aworks :: "new" american classical music

Fellow Traveler (2008). John Adams /longstanding titan/

The Kronos Quartet plays Carnegie Hall tonight:

John Adams, that longstanding titan of American minimalism, brings gravitas to the program with his compact, exhilarating new work, Fellow Traveler.

Son of Chamber Symphony (2007). John Adams /aws 2007.5/

Here's the final post to finish my slow-blog of the Alarm Will Sound concert at Stanford...

Parents are the bones on which children sharpen their teeth. -Peter Ustinov

In today's Ask Mick LaSalle, Mick reiterates the idea that each work of art should be judged based on its intent, rather than in comparison with other works. As a consumer rather than a producer of art, I don't necessarily agree with this. Regardless, in the case of the premiere Friday night of John Adams' newest work, Son of Chamber Symphony, given the title, it's all but impossible to not compare it with its precedessor, Chamber Symphony.

Some comments based on a first impression of a first performance:

• Compared to Chamber Symphony, Son of Chamber Symphony is less wacky and probably more worthwhile. The work strikes me as more grown-up compared to its parent.
• Compared to the original, Son of Chamber Symphony more effectively uses the smaller and compact ensemble, provides richer timbres (was that a hand drum?), and has a surprisingly subtle ending.
• Adams' use of woodwinds was some of the best work I've heard him do for those instruments, both combined and individually, except for maybe Gnarly Buttons (the latter's moo not withstanding).
  
• Chamber Symphony was inspired by, among other things, cartoon music. In Son of Chamber Music, I imagine the second movement being about cartoon characters at the end of filming an episode and having to transition back to the normal banality and concerns of everyday life. Think Bugs Bunny asking "what's really up, doc?" versus the more superficial "what's up, doc?"
• Lately, I've been listening to Thelonious Monk, Conlon Nancarrow, and Duke Ellington. Son of Chamber Symphony could be said to build on the rhythm and clarity of the latter two composers (although not the idiosyncratic Monk). There's a Conlon Nancarrow interview by Charles Amirkhanian where Charles suggests that unlike other serious composers of the time, Nancarrow had an authenticity derived from actually playing jazz trumpet. Similarly, at least in this chamber setting, I suspect Adams has benefited from his clarinetist father, from listening as a kid to Bennie Goodman, and from playing clarinet himself in a small community orchestra.
• This will get me booted out of the contemporary electronica music club but uncharacteristically, I found the amplified strings somewhat annoying.
• Since Son of Chamber Symphony does not have the benefit of fifteen years of cultural assimilation that its parent has had, feel free to check back with this blog in 2022 for a follow-up assessment...

In April, Son of Chamber Symphony will be used with choreography by Mark Morris in a San Francisco Ballet program. Finally, Frank Oteri's program notes talk about the significance of the commission:

Its birth into the world is the result of a rather extraordinary commission involving the sister and brother-in-law of Stanford Lively Arts Artistic and Executive Director Jenny Bilfeld. Eddi Van Auken and her husband, Van, a Stanford Business School graduate are both cancer survivors and decided to commission Adams' new work in honor of the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that is the nation's largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to eradicating lung cancer.

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aws aworks posts: 2007.1 2007.2 2007.3 2007.4 2006.1 2006.2 2006.3 2006.4 2006.5.
chamber symphony aworks posts

 

Tromba Lontana (1986). John Adams

Congratulations on John Adams' fortieth birthday. Ok, that was twenty years ago but at least it was documented in a KPFA radio show (now available on archive.org) where Charles Amirkhanian interviewed the composer. I've listened to the first hour so far and I have several comments:

• Twenty years later, I'll  say the novelty of the "digital compact disc" has worn off, and it is quaint to hear the two gentleman discuss the tradeoffs between CD and LP.
• This was recorded while Adams was writing Nixon in China, and it's not clear they knew the impact of what was about to happen.
• The always erudite composer was in the middle of reading The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and was hinting at parallels with the U.S. Several decades later, here's hoping he is still wrong.
• Uh, the parallels between Tromba Lontana and Charles Ives' The Unanswered Question never occurred to me. Adams also comments how he was trying to orchestrally reproduce the delay effects of tape and electronics.

Wikipedia: Tromba Lontana (lit. "distant trumpet") is a piece written by American minimalist composer John Adams in 1986. The piece was composed for the Houston Symphony in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Texas' declaration of independence from Mexico. It contains the muted voices of two trumpets, as if expressing the ghosts of the past.

