Einstein on the Blog: Scores at the Morgan Library

Title page from autograph manuscript, Einstein on the Beach. Collection of Paul Walter,
on deposit at the Morgan Library & Museum. Used with permission. Photography: Anthony Troncale

“I still use pencil and paper,” Philip Glass said about composing. “In fact, it’s become a problem. There are no copyists who work with ink anymore. They don’t exist.”

Glass’s problem, our prize.

Currently spread out on a single wall at the Morgan Library is a rather masterfully inked testament to doing things the old fashioned way: the entire handwritten manuscript for Glass’s Einstein on the Beach. A printed score generated by notation software wouldn’t have played as well near Robert Wilson’s murkily sketched storyboards for the opera, installed across the room, nor with the grainy video of the 1976 premiere playing on a loop in the same space. It wouldn't have been any fun at all—no smudges, no mysteries to solve involving ambiguously placed note heads, no record of the hand in the canvas, as they say. What we have instead is both a sublime visual representation of the music as well as a priceless record of a work's squiggly first step out into the light of day. Note for note, it's also a reminder that these things don't spring from the head of Zeus fully formed. They require painstaking labor, and lots of it.


For the music readers out there, have fun following along in the score as the audio plays in the background. But good luck with the "Spaceship" section.

Act 3, Scene 1 from autograph manuscript, Einstein on the Beach. Collection of Paul Walter, 
on deposit at the Morgan Library & Museum. Used with permission. Photography: Anthony Troncale