THAT GORGEOUS REPETITION : GLASS SYNTHESIZES CLASSICS, POP

There’s the old joke about the fellow who played the Philip Glass record and didn’t realize it was sticking until he began to wonder how a four-hour piece could fit on one side of an album.

Glass’ detractors and fans alike seem to get a chuckle out of that one, because whether you love him or hate him--and whether you accept or decry the “minimalist” label he’s been tagged with--it’s the gorgeous repetition that gets to you, with the music’s seemingly endless succession of scales and arpeggios digging into the cerebrum.

Glass, who headlined the Universal Amphitheatre on Sunday night, released an album earlier this year which he described as his first attempt to craft actual songs (as opposed to operas, theater pieces and the like) around words supplied by prominent pop lyricists. Lest anyone think he’s out to challenge Leiber & Stoller on their own turf, this was still a long way from the Top 40.

All six selections on “Songs From Liquid Days” were filled to varying degrees with those very same trademark split-second recurring chord progressions, albeit with American voices--some quite recognizable--laid on top.

Sunday’s show marked the middle of a three-city tour to premiere “Liquid Days” in concert with the same vocalists that appeared on the record: Linda Ronstadt, Douglas Perry, Bernard Fowler, Janice Pendarvis and the Roches. Before the guests appeared after intermission (for one song each and a group finale), the performance was filled out with two unrecorded Glass compositions--mostly flutes and synthesizers with an unidentified soprano.

Of course, any concert that brings Ronstadt and Perry together on the same bill is bound to stir up some confusion for the novice in these matters: Is it “classical” music or “pop” music?

First, the evidence in favor of this being a serious music concert.

Ticket prices were high. There were as many as 26 musicians and singers on stage at one time: three synthesizer players (including Glass), seven brass, three woodwinds, a string quartet, eight singers and a conductor. None of the songs had verses and choruses per se. No one on stage spoke a word. Everyone in the audience was wearing eyeglasses. There were no T-shirts on sale in the lobby. No one in the audience yelled for “Einstein on the Beach”--or “Whipping Post.”

Now, the evidence in favor of this being a pop concert.

The Roches moved around a bit while singing and had among their stage clothes a yellow polka-dot dress and green stockings. The audience laughed at the funny parts. A couple of the tunes had an almost disco beat at times, with some sort of electronic drum sound at one point.

This is hardly a question to rival the revitalized interest in Lee Harvey Oswald’s guilt or innocence. And one’s mind does tend to change. The scarceness of emotional content or catharsis in Glass’ music--with the possible exception of the lift provided by Fowler’s outstanding vocal--makes us lean toward the “serious” side.

For all the silence and straight faces, though, there’s a danger in taking this too seriously, and that makes us lean--of course--toward the pop side.

There’s certainly wit in the interplay of the words (by David Byrne, Paul Simon, Suzanne Vega and Laurie Anderson) and melody, and the structure of the music itself can be seen as having a subtle humor about it. You can view those darn arpeggios that won’t stay away as a running joke as much as a recurring motif.

And though “Liquid Days” fits too snugly into Glass’ canon to be seen as a blatant cross-cultural experiment, it’s not as if it’s a “rock-meets-classical” stunt or anything. The composer obviously took a certain delight in bringing such a diverse crowd together.

The words and music in the songs are often incongruous enough, and the singers tend to put a different (third) spin on the material altogether. The best example live was “Changing Opinions,” a song with a wry Simon lyric conjecturing a multitude of metaphysical explanations for “an electrical hum in the room.” It featured a slow, building vocal from Fowler, who combined the strength of a classic soul ballad with the almost operatic stature of the composition.

Soulful vocal met hyper-cerebral song, polka-dots met tuxedo, Universal Amphitheatre met attentive audience, and it was all good fun.