I heard this Philip Glass piece performed last summer by James McVinnie on the organ at St. Paul's Cathedral, London. In this video, Glass perfoms it himself.
At the begining of the recording, Glass explains that he composed it for an introduction to the Dalai Lama, who was visiting the U.S. in 1979; the people who commissioned the piece didn't know exactly when the Dalai Lama would arrive, so Glass needed to create something of that could be stretched or cut to fit whatever time was available.
In the cathedral, the sound filled the space and I could feel the vibration of the organ in my body—through the stone floor, the spindley wooden chair, the air. Each heavy chord hit like a blow. It felt somehow like I was listening and experiencing my own particular life as part of all life all at once. Even the recording has a little of that magic, I think. It sounds like spring, and also death, or at least how I hope death will be.
