By Stephanie Bunbury [The Age, 1 October 2005]

He's one of the world's best-known composers, but could Philip Glass' greatest achievement be the way he lives his life?

Somewhere in the middle of his musical education, Philip Glass started to look for a fork in the road. In the early 1960s, when he was studying composition in Paris, every cerebral young music student worth his salt was shaking with Schoenberg, Webern and Berg, the dust-dry maestros of 12-tone.