The CIVIL warS: “Interlude no. 2”

• the CIVIL warS “a tree is best measured when it is down” is a mixed-media theater work by director/producer Robert Wilson, who also collaborated with Glass on Einstein on the Beach (1976).¹
• The CIVIL warS was created by Wilson for the 1984 Olympic Games. The complete theater piece is an epic which includes music by many composers.²
• Glass composed two operatic works for the CIVIL warS: Civil Wars Cologne and Civil Wars Rome (each work premiered in its eponymous city).This Interlude comes from the Civil Wars Rome Section.³

“Part of Robert Wilson’s multi-composer epic for the Olympic Games of 1984, the Rome Section of “the CIVIL warS” is a unit all its own, non-narrative, and portrays the future, the present, the past (both near and distant), and the legendary – all existing simultaneously. The opera is symbolic, metaphysical, realistic, metaphomical, and its stage ranges from ancient Athens to the spaceship-filled future of the human race.”

Glass’s program note⁴

1. Strickland and Mark Alburger, “Glass, Philip,” Grove Music Online (October 16, 2013), accessed October 9, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002252917.
2. Tim Page, “Glass, Philip (opera),” Grove Music Online (2002), accessed October 9, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-5000007459.
3. Strickland and Alburger, “Glass, Philip,” Grove Music Online.
4. “Philip Glass: Compositions: The Civil Wars – Rome,” PhilipGlass.com, accessed October 9, 2019, https://philipglass.com/compositions/civil_wars_rome/.