Dictionary of Music - Birding America

160 giocosogiocoso (jô kô′sô) Italian. Also, con gioco (kônjô′ kô). A direction to perform in a merry, livelymanner.gioioso (joi yô′ sô) Italian.in a gay, joyful manner.gitana, alla (ä′lä jē tä′nä) Italian.Gitarre (gi tä′re).A direction to performIn gypsy style.The German word for GUITAR.gittern (git′ərn). An early type of GUITAR, playedto accompany singing and dancing during the MiddleAges and surviving in some places until the sixteenthcentury (elsewhere it was replaced by eitherlute or guitar). The gittern had a boxlike body and,usually, four pairs of gut strings, played with a plectrum.During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuriesthe name was used not only for this instrument butalso for the CITTERN and for the Spanish guitar, sothat in some sources it is not always certain whichinstrument is meant. No music for gittern has survived.giusto (joo — s′tô) Italian: “correct.” A word appearingin such directions as tempo giusto (“correcttime”), meaning either that one should return toplaying in strict tempo or that a tempo should bechosen that is appropriate to the music.Glass, Philip, 1937– . An American composerwho was strongly influenced by his study of Indianmusic and first became known for his MINIMALISM,based on extensive repetition, rhythmic regularity,and conventional tonal harmony. In the late 1960sGlass founded his own eight-member ensemble ofelectric keyboards (synthesizer, organ, piano), amplifiedwind instruments, and voices, for which most ofhis compositions were written. Among them were thesuites North Star (1977) and Glassworks (1981). Theensemble often performed for jazz and rock audiencesas well as for listeners interested in seriousexperimental music. In the mid-1970s Glass alsobegan writing operas. The first was Einstein on theBeach (1976), in collaboration with playwrightdirectorRobert Wilson, who contributed the scenarioand assisted with staging and sets. Well received inEurope, it received its American premiere at the MetropolitanOpera and shocked audiences with its textof solfège syllables, numbers that limned the rhythmicstructure of the music, and interior monologues.The music of this four-and-one-half-hour work wasmore complex than Glass’s earlier pieces; he usedmore chords and keys and richer tone colors and textures,although the harmonies were still tonal and themelodic patterns were relentlessly repeated. His nextopera, Satyagraha (1980), is a series of tableauxabout the life of Mohandas Gandhi in Africa, scoredfor orchestra, soloists, and chorus. The action is notrealistic, and the libretto, in Sanskrit, is based on theBhagavad-Gita. It was followed by the operaAkhnaten (1983), a series of meditations (in Egyptian,Hebrew, and Akkadian) on the Egyptian pharaoh,linked by a narrator who speaks in the language ofthe audience. Other theater works of Glass’s includethe film score Koyaanisqatsi (1982); the music theaterpiece Photographer (1982); the operatic fifth actof Robert Wilson’s twelve-hour-long multinationaltheater epic, Civil Wars: A Tree Is Best MeasuredWhen It Is Down (1984); the opera The Juniper Tree(1985), in collaboration with Robert Moran; theoperas Orphée (1993) and La Belle et la Bête(Beauty and the Beast; 1994), both based on films byJean Cocteau; two later collaborations with RobertWilson, White Raven (2001) and Galileo Galilei(2002); and the theater music piece, The Sound of aVoice (2003), which uses both Western and Asianinstruments. A notable choral work is his Symphonyno. 5, “Requiem, Bardo, Nirmanakaya” (1999), avast piece drawing on the major Eastern and Westernsacred texts as well as more obscure tribal legends. Inaddition, Glass collaborated with director GodfreyReggio on a film trilogy, the Qatsi Trilogy, that hasbeen described as a nonverbal tone poem taking acosmic view of the earth and its problems. Glass’sscore for the third film, Naqoyqatsi (“War as a way oflife”; 2002), alternates between sections suggestingcosmic acceleration, sometimes with a martial ring,and detached meditation. Glass also wrote the scorefor The Hours (2002), a film based on MichaelCunningham’s novel of the same name.glass harmonica An instrument consisting of aseries of tuned glass bowls fixed to an axle, which is