GLASS'S MASTER CLASS.(The Talk of the Town)(Philip Glass' music composition)

Toward the end of his life, Samuel Beckett wrote a dramatic monologue called "Company," in which an old man lies in a dark room, thinking despairingly back on his existence. As in other Beckett works, the feel-good message is that dying begins at the moment of birth. In 1983, Frederick Neumann, a co-director of Mabou Mines, staged a performance of "Company," and he asked Philip Glass to compose some music for the production. Glass wrote a string quartet, in four parts, and Beckett approved the music, stipulating that it " 'only be played in the interstices of the play,' " Glass recalled recently. "Whatever the hell that meant."

Glass regarded the composition as Gebrauchsmusik, which means "music for use"--"like salt and pepper," he said, "just something for the table." He never expected to hear the music after the play closed, but the short piece has taken on a life of its own, and has been performed in a variety of contexts far removed from Beckett's text. "It just seems to find people," Glass said.

On the first Sunday in March, the music was performed by the Philharmonia, a string ensemble of top New York City music students, ranging in age from thirteen to eighteen, at the Third Street Music School Settlement, in the East Village. Glass, who is sixty-nine, lives nearby, and he and his wife, Holly, have two small children in Third Street's preschool program. On the day before the concert, Glass, who was to perform several pieces on piano in the concert, offered to work with the students in their final rehearsal.

Barbara Field, the executive director of Third Street, greeted the composer, and they chatted briefly in her office, mostly about the sad state of music education in the city's public schools. Field noted that Third Street is the oldest community music school in the country. (In 1912, students raised funds to benefit the survivors of musicians lost on the Titanic.) Glass, whose father owned a record store in Baltimore, said, "My public school taught music. Not only did they teach us to play--they gave us our instruments!" He added that he played bass trumpet and glockenspiel in the high-school marching band during ...