The paradigm of Western music, classical or popular, is the sexual act, and the conclusion of the sexual act for most Westerners (or at least Western males of the slambam variety) is the orgasm. Climax is central to our music, since music is the art closest to the emotions and to sexuality. But not all kinds of music proceed so purposefully, just as some sorts of Oriental sex are more concerned with the meditative aspects of sensation than with pumping to a climax.

All of which may seem a needlessly salacious way of leading into the two albums discussed here. But, in fact, these works by Steve Reich and Philip Glass are the newest and best representatives of what has been called "trance music," and trance music is nothing less than the adaptation of non-Western notions of musical stasis to a highly organized, rhythmic, structured Western sensibility.

The result isn't just a new kind of classical music, one that promises to rejuvenate a high art form seriously in danger of lapsing into terminal elitism. Trance music has also become genuine fusion music that can appeal effortlessly to fans of progressive rock, jazz and even disco. And it does so not by cravenly borrowing the surface style of a foreign idiom, but by remaining true to itself. Both of these discs are on labels far from the staid ways of the classical companies. ECM is a jazz label that (especially now with its Warner Bros. distribution tie-in) is capable of reaching the rock audience as well. Tomato is a feisty new independent with rock spirit and savvy and a seemingly fervent commitment to experimental music of all sorts. Both Reich and Glass and their ensembles have played showcase engagements at rock clubs recently and are likely to continue the practice.

Of the two releases, Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians is the more accessible (as well as the least expensive). The eighteen musicians play mostly keyboard or mallet percussion instruments; pianos, marimbas, xylophones, metallophone. In addition, there are wordless women's voices, violin, cello, clarinets and bass clarinets. Some of these instruments set up a steady, reiterative plinking sound (a constant with this genre back to its early Sixties progenitor, Terry Riley's In C), and soon the others start plinking along, too, shimmering as they adumbrate and blur the pulse. Through all this, the sustained sounds support and soften the percussion. The harmony seems static, yet one's interest is held by the pungency of the aural color, the pulsing dynamics and Reich's periodic shifting of instrumental forces. As with a change in the sunlight, the music enters a new sonic realm.

Einstein on the Beach is another matter altogether, far grander but far more difficult—and four records, to boot. This was originally a nearly five-hour "opera" cowritten by composer Philip Glass and Robert Wilson, the extraordinary avant-garde playwright and director from New York. Though Wilson's theatrical ideas profoundly affected Glass' music (and vice versa), it's Glass' score we have here, mixed with the sparse spoken words from Wilson's drama.

Called an opera by its creators, Einstein on the Beach has nothing to do with operatic conventions: no classically trained vocalists, no orchestra, no naturalistic/psychological plot. And onstage, there were Wilson's hypnotic, visionary tableaux, in which everything unfolded with dreamlike slowness.

As one who was deeply—religiously—moved by the stage performance of Einstein on the Beach, it's difficult for me to anticipate how people will react to it as sound alone. Furthermore, though he denies it in the LP's lavish program notes, Glass has cut the music from 270 to 163 minutes. He's done this not by eliminating any material, but by reducing repetitions and, in some instances, by playing things faster than he did during the work's 1976 tour. (The quicker tempos were chosen for artistic reasons, however, and not to save time.) Since hypnotic repetition has much to do with this music, one might worry that such compression would prove damaging.

It doesn't, though—in fact, for many, Einstein on the Beach will still seem maddeningly uneventful. Yet, for sympathetic tastes, this is a veritably enchanted world. The forces here—four speaking actors, a solo female voice, a small chorus, solo violin and an amplified ensemble of female voice, saxophones, flutes, clarinet and electric keyboards—are actually less varied than Reich's. But the range of mood is dazzling as the opera moves from the rapturous recitation of numbers to unabashed sentiment to surging dances to eerie mysticism to apocalyptic fury. In some distantly symbolic way, Einstein on the Beach is about the whole modern world, the place of science in our lives and how the forces of love can redeem man's ultimate follies.

Though a long way from Styx or Barry Manilow or the Clash, Music for 18 Musicians and Einstein on the Beach aren't operating in a closed universe. Like all really innovative art, the works of Steve Reich and Philip Glass have encountered fierce resistance from the hidebound world of classical music. Yet both composers have won themselves a new audience, drawn from many different stylistic camps. All that these fans share is a willingness to accept the new and a yearning for a transcendent romanticism in music. (RS 289)

JOHN ROCKWELL