Biography

He was educated at the University of Southern California (USC) (BM), a student of Ingolf Dahl, Goffredo Petrassi in Rome on a Fulbright Scholarship, Roger Sessions at Princeton University on a fellowship, and at the Institute of International Education in Warsaw with Witold Lutosawski on a grant. He joined ASCAP in 1961.
- IMDb mini biography by: Hup234!

Although born into a film star family (his father Gaston-Jacques Glass had taken over from John Wayne on the simultaneous French-language version of The Big Trail in 1930, Paul Glass decided early to follow the path of serious music. After gaining a B. Mus. degree at the University of Southern California, he furthered his education in Europe, studying under Petrassi in Rome and Lutoslawski in Warsaw. In 1957 he received the Los Angeles Chamber Symphony Award and the same year composed his first film score, The Abductors (1957). Like many serious composers, Glass developed two styles of film scoring: firstly, the more accessible and commercial approach for mainstream movies. These would include the haunting Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965) which became a popular soundtrack album, and the respected docu-drama Overlord (1975) scored in the style of and as a homage to Vaughan Williams.

His second style was more academic and avant-garde, suitable for off-beat pictures like Lady in a Cage (1964) and Nightmare in the Sun (1965). Most of Glass's concert works fall into this latter category. He describes his Sinfonia No.3, for instance, as using a new diatonic-dodecaphonic method...explored parallelly through scientific means, verified with the aid of a computer using the LISP Programme. It is based, explains Glass, on the fact that it is possible to chain together twelve diatonic scales in a way that the resulting pitches at the same time belong exactly to seven twelve-tone series.

Paul Glass has won numerous awards during his long career.
- IMDb mini biography by: Jim Marshall