aworks :: "new" american classical music

Doctor Atomic (2005). John Adams /more visceral nature/

 

operaramblings:

This piece is every bit as good as Nixon in China and probably surpasses it in emotional impact due to the more visceral nature of the material.

Nixon in China is more musically appealing but may in fact have less emotional impact. Hmm...

• Nixon Agonistes photo credit: (flickr/briannaorg)
• Nixon in China at the Hult Center (suemtravels.wordpress.com)
• Alice Goodman: The furore that finished me (guardian.co.uk)
• Lessons of the 40 years since Nixon went to China (globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com)
• Editorial | In praise of ... The Death of Klinghoffer (guardian.co.uk)

Related articles

Doctor Atomic (2006). John Adams /creation and creator/

Image via Wikipedia

The Metropolitan Opera blog on technical rehearsal of the John Adams opera:

“The bomb itself was a crazy looking thing,” he [set designer Julian Crouch] said. “Most bombs are honed through technology, but the atomic bomb was incredibly homemade. It was like a one-off. They weren’t mass producing at this stage, anyway. They used things like Scotch tape to tape things in. It’s insane. It looks crazy. It’ll come down and people will think it’s an exaggeration but it’s not, it’s absolutely an insane looking thing, like science fiction, like someone’s brain with wires all over it.”

Wikipedia on whether Robert Oppenheimer would like Adams' opera:

There is no attempt to "explain" Oppenheimer or render him in simplistic terms. However, Robert Oppenheimer, the actual physicist, famously disliked opera, and was wary of dramatists who over-sentimentalized the story of his life.

Doctor Atomic (2006). John Adams /new "new"/

Soundamus is a service to flag new releases of artists you listen to. You enter your last.fm username e.g. eastmp and it generates a list of relevant new recordings. Among other items, my list has:

• the DVD of Adams' Doctor Atomic, out today (at least on amazon.fr).
• an upcoming CD of Adam's The Flowering Tree
• the upcoming Philip Glass Nonesuch retrospective
• a new Oasis release
• Pete Seeger At 89
• TV on the Radio
• a Peter Garland album
• a slew of Dennis Russell Davies recordings
• Steffen Schleiermacher playing Morton Feldman
• ...

This seems like such an obvious yet useful service...

Doctor Atomic (2006). John Adams /DVD?/

The Reverberate Hills notes of a recording to come of the John Adams opera, Doctor Atomic:

I see that Opus Arte lists among its August releases a two-disc set of the Netherlands Opera production of Dr Atomic.

Opus Arte has a short clip of the DVD that looks more dramatic than I remembered.

Doctor Atomic (2006). John Adams /the making of the opera of the making of the atomic bomb/

oboeinsight points to Wonders Are Many, an upcoming documentary of the making of John Adams' Doctor Atomic. Watching the preview makes me wonder if Doctor Atomic itself would have been better as a film rather than an opera, given the rich visual material that could have been used.

The symphonic version of Doctor Atomic will be played at this year's Cabrillo Music Festival in Santa Cruz:

This is a piece considered by some critics to be “a significant leap forward for Adams as a composer.” The work includes passages from the overture, Oppenheimer’s Baudelaire soliloquy, the electrical storm music, "Batter my heart," and the culminating “Countdown” music.

Doctor Atomic (2005). John Adams /as we, transfixed, made history/

Wynne Delacoma previews the December performance of Doctor Atomic by the Lyric Opera:

It's fitting that Lyric is bringing "Doctor Atomic" to Chicago, the city where the first sustained nuclear reaction was achieved on Dec. 2, 1942. Working for months in secret in an abandoned squash court under the stands of the University of Chicago's Stagg Field, at 57th and Ellis, a team headed by Enrico Fermi created the technology that would move an atomic bomb from the realm of science fiction to reality.

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john von rhein: john adams and chicago. aworks: doctor atomic. de anza college: act 1, scene 1 - nixon in china

Doctor Atomic Symphony (2007). John Adams /what would varèse think?/

The BBC announcer comments at the end of the premiere of Doctor Atomic Symphony:

A highly charged score for a highly charged period in American history.

Based on one pass at listening to the BBC stream, compared to the opera, this version was only moderately charged and maybe not as weird as I imagined. I knew the electronic overtures had been dropped but it's possible I miss the odd staging as well.

Here's what I said a year ago about the opera:

I still haven't decided if the music of Doctor Atomic was something of merit or not. It was in Adams' Nixon in China, despite the composer saying he used the orchestra as if it were a "ukelele." A year later, the electronic sounds of Doctor Atomic remain the most memorable.

