When Philip Glass was 15, his father, who owned a record store in Baltimore, put him in charge of buying classical albums. Mr. Glass was then a precocious freshman at the University of Chicago and taking the first steps on the path to becoming a composer. When he learned of a new recording of the complete Schoenberg string quartets played by the Juilliard String Quartet, he ordered four copies. Aghast, his father asked if he was trying to put him out of business. To teach his son a lesson, he told him to put the recordings of these atonal chamber works on the shelves with the more mainstream classical records and report back when the last copy had been sold. That took seven years. The lesson Mr. Glass learned? “I can sell anything if I have enough time.”

That is one of many revealing anecdotes in “Words Without Music,” Mr. Glass’s warm, low-key and often delightful new memoir. Mr. Glass, one of the most influential and prolific composers of operas, symphonies, chamber works and film scores, is now 78. Enough time has passed for him to sell his own distinct musical language, developed through a blending of Western and Indian traditions, in which repeated musical cells form patterns to hypnotic effect. To many listeners it remains perplexing and even infuriating, but the influence of Mr. Glass’s music, called Minimalist despite his protests, is pervasive in all genres of music.

The book traces the development of that music, but above all it’s a portrait of a composer who rose to prominence almost entirely outside of the usual institutions. He collaborated with innovators in theater, dance and film and founded his own ensemble, record labels and music publishing companies. A succession of jobs — steel work, furniture moving, plumbing, construction — kept him afloat. He drove cabs from his mid-30s right up to the moment, in 1978, when he received a commission from the Netherlands Opera to write what would become the mesmerizing Gandhi tribute “Satyagraha.” By then he was 41 and his groundbreaking opera “Einstein on the Beach,” developed with the director Robert Wilson, had played to sold-out audiences at the Metropolitan Opera.

That work ethic was a legacy from his parents, especially his father, Ben, who fixed cars and radios in addition to selling records. He also taught his son to play mental chess, an exercise that, Mr. Glass writes, develops the ability to visualize with “terrific clarity.” The warmth with which Mr. Glass writes about his family contrasts with the relative reticence — even opacity — with which he glosses over his personal relationships. (He has been married four times.)