of Vila Viçosa, Count of Arraiolos, Count of Barcelos, Count of Neiva and Count of Ourém.

On 15 January 1837 the Spanish Cortes, then in midst of the First Carlist War (1833–39), excluded Miguel from the Spanish succession, on the grounds that he was in rebellion along with his maternal uncle Carlos, the first Carlist pretender of Spain. Miguel's eldest sister Teresa, Princess of Beira, and his nephews (three sons of late Infanta Maria Francisca of Portugal, and Sebastian, son of Teresa, Princess of Beira) were also excluded.

Miguel lived the rest of his life in exile and, removed from Portuguese politics, his character altered radically; in his later years he was a portly heavily-bearded patriarch and lacked the cowboy persona of his early life. He refused to accede to the terms of the Concession of Evoramonte and thereby forfeited his generous pension from the Portuguese government. He lived for a time as a destitute refugee in Rome, in apartments provided by Pope Gregory XVI, who also gave him a small monthly allowance. In 1851, after spending several years in England, he moved to the Grand Duchy of Baden in southern Germany and married Princess Adelaide of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg. They settled in the former Cistercian monastery of Bronnbach, and raised seven children. His widow succeeded in securing advantageous marriages for all their daughters. Like Queen Victoria, Miguel would become known as the "grandfather of Europe", but this was only after his death.

Miguel died while hunting at Bronnbach, Grand Duchy of Baden on 14 November 1866. He was buried in his wife's family's vault in the Franciscan monastery of Engelberg at Grossheubach, Bavaria. In 1967 his body and that of his wife (then resting in Ryde on the Isle of Wight in England) were transferred to the Braganza pantheon in the old Monastery of São Vicente de Fora in Lisbon.

Titles

In addition to his hereditary titles, over the course of his career Miguel received many awards and honors, including:

Grand Prior in the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem;

Knight in the military orders of the Order of Christ, Order of Santiago, Order of São Bento de Avis and Order of the Tower and Sword;

Grand Cross in the Order of the Immaculate Conception of Vila Viçosa;

Knight of the Tosão de Ouro;

Grand Cross in the Order of Saint Stephen from Hungary;

the Order of the Southern Cross from Brazil;

the Order of S. Fernando e Mérito, and Order of Charles III from Spain;

the Order of the Holy Spirit, Order Saint Luís, and Order of Saint Michael from France;

the Order of the Thistle of the United Kingdom.

Posthumously, or during his reign, D. Miguel was known by various epithets:

''O Tradicionalista'' (English: ''The Traditionalist'')

''O Usurpador'' (English: ''The Usurper'')

''O Absolutista'' (English: ''The Absolutionist'')

''O Sacrificado'' (English: ''The Sacrificed'')

''O Rei Absoluto'' (English: ''The Absolute King'')

Marriages and descendants

In 1851, at the age of 48, he married Princess Adelaide of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg, by whom he had a son and six daughters. class="unsortable" style="width: 110px;" align="right" align="right" align="right" align="right" align="right" align="right" align="right" align="right"

+
	Birth||	Death	Notes
Infanta Maria das Neves of Portugal	Infanta Maria das Neves	5 August 1852||	15 February 1941	Married Infante Alfonso Carlos, Duke of San Jaime
[[Miguel II, Duke of Braganza	Infante Miguel II	19 September 1853||	11 October 1927	Duke of Braganza, and grandfather of the current throne claimant, Duarte Pio, Duke of Braganza
Princess Maria Theresa of Braganza	Infanta Maria Theresa	24 August 1855||	12 February 1944	Became the third wife of Archduke Karl Ludwig of Austria
Maria Josepha of Portugal	Infanta Maria Josepha	19 March 1857||	11 March 1943	Became the second wife of Duke Karl-Theodor in Bavaria
Infanta Adelgundes, Duchess of Guimarães	Infanta Adelgundes	10 November 1858||	15 April 1946	Prince Henry, Count of Bardi>Prince Enrico of Bourbon-Parma, Count of Bardi, son of Charles III, Duke of Parma
Marie Anne of Portugal	Infanta Marie Anne	13 July 1861||	31 July 1942	Married Guillaume IV, Grand Duke of Luxembourg
Maria Antonia of Portugal	Infanta Maria Antónia	28 November 1862||	14 May 1959	Became the second wife of Robert I, Duke of Parma

