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Thread: John Adams, composer.

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    John Adams, composer.

    Adams is an interesting fellow. Usually considered one of the Minimalists, in fact he tends to not quite fit into any specific artistic movement - that description has more to do with his artistic development than with his actual music, particularly his more recent work. While it certainly does employ many Minimalist techniques, it has come to do so in a fashion quite different from Riley, Glass, or Reich: As they did, Adams received his early training in the strict Serialism of Fifties and Sixties academic composition. As they did, he came to recognize that as an artistic dead end. As they did, he found his way to Minimalism as an antidote. But he came to treat it not as a revolution, a movement to reinvent music by deconstructing it to its barest essentials, but as a road back to tonality and the 19th Century symphonic tradition, and as a fresh way of approaching that tradition.

    An illustration of this comes from Harmonielehre, a pivotal work for him: In the mid-Eighties, Adams was plagued by a year-and-a-half case of writers' block. His early, fairly strict Minimalist style had hit a dead end, and he seemed to have nothing further to say. Composing this piece, a three-movement symphony in all but name, broke that block. It forms a stylistic bridge between the Minimalism he had adopted and the 19th Century late-Romantic tradition he loved, not only for itself, but for how its harmonic vocabulary underlay much jazz and pop music.

    He's one of the very few Americans making his living entirely as a classical composer - he does not teach, although he has, and does not write movie scores, although he has done that a little as well. Accomplishing this has involved succeeding at two not-particularly-easy tasks: First, earning a measure of respect as an artist from his fellow professionals in the arts, notably the orchestra conductors and opera directors who program performances, and the foundations and performing arts boards who commission new works - enough respect that they will play his music or hire him to write more of it. And second, earning enough popularity with the concert-going public that performing an Adams piece might actually put bums in seats. Or, at least, won't scare away those who came to hear Mozart.

    Now that doesn't necessarily equate to musical quality. Popularity with the public may not mean much beyond a certain gift for the obvious. Respect from one's fellows can be as much a matter of politics and professionalism - being easy to work with, able to meet deadlines, a good collaborator, and willing to shmooze wealthy donors - as actual musical greatness. But on the other hand, symphony and opera leaders do know quite a bit about music. A few ingratiating tunes and a few trendy musical gimmicks, even if packaged with an ingratiating personality, only cut a limited amount of ice with them. Which is a roundabout way of saying there’s got to be something there, or he wouldn’t have gotten as far as he has.

    Personally, I find his music spotty, but very good when it’s “on” – as it is in Harmonielehre, portions of his opera Doctor Atomic, and the four-minute Short Ride in a Fast Machine. When not “on”, it can be a bit dull. Also, it is rarely shockingly original – although Adams sees himself more as a “summing-up” composer like Brahms, who used an existing vocabulary well, than as a pioneer like Wagner or Debussy. For an example, doesn’t Short Ride…:



    sound rather like this?



    So what do you think of Adams?

  2. #2
    I discovered the big three US minimalists at the same time, back in the 1980s, and at first I liked Glass most, Adams second and Reich third. Since then, though, my estimation has been pretty much reversed, so Adams has the virtue of having retained his second spot ... which is no coincidence, since he's very much the 'least objectionable' minimalist to a general audience as well.

    The comparison with Bernard Hermann is a valid one, but mainly because they were both influenced by Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements, which is the biggest underlying influence on Adams' 'motoric' works. They're a lot of fun (I used to listen to Shaker Loops and Grand Pianola Music a lot) but his later work has become more infused with a sense of self-importance. The critics have been very keen on his large-scale works such as Naive & Sentimental Music, but it's not a work that I enjoyed much, and I find his operas very stodgy indeed.

    I'd say that members of these particular forums would have a better time with Steve Reich than John Adams.

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    Member Oreb's Avatar
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    I don't think Adams sits easily alongside Riley, Glass or Reich - largely because I think he is so much better than they are. I think he has far more musical substance about him (probably rubbed off from his childhood encounter with the great Duke Ellington) and he seems to me to be much less about gimmicks.

    Nixon in China is a major achievement IMO, although the other opera of his with which I'm familiar - The Death of Klinghoffer - is much less impressive.

    El nino is also very fine.

