City of Glass
LABEL Capitol
NO. H 353
FORMAT 10” Record
PRODUCER Jim Conkling
LINER NOTES Bob Graettinger
LOCATION Radio Recorders, Hollywood
RECORDING DATES 5, 7 December 1951
Composer Robert Graettinger began building his fantastic city in 1948, and that same year conducted the work’s first experimental performance during Stan Kenton’s concert at the Chicago Civic Opera House. The applause was sparse and the criticism that followed was severe. Sorely disappointed, Graettinger and Kenton analyzed the deficiencies of the radical new composition. They decided to rewrite it to include strings and to add the colors and dimension that only a larger ensemble could provide. For seemingly interminable months Graettinger worked religiously on the new score, spurred on by frequent encouragement from the man who most belied in him—Stan Kenton.
Then, during the “Innovations in Modern Music” concert tours of 1950 and 1951, separate movements of THE CITY OF GLASS—never the entire composition—were performed. Increasingly favorable audience reaction gave fresh strength to Kenton’s belief in the work, and growing interest in it on the part of Capitol Records confirmed his confidence.
On December 5, 1951, in a lengthy session at Capitol’s Hollywood studios, THE CITY OF GLASS became a recorded reality. The years of persistence and experimentation culminated in a truly outstanding album, now proudly presented to those who seek the stimulation of a challenging musical conception.
The talented young composer of THE CITY OF GLASS has come up from the world of jazz, but in his imaginative work he is seeking a whole new realm of musical expression. It is built about his unique theories concerning the relationship of instrumental sounds and the laws of physics.
Robert Graettinger was born in Ontario, California, on October 31, 1923, and began his career at the age of nine by studying the saxophone. At sixteen, he landed his first professional job, with Bobby Sherwood, as both saxophonist and arranger. After a similar stint with Benny Carter, he decided to devote full time to writing and arranging, and late in 1947 joined Stan Kenton. His first recorded work was “Thermopolae.”
CITY OF GLASS, a fascinating contribution to contemporary American music, has been heralded by connoisseurs and damned by skeptics since its conception, for it is an extreme departure from the modern jazz idiom with which Stan Kenton has long been identified.
Its fresh new sound almost defies technical explanation. It is music of completely abstract quality, with broken rhythmic lines and intricate contrapuntal melodies, rich with vibrant imagination and uninhibited spirit. An augmented Kenton orchestra, skillfully recorded, projects all its wonderful vitality.
A NOTE BY THE COMPOSER...
The music of THE CITY OF GLASS is primarily abstract and non-objective, but it has vivid visual associations for me. The composition as a whole suggests, I feel, a city in which the structures are shapes of musical sound, transparent and in constant motion, so that through one can be seen the outlines of others—a city of moving glasslike edifices.
The work’s development covers the passing of a single day. The various textures of the instruments chosen to produce the tonal skyscrapers seem to describe the reflections of the day’s changing illumination.
Part I—Entrance Into the City—opens with gradual transition from a distant perspective that envelops the entire metropolis to a relatively close perspective in which single objects can be made out. Throughout this entrance and during an imaginary stroll down the avenues of the city, the glimmering architecture reflects the fish brilliant light of early morning.
Part II—The Structures—describes several of the edifices, exposing them to close inspection. A perspective of extreme awareness of each is suggested by the use of only one family of instruments at a time—first the brass, then the strings, then saxophones. As the walk concludes, there is an air of anticipation and excitement.
Part III—Dance Before the Mirror—takes place in a maze of midday light. The structures are now seen through rapidly changing perspectives as though one were viewing them while whirling around in a spirited dance before a huge mirror. There is a frenzied climax and then abrupt silence.
Part IV—Reflections—starts softly in a description of the rich somber hues of late afternoon. A gradual feeling of ascension finally provides one with a vantage point from which to view the city in its entirety once again. Now the structures reflect the fiery blaze of sunset, and the composition ends as darkness slowly falls on THE CITY OF GLASS.
Bob Graettinger
Perhaps Kenton’s most talked about and least listened to album (well, except maybe for the excursion with Tex Ritter), was this suite by Graettinger. First written for the Progressive Jazz Orchestra, the composer rescored it for the Innovations, and that is the version that made it to the studio.
I believe it is safe to say that, except for the instrumentation of a big band with strings, it bears no resemblance to jazz. It is moving, fascinating, colorful, entrancing. But it isn’t jazz. And his critics latched onto that aspect.
I find it very appealing, and not at all difficult to listen to. By this point, Graettinger was coming into his own as a mature composer.
—TV
Reviews
Graettinger Hailed: ‘City Of Glass’ Gets Great Treatment On Kenton LP
GRAETTINGER: City of Glass. Augmented Stan Kenton Orchestra. CAPITOL H353 10”.