Illegitimate offspring

Maria Assunção Ribeiro do Carmo e Bragança (Rome, c. March 1831 - Minas Gerais, Brazil, 18 November 1910) was an illegitimate daughter from a relationship with a Lady of the Portuguese nobility living in Rome, Antónia Francisca Ribeiro do Carmo. She was recognized as his child in 1839, thereby being semi-legitimized. According to public records, she died in Minas Gerais in 1910, without any confirmed heirs or offspring

Maria de Jesus de Bragança e Bourbon (Santarém, 1834 - ?) was an illegitimate daughter from a relationship with a woman from the Portuguese peasantry living in Santarém at the time when Miguel was also there at the end of the civil war. She was never acknowledged. She married Dom Tomás José Fletcher de Melo Homem (Moita, 23 February 1836 - Lisbon, 3 October 1905), and had female issue now extinct at the generation of her two grandsons

Ancestors

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References

;Notes ;Sources

External links

Diccionario Histórico ('''') - (''Portuguese'') website on the life of Miguel

{{S-ttl|title=King of Portugal and the Algarves(usurper) |years=1828 – 1834}} |- {{S-tul|title=King of Portugal''Miguelist line'' |years=1834 – 1866}}

Category:Portuguese monarchs Category:Knights of the Golden Fleece Category:Roman Catholic monarchs Category:House of Braganza 117 Category:Portuguese infantes Category:Generalissimos Category:19th-century Portuguese people Category:1802 births Category:1866 deaths Category:Burials at the Monastery of São Vicente de Fora Category:Grand Masters of the Order of the Immaculate Conception of Vila Viçosa

ca:Miquel I de Portugal cs:Michal I. Portugalský da:Mikael 1. af Portugal de:Michael I. (Portugal) el:Μιχαήλ Α΄ της Πορτογαλίας es:Miguel I de Portugal eo:Mikaelo la 1-a (Portugalio) fr:Michel Ier de Portugal gl:Miguel I de Portugal ko:미겔 (포르투갈) id:Miguel I dari Portugal it:Michele del Portogallo ka:მიგელ I (პორტუგალია) ht:Don Miguel hu:I. Mihály portugál király mr:मिगेल, पोर्तुगाल nl:Michaël I van Portugal ja:ミゲル1世 (ポルトガル王) no:Miguel av Portugal pl:Michał I Uzurpator pt:Miguel I de Portugal ro:Miguel I al Portugaliei ru:Мигел I (король Португалии) fi:Mikael (Portugali) sv:Mikael I av Portugal zh:米格爾一世 (葡萄牙)

Coordinates	16°48′″N96°09′″N
name	Philip Glass
background	non_performing_personnel
born	January 31, 1937Baltimore, Maryland, United States
genre	Minimalist, Classical, Contemporary classical, Ambient
occupation	Composer
years active	1956–present
label	Virgin RecordsCBS RecordsNonesuch/Elektra RecordsSony Classical/SME RecordsOrange Mountain Music
notable instruments	Farfisa organ }}

Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an American music composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public (along with precursors such as Richard Strauss, Kurt Weill and Leonard Bernstein).

Although his music is often (controversially) described as ''minimalist'', for his later work he distances himself from this label, describing himself instead as a composer of "music with repetitive structures." Though his early mature music shares much with what is normally called 'minimalist', he has since evolved stylistically. Currently, he describes himself as a "Classicist", pointing out that he is trained in harmony and counterpoint and studied such composers as Franz Schubert, Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with Nadia Boulanger.

Glass is a prolific composer: he has written works for his own musical group which he founded, the Philip Glass Ensemble (with which he still performs on keyboards), as well as operas, musical theatre works, ten symphonies, ten concertos, solo works, chamber music including string quartets and instrumental sonatas, and film scores. Three of his film scores have been nominated for Academy Awards.

