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TEXT TWELVE Imagine howmuch sleep future musicologists will lose over Philip Glass. Throughout hiscareer he has changed his scores to suit the circumstances, trimming them forrecordings, for example, because he believes that nonvisual performancesbenefit from concision. The notion of an immutable, sacrosancturtext -- the very thing musicologists sift historical evidence hoping toestablish -- is entirely alien to him. Still, youwould think that if Mr. Glass held anything sacred, it would be the structureand format of Einstein on the Beach. At that operas premiere in 1976, and in its 1984 and 1992 revivals, Einstein played for five hours with nointermission. Free of narrative but rich in associations and imagery --Einstein as a madly ecstatic violinist but also as the father of nuclear power-- the work unfolded inexorably, its repeated musical phrases creating rhythmicwheels within wheels. The libretto, mostly numbers, solfege syllables andquirky, stream-of-consciousness spoken texts, works its own hypnotic spell.Listeners were free to come and go as they pleased, but some of the works power came from itsrelentlessness, to say nothing of the quirkiness of Robert Wilsons staging. The versionthat Mr. Glass and his ensemble presented at Carnegie Hall on Thursday eveningswept away the elements that made the work a happening and transformed it intoa concert piece: three hours long, with an intermission and with formal seatingrules in force. The breadth of the work was presented, if not its full sweep.The two-hour trim was accomplished by deleting sections from all but a fewscenes. Some trims were noticeable: Lucinda Childss tale of the multicolored bathingcap was intact, as were the quotations from Carole Kings I Feel the Earth Move, but Mr. Bojangles was evictedfrom this version. | 
