This exposure to Indian music opened up a new musical world. Ravi, not drugs, was my acid trip. On his return to this country in 1967 he began composing a bare, static, single-line music, from which were purged chromaticism and modulation. From 1967 to 1974 he performed his music in New York lofts, and his principal support came from artists and art foundations, especially those of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. It has a physical presence people can respond to.
Artists are very eager to get art out of the academy.
The considered anti-intellectualism, the lack of interest in rigorously logical, linear processes has remained, and is illustrated by his collaboration with Robert Wilson, the opera Einstein on the Beach , which was premiered in 1976. Significantly, the Einstein of this work is a dreamer. The emphasis in this nonlinear collection of events and scenes is on intuition, visceral sensations, dreams, fantasies, and disjointed images, not on progressive development. The influence of Eastern philosophy on Western art has been felt for several decades, but Philip Glass's contribution to Eastern-inspired music has been unique. Unlike his predecessors, he uses musical materials familiar to Western audiences.