Glass counts many artists among his friends and collaborators, including visual artists (Richard Serra, Chuck Close), writers (Doris Lessing, David Henry Hwang, Allen Ginsberg), film and theatre directors (including Errol Morris, Robert Wilson, JoAnne Akalaitis, Godfrey Reggio, Paul Schrader, Martin Scorsese, Christopher Hampton, Bernard Rose, and many others), choreographers (Lucinda Childs, Jerome Robbins, Twyla Tharp), and musicians and composers (Ravi Shankar, David Byrne, the conductor Dennis Russell Davies, Foday Musa Suso, Laurie Anderson, Linda Ronstadt, Paul Simon, Joan LaBarbara, Arthur Russell, David Bowie, Brian Eno, Roberto Carnevale, Patti Smith, Aphex Twin, Lisa Bielawa, Andrew Shapiro, John Moran, Bryce Dessner and Nico Muhly). Among recent collaborators are Glass's fellow New Yorker Woody Allen, Stephen T. Colbert, and poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen.

Life and work

:''For a list of works, see List of compositions by Philip Glass''

Beginnings, early education and influences (1937–1964)

Glass is Jewish, and was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Ida (née Gouline) and Benjamin Charles Glass, and the grandson of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania. His father owned a record store, and consequently Glass's record collection consisted to a large extent of unsold records, including modern music (such as Hindemith, Bartók, Schoenberg, Shostakovich) and Western classical music (including Ludwig van Beethoven's String Quartets and Schubert's B Piano Trio, which he cites as a "big influence"), at a very early age. He then studied the flute as a child at the Peabody Conservatory of Music and entered an accelerated college program at the University of Chicago at the age of 15, where he studied Mathematics and Philosophy. In Chicago he discovered the serialism of Webern and composed a twelve-tone string trio. In 1954 Glass went to Paris for the first time, encountering the films of Jean Cocteau, which made a lasting impression on him. He visited artists' studios and saw their work; "the bohemian life you see in [Cocteau's] Orphée was the life I ... was attracted to, and those were the people I hung out with."

Glass then went on to the Juilliard School of Music where the keyboard became his main instrument. His composition teachers included Vincent Persichetti and William Bergsma, while fellow students included Steve Reich. During this time, in 1959, he was a winner in the BMI Foundation's BMI Student Composer Awards, one of the most prestigious international prizes for young composers. In the summer of 1960, he studied with Darius Milhaud at the summer school of the Aspen Music Festival and composed a Violin Concerto for a fellow student, Dorothy Pixley-Rothschild. After leaving Juilliard in 1962, Glass moved to Pittsburgh and worked as a school-based composer-in-residence in the public school system, composing various choral, chamber and orchestral music.

Paris (1964–1966)

In 1964, Glass received a Fulbright Scholarship and went to Paris, where he studied with the eminent composition teacher Nadia Boulanger from autumn of 1964 to summer of 1966. Glass's years in Paris as a student made a lasting impression and influenced his work ever since, 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 stated in his autobiography ''Music by Philip Glass'' (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. He encountered revolutionary films of the French New Wave, such as those of Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, which ignored 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. After ''Play'', Glass also acted in 1966 as music director of a Breuer production of Brecht's ''Mother Courage and Her Children'', featuring the theatre score by Paul Dessau.

In parallel with his early excursions in experimental theatre, Glass worked in winter 1965 and spring 1966 as a music director and composer on a film score (''Chappaqua'', Conrad Rooks, 1966) with Ravi Shankar and Alla Rakha, which added another important influence on Glass's musical thinking. His distinctive style arose from his work with Shankar and Rakha and their perception of rhythm in Indian music as being entirely additive. He renounced all his compositions in a moderately modern style resembling Milhaud's, Aaron Copland's, and Samuel Barber's, and began writing pieces based on repetitive structures of Indian music and a sense of time influenced by Samuel Beckett: a piece for two actresses and chamber ensemble, a work for chamber ensemble and his first numbered string quartet (No.1, 1966).

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.

