Music In Eight Parts was performed only a few times in 1970, but the manuscript has been lost for decades. It was recently found, and it was played for the first time in 50 years this spring. What happened to the manuscript? Showbiz. Here’s more from Philip Glass:

It’s theorized that after Glass’s 1975 opera Einstein on the Beach landed the composer in a fair amount of debt, Glass was forced to sell a number of scores…. Composed right in the middle of Glass’s Minimalist period, in early 2018 the score was obtained by Glass’s publishers…. Alex Gray, music assistant at the publishing company, thought it would be interesting to realize the work for the instrumentation of the Philip Glass Ensemble: woodwinds, keyboard, and voice. As part of Gray’s research, he copied the score, made a synthesized demo of the piece, and he wrote a thesis on the project. The Philip Glass Ensemble then organized performances of this lost piece in the spring of 2020. It was to be the first time audiences would hear this music in five decades.

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