    This is an interesting point:

    Adams sees himself more as a “summing-up” composer like Brahms, who used an existing vocabulary well, than as a pioneer like Wagner or Debussy

    which I think sums him up well. I think his best stuff will be remembered long after the dreadful Riley and Glass are forgotten.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Baribrotzer View Post

    So what do you think of Adams?
    I dig most of what i've heared of John Luther Adams music.

    ..but seriously,i've only heared bits and pieces of John Adams' music over the years,the only cds i have of Adams is Harmonielehre and Shaker Loops, which i haven't played in years,and i don't remember my reaction to them, but will revisit thanks to this thread.
    Last edited by walt; 01-02-2013 at 10:12 AM.
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  5. #5
    About ten years ago I went bananas for John Adams and listened to little else for a couple of months. Subsequently I haven't listened to him, or really kept up with what he's been up to for a few years.
    My thoughts at the time were that his earlier 'minimalist' stuff sounded at best like a poor man's Reich and at worst like a poor mans Glass! Although let me say, as much a criticism as this might appear to be, I found much of it extremely enjoyable.

    For me things get interesting when he adopted a more pastoral kind of style. The Gnarly Buttons album is ace, Century Rolls (Century Rolls, Lollapalooza and Slominsky's Earbox) is tremendous but what really knocked me out the most was the piece, from the album of the same name, Naive And Sentimental Music.

    That tune absolutely smashed into my psyche and went off like a bomb. It remains one of my favourite pieces of recent(ish) orchestral music. Not everyone agrees with me though and, what with music being so subjective, a lot of my friends think it is really nothing special.

    I won't try and reduce it by clothing it with pithy and florid descriptions but that tune certainly makes the hairs on the back of my hand stand on end which is as good a gauge of music's effect as anything.
    Last edited by Kavus Torabi; 01-02-2013 at 10:40 AM.

  6. #6
    If Short Ride... is one of his "on" pieces, I'd hate to listen to the dull stuff. OK for the Boston Pops crowd I suppose?

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    I have a pretty nice compilation of his stuff, conducted by Simon Rattle. Harmonielehre really floats my boat. I like him a lot more than Glass or Reich.
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    I only have Nixon in China, and love it. Where should I go from here?
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  9. #9
    A friend of mine made me a copy of some of the stuff from Adams' Earbox release and there was one piece that I really liked. I think it might have been Harmonielehre. It's cyclical and tuneful and not unlike Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Sturgeon's Lawyer View Post
    I only have Nixon in China, and love it. Where should I go from here?
    This is a fine place to start:
    Quote Originally Posted by ItalProgRules View Post
    I have a pretty nice compilation of his stuff, conducted by Simon Rattle.
    It contains Harmonielehre, Short Ride..., and The Chairman Dances - which last is an out-take from Nixon in China, fashioned into an independent 12-minute piece of its own. Good music, and good versions. Doctor Atomic is also worthwhile, but the music is a bit sterner than Nixon..., a bit more chromatic, and a bit less tuneful. The story, though, is so powerful - it's about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project, with a text assembled from letters, declassified government documents, and poetry of the period. The only recorded version I'm aware of is a live DVD on Sony, which has good conducting (by Alan Gilbert), good singing (by Gerald Finley and others), but rather static staging (by Penny Woolcock).

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Oreb View Post
    I don't think Adams sits easily alongside Riley, Glass or Reich - largely because I think he is so much better than they are.
    Oh, I disagree! While a lot of Terry Riley's music does nothing for me, his epic string quartet Salome Dances For Peace is as good as anything by Adams (and I like Adams a lot). Reich is more of an acquired taste, but he's one of the greatest composers that the U.S. has right now and quite possibly the most enduring of the minimalists. If Adams and his music disappeared tomorrow, our lives would be the worse, but musical history would not even notice his absence; if Reich and his music disappeared there would be an enormous void.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Sturgeon's Lawyer View Post
    I only have Nixon in China, and love it. Where should I go from here?
    If opera is your thing, stay away from the unfortunately titled The Death of Klinghoffer; it's dire and kitschy.

    the 'least objectionable' minimalist to a general audience
    ... in large measure due to his "mashing" of minimalism's transparency with (New) Romanticism's sweeping emotional expression, reconciling minimalism's upfront pulse patterns with a conventional harmonic idiom and "old fashioned" orchestral rhetoric, and all the while ransacking the musical past for the delectation of "in the know" (post)modern audiences.