Minimalism: From ''Strung Out'' to ''Music in 12 Parts'' (1967–1974)

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". Finding little sympathy from traditional performers and performance spaces, Glass eventually formed an ensemble with fellow ex-students Steve Reich, Jon Gibson, and others, and began performing mainly in art galleries and studio lofts of SoHo. The visual artist Richard Serra provided Glass with Gallery contacts, while both collaborated on various sculptures, films and installations; from 1971 to 1974 he became Serra's regular studio assistant.

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 Philip 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 worked as a plumber and cab driver (in 1973 to 1978). 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 favour 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,; but Glass's music was also met with enthusiasm from younger artists such as Brian Eno and David Bowie (at the Royal College of Art ca. 1970). Eno described this encounter with Glass's music as one of the "most extraordinary musical experiences of [his] life", as a "viscous bath of pure, thick energy", concluding "this was actually the most detailed music I'd ever heard. It was all intricacy, exotic harmonics". 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, Glass formed the Philip Glass Ensemble (while Reich formed Steve Reich and Musicians), an amplified ensemble including keyboards, wind instruments (saxophones, flutes), and soprano voices.

Glass's music for his ensemble culminated in the four-hour-long ''Music in Twelve Parts'' (1971–1974), which began as a single piece with twelve instrumental parts but developed into a cycle that summed up Glass's musical achievement since 1967, and even transcended it – the last part features a twelve-tone theme, sung by the soprano voice of the ensemble. "I had broken the rules of modernism and so I thought it was time to break some of my own rules", according to Glass. 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."

Another Look at Harmony: The Portrait Trilogy (1975–1979)

Glass continued his work with a series of instrumental works, called '' Another Look at Harmony '' (1975–1977). For Glass this series demonstrated a new start, hence the title: "What I was looking for was a way of combining harmonic progression with the rhythmic structure I had been developing, to produce a new overall structure. (...) I'd taken everything out with my early works and it was now time to decide just what I wanted to put in—a process that would occupy me for several years to come." Parts 1 and 2 of "Another Look at Harmony" were included in a collaboration with Robert Wilson, a piece of musical theater that was later designated by Glass as the first opera of his portrait opera trilogy: ''Einstein on the Beach''. Composed in Spring to Fall of 1975 in close collaboration with Wilson, Glass's first opera was first premiered in summer 1976 at the Festival d'Avignon, and in November of the same year to a mixed and partly enthusiastic reaction from the audience at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Scored for the Philip Glass Ensemble, solo violin, chorus, and featuring actors (reciting texts by Christopher Knowles, Lucinda Childs and Samuel M. Johnson), Glass's and Wilson's essentially plotless opera was conceived as a "metaphorical look at Albert Einstein: scientist, humanist, amateur musician—and the man whose theories (...) led to the splitting of the atom", evoking nuclear holocaust in the climactic scene, as critic Tim Page pointed out. As with ''Another Look at Harmony'', "''Einstein'' added a new functional harmony that set it apart from the early conceptual works". Composer Tom Johnson came to the same conclusion, comparing the solo violin music to Johann Sebastian Bach, and the "organ figures (...) to those Alberti basses Mozart loved so much". The piece was praised by the Washington Post as "one of the seminal artworks of the century."

''Einstein on the Beach'' was followed by further music for projects by the theatre group Mabou Mines such as ''Dressed like an Egg'' (1975), and again music for plays and adaptations from prose by Samuel Beckett, such as ''The Lost Ones'' (1975), ''Cascando'' (1975), ''Mercier and Camier'' (1979). Glass also turned to other media; two multi-movement instrumental works for the Philip Glass Ensemble originated as music for film and TV: ''North Star'' (1977 for the Documentary "Mark di Suvero, sculptor" by Francois de Menil and Barbara Rose) and four short cues for Jim Henson's TV-series for children, ''Sesame Street'', named ''Geometry of Circles'' (1977).

