The Ned Flanders of Music Criticism

Otherwise known as Scott Cantrell, former president of MCANA, the Music Critics’ Association of North America. About Philip Glass, he says:

For four decades, his diddle-diddles and doodley-doodlies have transported some and maddened others.

That’s just F-ing fiddley-diddly dumb.

But here’s the kicker—one I didn’t expect. The article is not about a concert or a recording; it’s about a lecture where Glass was heard saying this:

"My musical mother was Nadia Boulanger, my musical father was Ravi Shankar. I was their child, by immaculate conception."

Jesus Christ!

By the late 1960s, the musical scene was ready for something radically different from abstract atonality. Composing a score for a Samuel Beckett play opened Mr. Glass' ears to the possibility of music based on hypnotic repetitions. "It was," [Glass] said, "the shell of the egg cracking."

Weird, I thought his first statement was hyperbole. But...

no. It wasn’t.

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