    I don't think Adams sits easily alongside Riley, Glass or Reich
    Even Phrygian Gates and Shaker Loops--his most overtly "minimalist" works-- deployed minimalism more as a textural springboard, not--as with Riley, Glass, and Reich--as audible process or linear progression.

    El nino
    As far as "knowing" one's audience, having the children's chorus sing the work's last word--"poetry"--was a stroke of marketing genius, which--rightly or wrongly--only served to reinforce the notion that Adams is a purveyor of "classical music for yuppies".

    Adams is a mixed bag for me, and I drift back and forth to him, but I quite dig his recent Son of Chamber Symphony, his homage to Schoenberg's chamber symphony (though it's not, of course, in Schoenberg's language).
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    W.P.O.D. Dan Marsh's Avatar
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    I really enjoyed Doctor Atomic when I saw it at the Met a few years ago.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Finn_McCool View Post
    A friend of mine made me a copy of some of the stuff from Adams' Earbox release and there was one piece that I really liked. I think it might have been Harmonielehre. It's cyclical and tuneful and not unlike Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells.
    I think the piece you want is Light Over Water, his most melodic and minimal work.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Sordel View Post
    I discovered the big three US minimalists at the same time, back in the 1980s, and at first I liked Glass most, Adams second and Reich third.
    Irrespective of their individual merits, the Big Three Minimalists are Reich, Glass & Riley, with LaMonte Young as the Godfather. In musical terms, Adams was a second generation minimalist. Adams has gone off into neo-classical terrain while the other three still retain more of their earlier ethos. And those of you dismissing Riley because of his earlier work (unjustly I would say) should catch up with the compositions he's written for Kronos Quartet.

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Echoes View Post
    Irrespective of their individual merits, the Big Three Minimalists are Reich, Glass & Riley, with LaMonte Young as the Godfather. In musical terms, Adams was a second generation minimalist.
    In sales terms, LaMonte Young has, largely due to the timescale of his compositions, virtually no sales, and Riley's work is mostly on small labels. No question, if we're looking at influence and important In C is probably more important than any single work written by Adams, but I'm going to stick to my guns and place Adams in a big three with Glass and Reich. It helps that a couple of critical releases (the Grand Pianola Music/Eight Lines pairing by Ransom Wilson and the Variations/Shaker Loops pairing by Michael Tilson Thomas) paired Reich & Adams even though they are quite dissimilar.

    Still, maybe we're a bit early for canon-building in minimalism. A lot of lists would put Morton Feldman in the first rank.

  17. #17
    Riley's best work is available on Columbia Masterworks, so not small label. I do see him as one of the big 3, with Reichs and Adams. But also Glass, and Young, Jon Hassel, Angus Maclise, Billy Name, Yoshi Wada and out there, Pandit Pran Nath.
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    Too bad LaMonte Young chooses not to release tapes of music from Theatre Of Eternal Music, the early/mid 1960s ensemble that featured Young on sopranino sax(in this clip,other tapes have Young on voice),Marian Zazeela on voice drone, John Cale on viola, Tony Conrad on violin, and Angus MacLise on percussion.Later incarnations of TOEM had various personnel.

    Young has claimed that no record company has made him a fair offer to release music from TOEM.A pity, this is music of a very high order,imo.YMMV.
    Last edited by walt; 01-03-2013 at 07:37 AM.
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    Progga mogrooves's Avatar
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    Big 4: Young, Riley, Glass, and Reich.

    Quote Originally Posted by Dana5140 View Post
    But also Glass, and Young, Jon Hassel, Angus Maclise, Billy Name, Yoshi Wada and out there, Pandit Pran Nath.
    .... and Charlemagne Palestine, Barbara Benary, Tony Conrad, Harold Budd, and Phill Niblock, among others.....
    Hell, they ain't even old-timey ! - Homer Stokes

  20. #20
    Yes! Charlemagne Palestine. I completely forgot! Seminal!
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  21. #21
    Boo! walt's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dana5140 View Post
    Yes! Charlemagne Palestine.l!
    Indeed.I recommend:

    Strumming Music
    Four Manifestations on Six Elements
    In Mid-Air
    Schlongo!!daLUVdrone(solo pipe organ)
    "please do not understand me too quickly"-andre gide

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