Another series, ''Fourth Series'' (1977–79), included music for chorus and organ ("Part One", 1977), organ and piano ("Part Two" and "Part Four", 1979), and music for a radio adaption of Constance DeJong's novel ''Modern Love'' ("Part Three", 1978). Part Two and Part Four were used (and hence renamed) in two dance productions by choreographer Lucinda Childs (who had already contributed to and performed in ''Einstein on the Beach''). "Part Two" was included in ''Dance'' (a collaboration with visual artist Sol LeWitt, 1979), and "Part Four" was renamed as ''Mad Rush'', and performed by Glass on several occasions such as the first public appearance of the 14th Dalai Lama in New York City in Fall 1981. The piece demonstrates Glass's turn to more traditional models: the composer added a conclusion to an open-structured piece which "can be interpreted as a sign that he [had] abandoned the radical non-narrative, undramatic approaches of his early period", as the pianist Steffen Schleiermacher points out.

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, 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, who 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.

Completing the Portrait Trilogy: Akhnaten and beyond (1980–1986)

While planning a third part of his "Portrait Trilogy", Glass turned to smaller music theatre projects such as the non-narrative ''Madrigal Opera'' (for six voices and violin and viola, 1980), and ''The Photographer'', a biographic study on the photographer Eadweard Muybridge (1982). Glass also continued to write for the orchestra with his most famous film score to date, ''Koyaanisqatsi'' (Godfrey Reggio, 1981–1982). Some pieces which were not used in the film (such as ''Facades'') eventually appeared on the album ''Glassworks'' (1982, CBS Records), which brought Glass's music to a wider public.

The "Portrait Trilogy" was completed with ''Akhnaten'' (1982–1983, premiered in 1984), a vocal and orchestral composition sung in Akkadian, Biblical Hebrew, and Ancient Egyptian. In addition, this opera featured an actor reciting ancient Egyptian texts in the language of the audience. ''Akhnaten'' was commissioned by the Stuttgart Opera in a production designed by Achim Freyer. It premiered simultaneously at the Houston Opera in a production directed by David Freeman and designed by Peter Sellars. At the time of the commission, the Stuttgart Opera House was undergoing renovation, necessitating the use of a nearby playhouse with a smaller orchestra pit. Upon learning this, Glass and conductor Dennis Russell Davies visited the playhouse, placing music stands around the pit to determine how many players the pit could accommodate. The two found that they could not fit a full orchestra in the pit. Glass decided to eliminate the violins, which had the effect of "giving the orchestra a low, dark sound that came to characterize the piece and suited the subject very well." As Glass remarked in 1992, ''Akhnaten'' is significant in his work since it represents a "first extension out of a triadic harmonic language", an experiment with the polytonality of his teachers Persichetti and Milhaud, a musical technique which Glass compares to "an optical illusion, such as in the paintings of Josef Albers".

Glass again collaborated with Robert Wilson on another opera, ''the CIVIL warS'' (1983, premiered in 1984), which also functioned as the final part ("the Rome section) of Wilson's epic work by the same name, originally planned for an "international arts festival that would accompany the Olympic Games in Los Angeles". (Glass also composed a highly prestigious work for chorus and orchestra for the opening of the Games, ''The Olympian: Lighting of the Torch and Closing ''). The premiere of ''The CIVIL warS'' in Los Angeles never materialized and the opera was in the end premiered at the Opera of Rome. 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 (''Dance Pieces'', Jerome Robbins, 1983, and ''In the Upper Room'', Twyla Tharp, 1986), and 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 ones 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 Levesque), 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).

Operas and the turn to symphonic music (1987–1991)

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'', the Violin Concerto No. 1 (1987), Symphony No. 3 (1995), ''Echorus'' (1995) and also recent works such as Symphony No. 8 (2005), and ''Songs and Poems for Solo Cello'' (2006).

A series of orchestral works that were originally composed for the concert hall commenced with the 3-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 Russel 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 Orchestra. 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 turned to chamber music; he composed two String Quartets (No.4 and No.5, for the Kronos Quartet, 1989 and 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, 1986). ''Music from "The Screens"'' is on occasion a touring piece for Glass and Suso, and individual pieces found its way to 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 two explorers, Christopher Columbus (''The Voyage'' [1990], commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera, with a libretto by David Henry Hwang), and Vasco da Gama (''White Raven'') [1991], a collaboration with Robert Wilson and composed for the opening of the Expo '98). 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.