I now have an ear-worm of the trumpets in said piece. This replaces Radiohead's A Punch Up at a Wedding that has been repeating off and on in my head since Tuesday.

Thom Yorke: The thing I remember most about America is that it's silly. That can be quite a relief at times.

The Chairman Dances (1985). John Adams /like my opera/

Am I the only person who subscribes to both The Wire and Wired magazines?

Anyway, the new issue of The Wire kicks off with Chris Bohn proclaiming modern opera's lack of success portraying "dictators and demagogues" e.g. in Nixon in China:

Their tepidly satirical burlesques and numbingly inane repetitions add up to mildly noxious entertainments that hardly deliver justice for their ostensible subjects' deeds. To these ears, they're left seriously wanting by their composer's desire for his opera creations to be liked.

I naively assume all opera composers want their art to be liked, at least by someone if not everyone. And I'll grant The Chairman Dances doesn't fit into the more extreme aesthetic of the magazine. Ok, I'll skip ahead to the book review of Cornelius Cardew: A Reader:

After witnessing a concert by John Cage and David Tudor in 1958 Cardew became preoccupied with Cage and his American avant garde associates; that gave way in time to his search for viable popular forms to communicate urgent political messages.

I'll argue that the political informs the musical and not vice versa. But having only heard Cardew's music via cacophonous podcast, I can't say if he achieved his goal.

the chairman dances: earbox wikipedia john adams: popularity without pandering by peter gutmann

Scratchband (1996). John Adams /aws: part 3 of 8/

After shopping and idling on Sunday, it was time for watching...

After reading some of the recent hype for Alarm Will Sound, I had high expectations on how they presented the music of John Adams. And overall, it was fun and spirited.

My first thought upon seeing the group was, where are the strings? Oh, this piece is for an electrified band. Got it.

The body language of the group clearly indicated a sense of enjoyment of the music. And get down and get funky, bass clarinetist and oboist!; Isn't oboe hard to play standing up? At least in a later piece, the contrabassoonist was sitting. I might also put the drummer on risers. After all, that's what they would have done to show off John Bonham, Matt Cameron or Keith Moon. Of course, that might lead to fog machines and video screens and...

See SFMike's censored photos of the concert for a better look.

Finally, this boomer would like to see Adams compose more for electric guitar...

The Chairman Dances (1985). John Adams

Recent performances in a phrase...

Andrew Woodrow on the Toronto Symphony Orchestra:

• The Chairman Dances. John Adams - a great opportunity to dazzle
• Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. Leonard Bernstein - still sparkling
• Adagio for strings. Samuel Barber - mesmerizing, at it always is
• Rhapsody in Blue. George Gershwin - But he [Darrett Zusko] played against the orchestra

Steve Smith on the Brooklyn Philharmonic:

• untitled fanfare. John Corigliano - who gamely blew antiphonal riffs seemingly borrowed from the theme to TV western Bonanza on kazoos
• Symphonies of Wind Instruments. Igor Stravinsky - an introverted rendition
• Hymn to Aten from Akknaten. Philip Glass -  an aria that is arguably Philip Glass's loveliest creation

Ben Mattison previews a premiere at Indiana University:

• Our Town. Ned Rorem - According to IU, many composers, including Aaron Copland, have sought to set Wilder's play to music in the past, but the Wilder opposed the idea.

SFMike on the San Francisco Ballet (with his usual fine photos):

• Rodeo. Aaron Copland - tomboy wants a man and can't get one until she puts on an ugly dress and dances with the two cutest guys

Harmonium (1985). John Adams /paul griffiths/

I now have Paul Griffiths' The Penguin Companion to Classical Music. Scanning through the A's, items of interest:

