Philip Glass - Philip Glass: Music for The Crucible (2023)

Philip Glass has always been a composer attracted to issues of social transformation and the forces behind them. Glass composed about 40 minutes of new music for violin and cello as the main body of his score The Crucible. Only half of that music was used in the 2016 production on Broadway and it was supplemented with Glass arranging a number of traditional hymns. What is presented on this album is the complete original music for violin and cello that Glass wrote for the play omitting the hymn songs as well as one short piece for violin cello and organ that was something of a last minute addition. While string instruments evoke an old world and timeless sound one can speculate that the decision for writing for the combination of violin and cello plays on the duality that is ubiquitous in The Crucible... light and dark goodness and evil male and female righteousness and injustice.