The Cocteau Trilogy and Symphonies (1991–1996)

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 two 3-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) (all commissioned by conductor Dennis Russel 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'' (1949), ''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), which had a prominent part in Cocteau's 1949 film ''Orphee''. 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. The opera's "transparency of texture, a subtlety of instrumental color, (...) a newly expressive and unfettered vocal writing" was praised, and ''The Guardian's'' critic remarked "Glass has a real affinity for the French text and sets the words eloquently, underpinning them with delicately patterned instrumental textures".

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 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).

Symphonies, opera, and concertos (1997–2004)

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Glass's lyrical and romantic styles peaked with numerous 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 concerti, 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) are thematically meditative. 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 originated as Glass's collaboration with Allen Ginsberg (poet, piano – Ginsberg, Glass), based on his eponymous poem.

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 novella 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).

''Songs and Poems'' (2005–2007)

''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 D. Russell Davies notes.

Two months after the premiere of this opera, in November 2005, Glass's Symphony No.8, commissioned by the Bruckner Orchester 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 Sri 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 that "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 that 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 that "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 that "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."

Apart from this large-scale opera, Glass added a work to his catalogue of theater music in 2007, and continuing—after a gap of twenty years—to write music for the dramatic work of Samuel Beckett. He provided a "hypnotic" original score for a compilation of Beckett's short plays ''Act Without Words I'', ''Act Without Words II'', ''Rough for Theatre I'' and ''Eh Joe'', directed by JoAnne Akalaitis and premiered in December 2007. Glass's work for this production was described by ''The New York Times'' as "icy, repetitive music that comes closest to piercing the heart".

Chamber music, concertos and symphonies (2008–present)

2008 to 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 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' musical director Michael Riesman) followed in 2009, and ''Pendulum'' (2010, a one-movement piece for piano trio) is a recent entry in the series. Other projected pieces include a second Suite of cello pieces for Wendy Sutter.

Other works for the theatre were a score for Euripides' ''The Bacchae'' (2009, directed by JoAnne Akalaitis), and ''Kepler'' (2009), yet another operatic biography of a scientist/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 Orchester Linz and Dennis Russell Davies in September 2009. LA Times critic Mark Swed and others described the work as 'oratorio-like'; Swed pointed out that the work is Glass' 'most chromatic, complex, psychological score': '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 "Le quattro stagioni". 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 January 2011, Glass performed at the MONA FOMA festival in Hobart, Tasmania. The festival promotes a broad range of art forms, including experimental sound, noise, dance, theatre, visual art, performance & new media.

In August 2011, Glass will present 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' score. Glass hopes to present this festival annually, with a focus on art, science, and conservation.

Glass' major new works are a ''Partita for solo violin'' for violinist Tim Fain (2010, first performance of the complete work 2011), Symphony No.9 (2010–2011), Symphony No.10 (2011) and the opera ''The Lost'' (2011). Glass' Ninth Symphony was co-commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra, the Bruckner Orchester Linz and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. The symphony's first performance is scheduled for January 1, 2012 (in Linz, Austria); the American premiere will be on January 31, 2012 (Glass' 75th birthday), at Carnegie Hall, and the West Coast premiere under the baton of John Adams on April 5. ''The Lost'' is based on a play by Austrian playwright and novelist Peter Handke, ''Die Spuren der Verirrten'' (2006). It will be premiered in 2013 in Linz (Austria), conducted by Dennis Russell Davies and directed by David Pountney, who pointed out that the English translation of the original German title means "traces of those who lost their way": "[So] not knowing where you are going, let alone where you came from, seems to be a pre-condition. It is also, perhaps, the way we are? Philip’s music is perfect for this kind of abstraction".

Influences and connections

Aside from composing in the Western classical tradition, his music has ties to rock, ambient music, electronic music, and world music. Early admirers of his minimalism include musicians Brian Eno and David Bowie, who attended an early performance of the Philip Glass Ensemble in 1973. In the 1990s, Glass composed the aforementioned symphonies ''Low'' (1992) and ''Heroes'' (1996), thematically derived from the Bowie-Eno collaboration albums ''Low'' and ''"Heroes"'' (composed in late 1970s Berlin).

