Glassworks is a chamber music

Chamber music

Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...

 work of six movements by Philip Glass

Philip Glass

Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...

. It is regarded as being a characteristically Glass-like work. Following his larger-scale concert and stage works, Glassworks was Philip Glass's successful attempt to create a more pop-oriented "Walkman-suitable" work, with considerably shorter and more accessible pieces written for the recording studio. The studio album was released in 1982.

Movements

• I. Opening (piano (hn)) 6'
• II. Floe (2fl, 2 ssx, 2 tsx, 2hn, syn) 7'
• III. Island (2fl, 2 ssx, tsx, bcl, 2hn, vla, vc) 8'
• IV. Rubric (fl, ssx, tsx, 2hn, org) 6'
• V. Façades (2ssx, syn, vla, vc) 7' - This has its origins in the film score Koyaanisqatsi
  Koyaanisqatsi
  Koyaanisqatsi also known as Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance, is a 1982 film directed by Godfrey Reggio with music composed by Philip Glass and cinematography by Ron Fricke....
  
  , but was ultimately not used in the film; it is often performed as a work in its own right (ISWC T-010.461.089-0).
• VI. Closing (fl, cl, bcl, hn, vla, vc, pno) 6' - A reprise of Opening.

"Opening"

"Opening" uses triplet

Tuplet

In music a tuplet is "any rhythm that involves dividing the beat into a different number of equal subdivisions from that usually permitted by the...

 eighth note

Note

In music, the term note has two primary meanings:#A sign used in musical notation to represent the relative duration and pitch of a sound;#A pitched sound itself....

s, over duple eighth note

Eighth note

thumb|180px|right|Figure 1. An eighth note with stem facing up, an eighth note with stem facing down, and an eighth rest.thumb|right|180px|Figure 2. Four eighth notes beamed together....

s, over whole notes in 4/4. Formally

Musical form

The term musical form refers to the overall structure or plan of a piece of music, and it describes the layout of a composition as divided into sections...

 it consists of three groups of four measure

Bar (music)

In musical notation, a bar is a segment of time defined by a given number of beats of a given duration. Typically, a piece consists of several bars of the same length, and in modern musical notation the number of beats in each bar is specified at the beginning of the score by the top number of a...

 phrase

Phrase

In everyday speech, a phrase may refer to any group of words. In linguistics, a phrase is a group of words which form a constituent and so function as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence. A phrase is lower on the grammatical hierarchy than a clause....

s of three to four chords

Chord (music)

A chord in music is any harmonic set of two–three or more notes that is heard as if sounding simultaneously. These need not actually be played together: arpeggios and broken chords may for many practical and theoretical purposes be understood as chords...

 repeated four times each, ABC:||ABC, which then merges with the next movement

Movement (music)

A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession...

, "Floe" with the entrance of the horns.

"Rubric" and "Façades" both appeared in the 1988 documentary about Phillippe Petit, High Wire.