SST: Geometry of Circles

SESAME STREET TUESDAY

Last month Bob Boilen, host of one of my favorite podcasts (All Songs Considered), posted a memory on his NPR blog about his days as a director of the NPR program All Things Considered. It was his job to select appropriate, mood-setting music to play between segments, which was never more difficult than on September 11, 2001. He ended up choosing this piece by minimalist composer Philip Glass:



He later gave a talk where he explained why he chose this particular piece on that day:

"I wasn't going to play very dramatic music... I wasn't going to play music that had a lot of baggage to it... Not a famous Mozart or a Beethoven piece that was heavy or weighty... [Instead I played] a piece that didn't have a beginning, middle, and an end, because that is how I sometimes think about minimalist music, where it is just this mood that falls and happens... And it was just right... All of a sudden there was a place to breathe...... People didn't need more emotion, they just needed time to think." 

Although I had studied many of Philip Glass's works in depth as a music major in college and had seen many films that he has scored, I was unfamiliar with this particular piece. As I listened to it for the first time there was something about it that pushed out a lot of clutter in my mind and brought in a lot of clarity. I was recently able to track down the CD on which it is found, Glassworks, and I have been listening to it a lot over the last week, especially at work, where I have found that it makes me incredibly productive.

Little did I know* that my first exposure to Philip Glass came at a very young age via a series of pieces called "Geometry of a Circle" that he composed in 1979 specifically for Sesame Street:



*I wouldn't have realized this was Glass without an assist from my friend Peter. He emailed me about this a while ago, saying, "in retrospect, [this is] pretty crazy for a kid's show."