When American composer Philip Glass received a commission from the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra to create a new work, the artist was looking for a way to contrast nature and technology. Friends mentioned Itaipú. Glass visited in 1988 and fell into a state of awe when he saw the massive structure, soaring in height more than 55 stories. He likened it to the Egyptian pyramids. Learning the name meant “singing stone,” Glass was inspired to create a work of four movements using the indigenous Guarani language and poetry in the libretto written by Daniela Thomas. Below listen to a clip from Glass’ “Itaipu”.

Building the World Blog by Kathleen Lusk Brooke and Zoe G Quinn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.