Philip Glass has collaborated with recording artists such as Paul Simon, Suzanne Vega, Mick Jagger, Leonard Cohen, David Byrne, Uakti, Natalie Merchant, and Aphex Twin (yielding an orchestration of ''Icct Hedral'' in 1995 on the Donkey Rhubarb EP). Glass's compositional influence extends to musicians such as Mike Oldfield (who included parts from Glass's ''North Star'' in ''Platinum''), and bands such as Tangerine Dream and Talking Heads. Philip Glass and his sound designer Kurt Munkacsi produced the American post-punk/new wave band Polyrock (1978 to the mid-1980s), as well as the recording of John Moran's ''The Manson Family (An Opera)'' in 1991, which featured punk legend Iggy Pop, and a second (unreleased) recording of Moran's work featuring poet Allen Ginsberg.

In 1970, Glass and Klaus Kertess (owner of the Bykert Gallery) formed a record label named ''Chatham Square Productions'' (named after the location of the studio of a Philip Glass Ensemble member Dick Landry). In 1993 Glass formed another record label, Point Music; in 1997, Point Music released ''Music for Airports'', a live, instrumental version of Eno's composition of the same name, by Bang on a Can All-Stars. In 2002, Glass and his producer Kurt Munkacsi and artist Don Christensen founded the Orange Mountain Music company, dedicated to "establishing the recording legacy of Philip Glass" and, to date, have released sixty albums of Philip Glass's music.

Music for film

Glass has composed many film scores, starting with the orchestral score for ''Koyaanisqatsi'' (1982), and continuing with two biopics, ''Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters'' (1985, resulting in the String Quartet No.3) and ''Kundun'' (1997) about the Dalai Lama, for which he received his first Academy Award nomination.

The year after scoring ''Hamburger Hill'' (1987), Glass began a collaboration with the filmmaker Errol Morris with his music for Morris's celebrated documentary ''The Thin Blue Line''. He continued composing for the Qatsi trilogy with the scores for ''Powaqqatsi'' (1988) and ''Naqoyqatsi'' (2002). In 1995 he composed the theme for Reggio's short independent film ''Evidence''. He even made a cameo appearance in Peter Weir's ''The Truman Show'' (1998), which uses music from ''Powaqqatsi'', ''Anima Mundi'' and ''Mishima'', as well as three original tracks by Glass (who is actually briefly visible performing at the piano in the film itself). In the 1990s, he also composed scores for the thriller ''Candyman'' (1992) and its sequel, ''Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh'' (1995), plus a film adaptation of Joseph Conrad's ''The Secret Agent'' (1996).

In 1999, he finished a new soundtrack for the 1931 film ''Dracula''. ''The Hours'' (2002) earned him a second Academy Award nomination, and was followed by another Morris documentary, ''The Fog of War'' (2003). In the mid-2000s Glass provided the scores to films such as ''Secret Window'' (2004), ''Neverwas'' (2005), ''The Illusionist'' and ''Notes on a Scandal'', garnering his third Academy Award nomination for the latter. Glass's most recent film scores include ''No Reservations'' (Glass makes a brief cameo in the film sitting at an outdoor cafe), ''Cassandra's Dream'', ''No Regrets'' and ''Mr Nice'' (2009). In 2009 Glass composed original theme music for Transcendent Man about the life and ideas of Ray Kurzweil by filmmaker Barry Ptolemy.

In the 2000s Glass's work from the 1980s again became known to wider public through various media. In 2005 his Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (1987) was featured in the surreal French thriller, ''La Moustache'', providing a tone intentionally incongruous to the banality of the movie's plot. ''Metamorphosis for Piano'' (1988) was featured in the reimagined ''Battlestar Galactica'' in the episode "Valley of Darkness", and in 2008, Rockstar Games released ''Grand Theft Auto IV'' featuring Glass's "Pruit Igoe" (from ''Koyaanisqatsi''). "Pruit Igoe" and "Prophecies" (also from ''Koyaanisqatsi'') were used both in a trailer for ''Watchmen'' and in the film itself. ''Watchmen'' also included two other Glass pieces in the score: "Something She Has To Do" (from ''The Hours'') and "Protest (Act II Scene 3)" (from ''Satyagraha'').

