Allan Kozinn on Philip Glass

"[M]any of us naturally wonder which approach comes closest to what the composer had in mind. … Composers can be surprisingly cavalier about how their works are presented. … In 1983 I attended a session at which Philip Glass and his ensemble were recording 'The Photographer,' a work from the period when his music was growing more harmonically complex but was still driven largely by repetition. During a break Mr. Glass explained that for the recording he had pared down the number of times phrases were repeated before they morphed into something new. 'But what will musicologists of the future make of the fact that the composer-directed recording is so different from the score,' I asked, a bit shocked, 'and on a matter as central as the number of repeats?' Mr. Glass said that wasn’t his issue. 'I have that problem with conductors sometimes,' he said. 'Sometimes I want to cut something, and they don’t want me to. But I’m not a purist, as you may have noticed. I suppose when I’m no longer around to not defend my work, other people will defend it for me, way beyond what I would probably have done myself'" ("Composer's Intent? Get Over It," New York Times, 2/7/10).