Performance ★ ★ ★ ★ ; Recording ★ ★ ★ ★ .
If your nerves are still raw and twitch in' from New Year's . . If a kitten daintily padding across an inch-deep rug-nap sets you groanin’ “Pul-lease quit that stompin’ around!” ... Then you’re in no fitten shape for such rackety-rax aural calesthenics as I'm prescribing today. For I've got a rugged workout for ya, man , and no softies or kids are gonna stand the gaff.
But if you've got tough ears and constitutions, I can promise you an adventure m new sound you’ll never forget…and more fun than you’ve had since that great day when you learned to pitch sliders and knuckles with a pile of rocks in grandpaw’s hot-house!
You’ll be feeling no pane either when Stan Kenton gets through with Bob Graettinger's City of Glass—probably the most exciting, maybe one of the most vital, and certainly the noisiest symphonic experiment yet achieved by a jazz composer and conductor.
Actually, there's no jazz in it (except for an echo or two in the Dance Before a Mirror third movement) but it sure is as "modern" as you can get. It's out of Schoenbergian and Bartokian blood-lines, perhaps, as far as the music itself goes, but all dolled up with the very latest in Graettinger and Kenton-style innovations where the frenzied but dazzling interplay of sonorities is concerned.
It's almost intolerably harsh and shill in stretches. Some of the stunts are beaten to exhaustion, a few are thrown away before they really get going, and oftentimes the use of too many effects at once tends to cancel out much of their impact. I wish Graettinger were as clever a dramatic psychologist as he is a sound-pattern weaver, for his work needs more astute editing and organization. Yet, for all that, he's got something here that's brashly alive and at its best tremendously exciting.
Many of his strictly musical ideas might have come straight out of the futurismus experiments of the symphonic enfants terribles of the ‘20s—and he could profit by a refresher course in Stravinsky's later works to learn more about thinning out these ideas and developing the best of them either more tersely or more fully, according to their demands.
But in clothing these ideas in brittle, acrid, but always electrifying sounds, Graettinger is a genuine pioneer in his own right. And in capturing Stan’s intensely driving performance on LP, Capitol makes a sizzling contribution of its own.
Darrell, Rob. "Record Review. 'City of Glass' Gets Great Treatment on Kenton LP." Down Beat, 28 January 1953.
Record Review. City of Glass
There is no point in rating this four-part suite by Bob Graettinger in terms of A to D; It is neither jazz nor popular music in any of the several senses in which those categories are generally understood; its only connection with the previous achievement of other the composer (Graettinger) or the conductor (Kenton) is the vigorous performance the latter elicits in behalf of the former. As music, it seems to me to fall somewhere between Schoenberg and Schillinger, but most of all to fall, nowhere suggesting the understanding of atonal or twelve-tone composing traditions to be found in the same writer’s House of Strings. There’s a nice guitar bit in the second movement (The Structures) and the third movement (Dance Before the Mirror) almost attains a jazz best, but the overall impression is of a muddled modern work ill-defined in purpose and not much closer to a work of art than science fiction. (10-inch Capitol LP)
Ulanov, Barry. "Record Review. City of Glass." Metronome, March 1953. 24.
Tracks
1. First movement - Part 1: Entrance Into The City
2. First movement - Part 2: The Structures
3. Second movement - Dance Before The Mirror
4. Third movement - Reflections
All tracks composed and arranged by Bob Graettinger.
Additional Capitol versions
EPF 353 — two 45rpm 7” records
W 736 — 12” LP [paired with This Modern World]
7243 8 32084 2 5 — CD [paired with This Modern World and other works by Graettinger]
Other versions
Creative World reissue — ST-1006 — 12” LP [paired with This Modern World]
Personnel
Alto sax
Bud Shank (+ fl)
Art Pepper (+ cl)
Tenor sax
Bob Cooper (+ oboe, eng horn)
Bart Caldwell (+ bassoon)
Bari sax
Bob Gioga (+ bs cl)
Trumpet
John Howell
Maynard Ferguson
Conte Candoli
Stu Williamson
John Copploa
French horn
John Grass
Lloyd Otto
George Price
Trombone
Bob Fitzpatrick
Harry Betts
Bill Russo
Dick Kenney
George Roberts (b-tb)
Tuba
Stan Fletcher
Piano
Stan Kenton
Guitar
Ralph Blaze
Bass
Don Bagley
Abe Luboff
Drums
Shelly Manne
Violin
Alex Law
Earl Cornwell
Phil Davidson
Dwight Muma
Maurice Koukel
Barton Gray
Seb Mercurio
Danny Napolitano
Charlie Scarle
Ben Zimberoff
Viola
Paul Israel
Aaron Shapiro
Dave Smiley
Cello
Gregory Bemko
Zachary Bock
Gabe Jellen
