aworks :: "new" american classical music

On the Transmigration of Souls (1992) /compositional process/

Mark Stryker interviews John Adams. In addition to talking about his self development early on to be able to handle pressure, Adams had this to say about writing On the Transmigration of Souls a year after 9/11:

I suppose part of my image of myself is that I am an American composer and that I ought to be able to respond to something like this. But it was very difficult. I spent the first month just surfing the Internet looking, thinking, sifting things, trying to find what this piece could possibly be.

On the Transmigration of Souls (2002). John Adams /denial/

Fredösphere on John Adams' Transmigration:

Adams chose a solo trumpet to sail above the sea of murmuring sounds. The trumpet recalls Ives' asker of the Unanswered Question, but this trumpet is surrounded by noisier "silence."  We say a trumpet "calls," and for that reason, this sad trumpet well expresses the futile summoning of these notices.

And the Standing Room on Ives' The Unanswered Question:

For years I've had this gnat buzzing around inside my head: why is it that every time I hear the ethereal opening chords of Ives's The Unanswered Question, my brain involuntarily adds a completely incongruous, thumping, techno bass drum line?

I'll hear On the Transmigration of Souls next month, when my year-long Adams sabbatical ends. Actually, I am thinking of working my way through the composer's work, oldest to newest, so it may not be next month.

Not everyone liked it, but I thought Run Lola Run was a great movie and the soundtrack was good. But, I'm probably better off if I don't listen to it right now since I don't want to link it in my mind with Ives' greatest piece. Interesting (to me anyway) that my listening habits are starting to be based on denial. Now that I think about it, earlier this evening, I skipped over the Detroit Chamber Winds version of The Unanswered Question; I just wasn't in the mood. Although tonight, I did go on to hear John Cage's The Seasons, Daughter of the Lonesome Isle, and In the Name of the Holocaust. Not exactly light-hearted fair but uplifting in some imponderable way.

Justin Oser (from Oakland) reviews Margaret Leng Tan's Cage CD on Amazon:

I can scarcely imagine better versions of these wonderful piano pieces. The pieces span a variety of types of pianos (prepared piano, toy piano, regular piano, bowed piano) and moods.

On the Transmigration of Souls (2002). John Adams /music/

I'll interpret Kinjo's off-hand edit to mean that Schoenberg, for better or worse, is no longer contemporary. More importantly, Kinjo comments on the music of On the Transmigration of Souls:

The piece is comprised of street noises, choral voices, spoken word, and the symphony orchestra. The musical aspect of the piece is slightly disappointing to me. It doesn't reach the emotional nadir that Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings set (IMHO) as the gold standard for mournful music. Neither is it formless enough to really feel experimental or expressionistic.

On the other hand, he likes that among the voices used are "foreign-sounding" ones.

On the Transmigration of Souls (2002). John Adams /Grammy/

On the Transmigration of Souls won several Grammies:

1. Best Classical Album: (Award to the Artist(s) and to the Album Producer(s) if other than the Artist.) Adams: On The Transmigration Of Souls. Lorin Maazel, conductor; John Adams & Lawrence Rock, producers (Brooklyn Youth Chorus & New York Choral Artists; New York Philharmonic) [Nonesuch Records]

2. Best Orchestral Performance: (Award to the Conductor and to the Orchestra.) Adams: On The Transmigration Of Souls. Lorin Maazel, conductor (Brooklyn Youth Chorus & New York Choral Artists; New  York Philharmonic). [Nonesuch Records] 

3. Best Classical Contemporary Composition:  (A Composer's Award. (For a contemporary classical composition composed within the last 25 years, and released for the first time during the Eligibility Year.)) Adams: On The Transmigration Of Souls. John Adams (Lorin Maazel; Brooklyn Youth Chorus & New York Choral Artists; New York Philharmonic). [Nonesuch Records; Publisher: Hendon Music.] Adams has won in the past for Nixon in China and El Dorado.

Philharmonic President Zarin Mehta (via WNYC): The award has special meaning because of the circumstances surrounding this work, which John Adams wrote under incredible pressures of both time and emotion. The work is a testament to his great sensitivity to the human challenge of this subject and to the foresight of Lorin Maazel, who oversaw the commission, and who did such a fantastic job of bringing all the forces together to create a memorable performance.

