If Philip Glass was a Film (2019) [video]

There are many musical traditions, and not all of them use those conventions, but classical European harmony is understood as explained in that comment.

Edit: here's the canonical [ I IV V7 I ] progression, a.k.a. the [ tonic => sub-dominant => dominant => tonic ] progression in C major: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFvm1cb80bc

The progression in the video is more subtle (and it uses a minor mode).

The whole generation of tension in a Classical sonata form is by modulating to the dominant early on and gradually returning to tonic. Subdominant modulations would be used near the end to achieve a sense of resolution before a final, decisive dominant to tonic movement.

Those are massive generalizations, but that is kind of the point: the meaning of certain gestures changes with time, place, and culture. There are no hard rules in music, except when there are, but even then they're mostly relative.

Let's divide and conquer:

1. The Youtube poster probably meant pre-dominant instead of "sub-dominant." Pre-dominant chords are a set of possible chords in a particular system of harmony-- called "common practice harmony"-- which essentially kick off the process of "asking a question" in the chord progression. This "common practice period" of music ran roughly the long stretch when Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms wrote music. Composers today can make use of that system if they wish, but as you'll see below Glass isn't doing this. (Digression: "Sub-dominant" refers to one particular chord choice in a given key, and it's not one which appears at the beginning of the Glass piece in the video. Neither is the dominant, at least in the function implied by the poster as "answering" or resolving the tonic. If anything the beginning of the excerpt sounds like a fragment of a descending tetrachord pattern that goes back to the middle ages, but without the final note. I.e., the bass line of Ray Charles' "Hit the road jack" leading up to but not including "no more, no more, no more, no more")

2. Glass' music in the excerpt is cyclic. You hear some 2-against-3 rhythms between the left and right hand for four measures-- the first 2 have the same chord, and the 3rd and 4th measures have different chords. Then you hear it all over again. This sets the basic rhythm and phrase structure for the entire excerpt-- everything cycles back around in predictable groups of 4 measures each, with the chords changing roughly every measure. Finally, each new phrase starts back at the same, predictable f-minor chord that began the entire excerpt.

3. The voicing of the chords remains in the same small range for the first half of the excerpt. You can play it with your hands close together in the middle of the keyboard, and it doesn't ever veer too far away from that position. This is what gives it that atmospheric, background sound that characterizes a lot of Glass' music. (Plus he seems to like long strings of alternating thirds in the melody.)

4. The chords used are fairly humdrum chords, and they do not follow the "common practice harmony" tonic/dominant tension/release pattern. The one chord in measure 3 happens to have a little tension, what with the d-flat in the bass creating a tritone with the g. But common practice harmony strongly implies a particular chord for the resolution, and Glass does not follow that pattern. From the standpoint of "common practice harmony," Glass actually leaves the tension hanging for that chord. So if you're hearing a tension-resolution pattern at the beginning of this excerpt, the thing that can decidedly not explain it is the common practice tension/release theory because this excerpt literally does the opposite.

5. In measure 4, there's an a-flat in the right hand creating a momentary embellishment that moves down to g in the second half of the measure. That kind of embellishment was known as a sighing motive in music from the Baroque period, and Chopin often utilized the right-hand alternation pattern on sighing motives that Glass does here.

To sum up: the music circles around itself in a predictable manner, always returning to the same place with pleasing, predictable chords in the mid-register of the piano. So almost regardless of which chords happen in measure 3 and 4, you're likely to hear a) a beginning with the "main" chord, b) a change when you hear different chords (plus that little sighing motive), and c) an answer that begins a new question when the cycle repeats. The cycles are relatively short, and the more cycles you hear, the more deeply you become aware of the pattern.

In conclusion-- the Youtube poster is literally wrong in their analysis of the chords, and wrong about the general category of tension/resolution in the excerpt. But the tonic-predominant-dominant tension/release pattern they suggest sounds similar enough to a "begin-change-repeat" pattern. Since you had a general feeling upon hearing the latter, and since the former suggests roughly a similar feeling, you took it to be objective.

Here's a counterexample with similar two-against-three rhythms:

https://youtu.be/0eEipRR9ebI?t=942

This excerpt uses a deeper range of the piano with a more sprawling voicing between the hands. Each phrase repeats, like the Glass excerpt. But each phrase is longer, and the chord progressions (and hidden melodies in each chord) do use the tonic/pre-dominant/dominant harmonic system that the poster alluded to. For one thing, the phrases don't always return to the same chord at the beginning. Moreover, each phrase pushes forward to the next to create a through-line, one that you can concentrate and listen to all the way through the excerpt to the end of the piece. It's a bit more nuanced that what I can write here, but there is a surprising amount of musical "stuff" happening in these passages that follow a loose set of guidelines for building tension within a phrase and across multiple phrases. The point is this-- if you wanted to make a parody video that put words to this Brahms Ballade, it would begin the same way as OPs video. But somehow, by the end, you'd have gotten a summary examination of Nietzsche's mature works. People from the 19th century thought about music making big, profound statements like that. And the music of that period utilizes an inventive and sophsticated harmonic language that invites that kind of interpretation. The difference between that and the uneventful, cyclic conversation by the guys in the video is for me is what makes the parody video funny.

Finally, lest I be misinterpreted-- Glass wrote his piece long after Brahms, and-- most importantly-- after a long movement of atonal composers took over the role of "serious" music in the U.S. and Europe. I think he was purposely turning the excitement level down to "chill mode" to show that the basic tenets of old school harmony still "resonate" (heh) and by no means were somehow "exhausted" at the end of the 19th century as a lot of pretentious composers claimed during that time. (Although perhaps those composers were just stressed out about the impeding world war and projecting, which is certainly understandable.)

Edit: make my comment even longer with some clarifications.

Edit 2: even longer with even more clarifications

Edit 3: add insult, rank speculation, and finally empathy about pre-war composers

Edit 4: remove footnote digression to get back to a sane comment length

Edit 5: because why not a few more clarifications

"Music in 12 Parts" is my go-to for cross-country flights. Always a pleasure.

It makes me wonder two things:

1. If the movie were recreated shot-for-shot in today's world, would still be it as interesting. Or would the contemporary elements make it less interesting.

2. What was it like to see the movie in the 1980s when the elements were still contemporary, and the film was absent of the historical-recordness. It's almost as if the passage of time has added something of value to the film which could not have existed when it was first released. And this film is unique in its ability to benefit from datedness. When I watch other 80s films and I see old fashions and hair styles, it sometimes takes value away from the film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-arPnTm0ZFI

    I’m an old man now, and a lonesome man in Kansas
        but not afraid
            to speak my lonesomeness in a car,
            because not only my lonesomeness
                it’s Ours, all over America,O tender fellows—
                & spoken lonesomeness is Prophecy
                in the moon 100 years ago or in
                    the middle of Kansas now.

This guy who drives a cab in NYC to support his musical interests is writing an opera about the spiritual insights of a specific Egyptian pharoh, while contrasting them against the scientific discoveries of a physicist who reoriented our entire species place in the universe. It's not just handwavy either, as you need to have the competence to play the pieces to begin to understand what they are expressing. It's not science or theology either, it's something else.

Is there a there there without getting into mystery cult stuff?

( https://chicagoreader.com/news-politics/they-came-in-through... )

Also if you listen to The Truman Show main theme, you may find that it sounds very similar to The Leftovers main theme. I’m quite certain that Richter must have borrowed elements from it.

If you get the chance, go. For anyone else, look at YouTube or Met Opera on Demand. If you are in NYC right now the director of the production is doing a think at NYU Skirball discussing this production and Glass in general.