• I didn't realize Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields is so old -- founded in 1959. I had to check to make sure Sir Neville Marriner is still living. He is and still conducting. Wikipedia says ASMF was founded in 1956; the ASMF website says 1958.
• Paul Hindemith was the first to include the accordion in his Kammermusic No. 1 in 1922.
• The tempo marking adagio dates from 1611.
• John (Coolidge) Adams' "breakthrough piece" was Harmonium. Really? It's a great piece but for me personally, it was Shaker Loops and for general renown, I would say Nixon in China. Or maybe even Harmonielehre.
• John (Luther) Adams was born in Mississippi.
• Thomas Ades influences include Conlon Nancarrow.
• Theodor Adorno started a 12-note opera based on Huckleberry Finn.
• The entry for Aeolian harp mentions Chopin but not Henry Cowell. Cowell stream here.
• Notable western-style but African-born composers are Kevin Volans and someone named Rainier.
• The first performances of Stravinsky's Agon in 1957 were in LA and New York.
• Aimez-vous Brahms? was a 1959 novel by Francoise Sagan.
• Stephen Albert was an American composer who died at the age of 51.
• William Albright was an American composer who died at the age of 53.
• The term album is "less commonly used of CDs."
• "Much of Ives' music" is considered aleatoric i.e. "music whose essential substance is not fully determined."
• An ostinato can be considered an algorithm.
• There is such a thing as an alto clarinet.
• Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors was commissioned by NBC-TV.
• Amateur originally signified "a person of gentle birth with a passion for some branch of the arts, learning or philosophy."
• I often confuse the American Composers Orchestra and the American Symphony Orchestra. And the American Federation of Musicians also represents Canada.
• Varese's Ecuatorial is an "extraordinary effort at creative retrieval" with respect to Amerindians.
• The entry of amplification doesn't mention John Adams.
• Laurie Anderson is close to "contemporary critical theory."

Hoodoo Zephyr (1993). John Adams

  And to complete the Amoeba Holiday Trifecta...

In SF today for other reasons (including seeing the superb Felicity Huffman at the Bridge Theatre) but swung by Amoeba in the Haight. I didn't have time to peruse the bargain bins but did end up with four CDs:

• John Adams. Hoodoo Zephyr. I can't find my old copy so this was a used replacement. In a first re-listen, for electronic music, it sounds surprisingly mundane. Adams apparently needs real instruments for his orchestration to shine.
• Mexican Piano Music by Manuel M. Ponce. Expanding the "a" in "aworks."
• Konono No. 1. Lubuaku. Haven't heard this yet. I think it's some budget live concert. CD was manufactured in Austria.
• Copland Chamber Music. Vanbrugh Quartet. I'm still trying to understand why Copland didn't achieve much with respect to chamber music.

Doctor Atomic (2005). John Adams

With a headline of "Marker leader in the opera of ideas: The US composer does not shy away from tought subject matter. But he also relishes the discipline of writing for a broad audience," Andrew Clark interviews John Adams in today's Financial Times. The article describes his upcoming opera Doctor Atomic:

The score includes a form of musique concrete -- industrial and military sounds, the sound of the weather and recordings of 1940s pop music, to be filtered through speakers round the auditorum.

The drama is set on the day before the first test of the atomic bomb. Adams says the libretto includes "real dialogue, violent arguments, and a love scene."

In broader discussion, when asked if he is a political composer, Adams hedges but says that America was founded "by religious zealots and venture capitalists. They seem to be in control as we speak." Since I work for a venture-funded company, I don't know what to make of that remark.

Talking about his career and commercialism, Adams says he was glad that at age 35, he decided to not pursue an academic career. He also takes a jab at IRCAM and what it represents by commenting that the French government "might be scandalised by a composer who has an audience."

robert gable: aworks adams culture wars era. adams: official del.icio.us wikipedia google news yahoo audio singingfish amazon. doctor atomic: official iron tongue of midnight. 2005

Wavemaker (1978). John Adams

Peter Koht previews the Cabrillo Music Festival including a quote from David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet about their return to the festival:

...the group's first violinist and artistic director David Harrington remembers their first appearance at Cabrillo. "We played the world premiere of a John Adams piece called The Wavemaker, which eventually evolved into Shaker Loops."

Wavemaker was a string quartet written the same year as Shaker Loops. Adams on the piece from americanmavericks:

...The "waves" of Wavemaker were to be long sequences of oscillating melodic cells that created a rippling, shimmering complex of patterns like the surface of a slightly agitated pond or lake. But my technique lagged behind my inspiration, and this rippling pond very quickly went dry. Wavemaker crashed and burned at its first performance. The need for a larger, thicker ensemble and for a more flexible, less theory-bound means of composing became very apparent.

robert gable: aworks adams consciousness revolution era. del.icio.us: adams. wikipedia: adams 1978. google news: john adams cabrillo music festival. earbox.com.