Personal life

Glass describes himself as "a Jewish-Taoist-Hindu-Toltec-Buddhist", and he is a supporter of Tibetan independence. In 1987 he co-founded the Tibet House with Columbia University professor Robert Thurman and the actor Richard Gere. Glass is a vegetarian.

Glass has four children and one granddaughter. Juliet (b. 1968) and Zachary (b. 1971) are his children from his first marriage, to theater director JoAnne Akalaitis (married 1965, divorced 1980). Granddaughter Zuri (b.1989) is Zachary's daughter. His second marriage to Luba Burtyk was dissolved. Marlowe and Cameron are Glass's sons with his fourth wife, Holly Critchlow (from whom Glass is divorced). His third wife, the artist Candy Jernigan, died of liver cancer in 1991, aged 39. Glass lives in New York and in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He has been romantically involved with cellist Wendy Sutter since 2005.

Glass is the first cousin once removed of Ira Glass, host of the nationally syndicated radio show ''This American Life''. Philip once appeared as a guest on ''This American Life'' and his piece ''Metamorphosis One'' is often used on the show. Philip Glass's cousin is Ira Glass's father.

According to an interview, Franz Schubert is Glass' favorite composer.

Films about Philip Glass

1976–''Music With Roots in the Aether: Opera for Television''. Tape 2: Philip Glass. Produced and directed by Robert Ashley.

1983–''Philip Glass''. From ''Four American Composers''. Directed by Peter Greenaway.

1985–''A Composer's Notes: Philip Glass and the Making of an Opera''. Directed by Michael Blackwood.

1986–''Einstein on the Beach: The Changing Image of Opera''. Directed by Mark Obenhaus.

2005–''Looking Glass''. Directed by Éric Darmon.

2007–''glass: a portrait of Philip in twelve parts''. Directed by Scott Hicks.

Awards and nominations

Golden Globe Awards

Best Original Score

Nominated: ''Kundun'' (1998)

Won: ''The Truman Show'' (1999)

Nominated: ''The Hours'' (2002)

BAFTA Awards

Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music

Won: ''The Hours'' (2002)

Academy Awards

Best Original Score

Nominated: ''Kundun'' (1997)

Nominated: ''The Hours'' (2002)

Nominated: ''Notes on a Scandal'' (2006)

Other

2010 NEA Opera Honors Award

18th International Palm Springs Film Festival Award

References

Further reading

William Duckworth (1995, 1999). ''Talking Music: Conversations With John Cage, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and Five Generations of American Experimental Composers''. New York, New York: Da Capo Press.

Philip Glass, Robert T. Jones (ed.) (1987, 1995). ''Music by Philip Glass''. New York, New York: DaCapo Press.

Richard Kostelanetz (ed.) (1997). ''Writings on Glass. Essays, Interviews, Criticism''. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press.

Robert Maycock (2002). ''Glass: A Biography of Philip Glass''. Sanctuary Publishing.

Potter, Keith (2000). ''Four Musical Minimalists: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass''. Music in the Twentieth Century series. Cambridge, UK; New York, New York: Cambridge University Press.

John Richardson (1999). ''Singing Archaeology: Philip Glass's "Akhnaten"''. Wesleyan University Press.

K. Robert Schwarz (1996). ''Minimalists''. 20th-Century Composers Series. London: Phaidon Press.

Bartman, William and Kesten, Joanne (editors). ''The Portraits Speak: Chuck Close in Conversation with 27 of his subjects'', New York: A.R.T. Press, 1997

Knowlson, James (2004). ''Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett'', New York: Grove Press.

External links

Philip Glass Q&A;

NewMusicBox cover: Philip Glass (includes video)

Art of the States: Philip Glass ''Piece in the Shape of a Square'' (1967)

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