What is really funny about all of this Philip Glass discussion is that just yesterday my 18 year old son was talking about this idea he had for a musical composition. It starts out with a very simple theme with a small number of instruments and each instrument plays a slowly mutating version of the original theme, but each instrument is evolving its theme independent of the others. After a short time the composition becomes totally chaotic and almost unlistenable, but eventually settles down into a much more elaborate but very melodic new theme.