Words Without Music: A Memoir by Philip Glass

man, clearly retired, was only interested in waltzes. The class was run in an open seminar fashion, with students bringing their music for comments and advice from Mr. Wolfe and reaction to their work from fellow students. I was impressed by how seriously all of the students’ work was addressed by our teacher. The “waltz man” brought in a new waltz for every class and was offered serious and good advice.
    Mr. Wolfe, tall, with black hair and eyebrows and a thin face, was an excellent teacher, and by the following spring, when my audition before the composition department came around, I had composed ten to twelve new pieces that the faculty composers looked at. I was anxious more than nervous. Stanley Wolfe had already let me know that I was doing pretty well. He had really guided me in what I should be doing in order to prepare for that audition, which was, in effect, an entrance audition.
    The letter of admission didn’t come for about ten days, but when it did, not only was I admitted to the school, I was also given a small scholarship. It was very encouraging: in other words, they wanted me to come. This scholarship was a special nod of approval that let me know that I didn’t get in by the skin of my teeth. From then on, I had part scholarships, part fellowships, and, somewhat surprisingly, a little bit of money from Uncle Willie, who finally relented and began sending me a couple hundred dollars a month, which was a big help.
    I knew by then that moving from the Extension Division to the regular school curriculum was not at all common, but I had worked very hard that year and had been able to make a good case for myself to the composition faculty. I was accepted as a regularly enrolled student in the composition department for the fall semester of 1958. Once admitted, I took only music courses and worked directly toward a diploma, which I accomplished in two years.
    William Bergsma was my composition teacher. No more “classes.” One-on-one instruction was available now that I was in the department. Bergsma was still a young man when I knew him. He had made a name for himself with an opera The Wife of Martin Guerre , as well as a host of orchestra and chamber works. Bergsma and I got along well and I was soon absorbing everything I could in the school—the L & M classes, a second major in piano, and regular attendance at the orchestra rehearsals, as well as permission to audit conducting classes taught by Jean Morel, who was a regular conductor at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and himself a superb musician.
    Bergsma was considered an up-and-coming composer in the Americana school of Aaron Copland and Roy Harris. I was already a tonalist by then, so he was the right teacher for me at that time, and was highly encouraging. He showed me what he called tricks, which often were very simple things, like how to set up a page of music so that it was easier to read, and how to review a piece by taking all the pages, putting them on the floor, and standing on a chair and looking down at the whole piece at once. That way you didn’t have any page turns. I had a great affection for him because he took it so seriously. In fact, I would compose my first string quartet with him.
    We would decide together what I would write, and then I would work on it until it was complete. Then we would go on to the next piece. With him, I was composing a piece every three or four weeks. There was one student at the school, a dedicated dodecaphonist, and he could spend a whole semester writing two pages of music. He almost got kicked out. At the end of the year, you were supposed to hand all your pieces in to a jury of composers, and you could flunk out at that point. It was impossible for me to flunk out—I had written too much music. I had the naïve but probably correct idea that if I wrote enough music, I would start to get better.
    My compositions at Juilliard sounded rather like those of my teachers. In the late 1950s and early