Other American classical winners:

• Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with Orchestra) (Award to the Instrumental Soloist(s) and to the Conductor.)  Previn: Violin Concerto "Anne-Sophie"/Bernstein: Serenade. André Previn, conductor; Anne-Sophie Mutter, violin (Boston Symphony Orchestra & London Symphony Orchestra). [Deutsche Grammophon]

• Best Engineered Album, Classical (An Engineer's Award. (Artist names appear in parenthesis.)) Higdon: City Scape; Concerto For Orchestra. Jack Renner, engineer (Robert Spano)[Telarc]

• Best Classical Vocal Performance. (Award to the Vocal Soloist(s).) Ives: Songs (The Things Our Fathers Loved; The Housatonic At Stockbridge, Etc.) Susan Graham, mezzo soprano (Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano). Track from: Ives: Concord Sonata; Songs [Warner Classics]

Note: Pierre-Laurent Aimard deserves a vocal performance honorable mention on Ives' Ann Street, calling out New York cross-streets ("Broadway", "Nassau crosses Ann Street"). I relish the accented interjections; this was last year's micro-highlight for me. Graham's part is of course good as well. Since the song is quite short, Amazon streams all of it, although it sounds much better on CD.

On the Transmigration of Souls, for orchestra, chorus, children’s choir and pre-recorded soundtrack (2002). John Adams

The Standing Room has an excellent introduction to John Adams' On the Transmigration of Souls, out on CD this week:

"Transmigration" is Adams's Pulitzer-winning commission from the New York Philharmonic to commemorate those who died on 9/11 -- a >20-minute work for orchestra, choruses (adult & children together) and a taped surround soundtrack created by Mark Grey. The texts are tiny excerpts of very personal remembrances from relatives and friends, pulled primarily from the missing persons signs that were posted in the aftermath...

I have yet to hear this other than the 30-second Real clip on Amazon.  Update: Mark Kanny reviews in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

Adams has composed a masterpiece of public music, not limited in appeal to classical music fans or to any political perspective. He is one of America's top composers, a compelling candidate to be a Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra composer-of-the-year sometime, and serves a national role in this piece.

Clark Bustard reviews in the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

"On the Transmigration of Souls" is not great music in the usual sense. No melody, figure or gesture of musical rhetoric may linger even after repeated hearings. What sticks with you is the effect - maybe the better word is affect, in the old meaning of music that imposes feelings or opens one up to them - of the combination of abstract and representational sounds and the resonance of the words.

An Associated Press review:

It's a daunting task for any artist to create a work that reflects the seismic impact of 9-11. Yet On the Transmigration of Souls comes remarkably close to achieving that. Adams' artistic skill and contrapuntal ingenuity weave this sonic collage into a heart-breaking, deeply moving memorial that seems to encompass all of the grief, anger and transcendance of those tragic events of three years ago.

Update 2: Bradley Bambarger reviews in the Star-Ledger:

That said, "On the Transmigration of Souls" isn't a work to be played repeatedly; the piece's extramusical associations are just too potent. Adams drew the text from notices for missing persons posted in New York after the World Trade Center tragedy. As sung by the chorus and read on tape, the notices run like a red thread through the musical fabric, with the words ranging from simple physical descriptions to outpourings of love. Each has a deeply touching resonance. Although scored for vast orchestra and double chorus, the work reserves full volume for a few gut-wrenching measures.

Stephanie von Buchau in the Alameda Times-Star:

Well, Adams has written a true Pulitzer piece. It may not be academic, but it is a safe, craftsmanly 25-minutes, an elegant combination of orchestra (NY Philharmonic), chorus (New York Choral Artists), children (Brooklyn Youth Chorus), solo trumpet (a la Charles Ives' The Unanswered Question) and text readers...Still, it is not much of a thing musically -- too tame, too ephemeral, a project that seems a far remove from Adams' usually flinty Yankee humanism. I much prefer his contentious, roiling choruses of Jews and Palestinians from "The Death of Klinghoffer." They are political-social events actually made into art, not just underlined in once-removed sorrow.

Charles Ward in the Houston Chronicle:

At times, Adams' multilayered style diminishes the shot-in-the-gut power of the quoted text, but the compensation is a brooding, powerful meditation on a horrific event. On the Transmigration of Souls is not music to fill time or the background. It demands careful, detailed listening.