Editing Philip Glass (section)

===1964–1966: Paris===
[[File:Nadia Boulanger 1925.jpg|thumb|Glass studied in Paris with [[Nadia Boulanger]].]]
In 1964, Glass received a [[Fulbright Scholarship]]; his studies in Paris with the eminent composition teacher [[Nadia Boulanger]], from autumn of 1964 to summer of 1966, influenced his work throughout his life, as the composer admitted in 1979: "The composers I studied with Boulanger are the people I still think about most—[[Johann Sebastian Bach|Bach]] and [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|Mozart]]."{{sfn|Kostelanetz|1999|page=109}}

Glass later wrote in his autobiography ''Music by Philip Glass'' in 1987 that the new music performed at [[Pierre Boulez]]'s ''[[Domaine musical|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. His move away from modernist composers such as Boulez and [[Karlheinz Stockhausen|Stockhausen]] was nuanced, rather than outright rejection: "That generation wanted disciples and as we didn't join up it was taken to mean that we hated the music, which wasn't true. We'd studied them at Juilliard and knew their music. How on earth can you reject [[Luciano Berio|Berio]]? Those early works of Stockhausen are still beautiful. But there was just no point in attempting to do their music better than they did and so we started somewhere else."<ref>{{cite news|last1=Wroe|first1=Nicholas|title=Play it again ...|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/oct/13/classicalmusicandopera.art1|access-date=April 19, 2016|work=The Guardian|date=October 13, 2007}}</ref>

During this time, he encountered revolutionary films of the [[French New Wave]], such as those of [[Jean-Luc Godard]] and [[François Truffaut]], which upended the rules set by an older generation of artists,<ref name="musicby">{{citation |title=Music by Philip Glass |location=New York |publisher=DaCapo Press |year=1985 |page=14 |last=Glass |first=Philip |isbn=0-06-015823-9 }}</ref> and Glass made friends with American visual artists (the sculptor [[Richard Serra]] and his wife [[Nancy Graves]]),<ref name="Potter, pp. 266–269">{{harvnb|Potter|2000|pp=266–269}}</ref> 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.{{sfn|Potter|2000|p=255}} These significant encounters resulted in a collaboration with Breuer for which Glass contributed music for a 1965 staging of [[Samuel Beckett]]'s ''Comédie'' (''[[Play (play)|Play]]'', 1963). The resulting piece (written for two [[soprano saxophone]]s) 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 [[Consonance and dissonance|dissonant]], idiom.<ref name="Schwarz" /> 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{{sfn|Potter|2000|pp=257–258}} on a film score (''[[Chappaqua (film)|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 classical music|Indian music]] as being entirely additive. He renounced all his compositions in a moderately modern style resembling [[Darius Milhaud|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).<ref>Joan La Barbara: "Philip Glass and Steve Reich: Two from the Steady State School" in {{harvnb|Kostelanetz|1999|pages=40–41}}</ref>

Glass then left Paris for northern India in 1966, where he came in contact with [[Tibet]]an refugees and began to gravitate towards [[Buddhism]]. He met [[Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama|Tenzin Gyatso]], the 14th [[Dalai Lama]], in 1972, and has been a strong supporter of the Tibetan independence ever since.