In 1982 Philip Glass became the first composer since Aaron Copland to join the CBS Masterworks label. Glass had formed the Philip Glass Ensemble in 1968, but it wasn't until his opera Einstein on the Beach (1976) that he achieved great critical and popular success. His first album for Masterworks, Glassworks, tripled all sales projections, pleasing audiences, critics and Glass himself. "Glassworks was my debut record on CBS. This music was written for the recording studio, though a number of the pieces soon found their way into the Ensemble repertory. A six-"movement" work, Glassworks was intended to introduce my music to a more general audience than had been familiar with it up to then." (Philip Glass)