Prior aworks posts after seeing the opera and then seeing it again show my mixed reaction at the time. And here are some quotes about the influence of Edgard Varèse on Doctor Atomic.

Next up on that BBC stream, Norman Lebrecht interviews Peter Sellars and they talk about Sellars' early interest in snakes and marionettes, among other topics.

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aworks: doctor atomic

Doctor Atomic Symphony (2007). John Adams /proms premiere/

John Adams' symphonic version of his Doctor Atomic just premiered at a Proms concert. BBC (for now) has a stream. The piece is one hour, 27 minutes into the Prom 50 program but the Real Audio player allows you to scroll to that point.

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aworks: doctor atomic

Doctor Atomic Symphony (2005). /new sounds?/

After some thoughtful follow-up posts by Musical Perceptions and A View from the Podium, I'd like to amplify, er, ponder the electro-acoustic topic some more.

First, I'll accept the premise that "symphonic and chamber music is overwhelmingly acoustic music." Still, I think I'm ok if Cal Performances wants to electronically assist Zellerbach Hall, since depending on where one sits, it can be either barn- or cave-like. The smaller Hertz Hall on the other hand...

And when I named some canonic electronic art music, I deliberately excluded John Adams' orchestral works. Is Adams' use of synthesized sound in works like A Short Ride in a Fast Machine, Chamber Symphony, and El Dorado (the last two links nsfw -- annoying automatic clips) fundamentally good? Or will the approach ultimately be rendered archaic and dated? Kenneth Woods would presumably argue the latter but I'm not sure. Adams' orchestration appeals but is that because or despite the electronic sounds? I did enjoy the "noisy parts" of Doctor Atomic but his all-electronic CD demonstrates his need for acoustic instruments as part of the mix.

Note that Adams' upcoming Doctor Atomic Symphony, premiering in Saint Louis next year, appears to only use acoustic instruments.

By the way, here's the symphonic content derived from the opera:

Among the music incorporated and reworked into this 30-minute symphony are passages from the overture, Oppenheimer’s Baudelaire soliloquy, the electrical storm music, “Batter my heart”, and the culminating “Countdown” music.

aworks post on alarm will sound's rendition of an adams electronic track (focusing on the visual performance; i still don't know if i liked what i heard).
how come so many of these upcoming performances of adams' music are outside the u.s.?
detroit vs. st. louis in the world series again this year?

Doctor Atomic (2005). John Adams /unreasonable expectations/

Some thoughts on opera and Doctor Atomic...

Soho the Dog comments on opera in general:

But opera is, for the most part, about inflating human emotions to gargantuan proportions: we thrill to see ourselves writ large, but it doesn't move us beyond the experience of this world.

And it's the gargantuan proportions that I find unappealing. For example, seeing Bernstein's small-scale Trouble in Tahiti was, in hindsight, a more satisfying experience than seeing Doctor Atomic. Which was the better "hearing" experience? Hard to say. One of the Soho the Dog's commenters suggests Bernstein's Mass as the best, albiet failed, attempt at the Great American Opera.

Then, Kinderkuchen criticizes John Adams' compositional skills for emphasizing relevance at the expense of humanity:

He just leaves out even the tiniest representation of human emotions.

While it's true the Doctor Atomic characters weren't particularly compelling, if the work wasn't  somehow relevant to contemporary life, I would have never attended. As another example, I didn't even bother to attend the Ligeti  opera in San Francisco several years ago even though he's a favored composer, probably because I expected it to be some stylized, Euro-oriented production. On the other hand, Philip Glass' Akhnaten in Oakland had the trick where the audience pretends to be on a contemporary Egyptian tour as you enter the theatre. This, plus imagining that George Bush is Akhnaten, in both ascent and fall, made for compelling drama (on top of excellent direction and performance).

I still haven't decided if the music of Doctor Atomic was something of merit or not. It was in Adams' Nixon in China, despite the composer saying he used the orchestra as if it were a "ukelele." A year later, the electronic sounds of Doctor Atomic remain the most memorable.

Finally, Kinderkuchen also mentions the pre-opera talk by Peter Sellars. I managed to see the John Adams-equivalent (twice). I have to say Adams' talk about the opera was witty, sophisticated and interesting, both in describing the inherent drama in the subject matter and in the challenges with creating the art. It's not clear the opera met those same standards...

The conclusion here is how I apparently expect opera to be relevant, emotional, intellectually engaging, musically rewarding and yet not overwhelming as a spectacle. Maybe my expectations are a bit too high, explaining why I only subscribed to the San Francisco Opera for a year. The live simulcast at Stanford next month of Rigoletto is an intriguing idea, though...