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Philip Glass: Best Out of Three (1968)

by Philip Glass, Evan Ziporyn

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PHILIP GLASS – BEST OUT OF THREE (1968)
EVAN ZIPORYN - CLARINETS

• Best Out of Three – Philip Glass – 120 bpm
• Best Out of Three – Philip Glass – 160 bpm

Philip Glass composed Best Out of Three in 1968 for members of his Ensemble, including Jon Gibson, who performed the piece several times in that era. The manuscript – scored for 3 clarinets - was found among Philip’s papers in 2021 by Alex Grey, who reconstructed it as he’d recently done with Music in Eight Parts. Alex sent me the score on August 21; I recorded it six days later. This album contains two versions of the piece, the first at the composer’s marked tempo (120), the second much quicker (160). I know of very few pieces of music that can work at such markedly different speeds, and pretty much all of them are either by Philip Glass or J.S. Bach.

Best Out of Three could only have been written by Philip Glass. It feels like the ‘missing link’ between his early works (Two Pages, Strung Out, How Now) and the mind-blowing Music in… pieces (…Fifths, Similar Motion, Changing Parts, etc.) that came soon thereafter. In description it fits well with all of the above: diatonic, limited range, perpetual motion. The material is repetitive – 3,744 8th notes – but there are no literal repeats, at least as far as I can tell. The one marking in the score is ‘mechanically,’ but the piece is incredibly expressive and evocative, reaching back to medieval hocket and isorhythm, providing a sonic analogue to mid-century op- and pop-art, and looking forward to the constant stream of innovative music Philip would continue to produce for the next 50 years, and counting.

I premiered this new version solo (with multitrack accompaniment) at Big Ears Festival, Knoxville, Tennessee, on March 27, 2022. The live (3-clarinet) version will be premiered by Jeff Anderle, Jon Russell and myself at ClarinetFest 2022, Reno, Nevada on June 30, 2022.

-Evan Ziporyn, June 24, 2022

credits

released June 29, 2022

All tracks recorded 8/27/2021 Killian Hall, MIT, Cambridge MIT
Luis ‘Cuco’ Daglio, engineer

#1 mixed, edited and mastered by Luis ‘Cuco’ Daglio
#2 mixed, edited and mastered by Dave Cook

Produced by Evan Ziporyn

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