John Coolidge Adams, b. February 15, 1947, is a minimalist composer and the creator of several sensational contemporary operas.
A native of Worcester, Massachusetts, Adams' childhood was spread out across several New England states. He had a musical childhood: he learned the clarinet from his father when he was quite small, grew up attending Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts, and began composing his own music at ten (it first graced his ears when he was around thirteen or fourteen).
After obtaining two degrees from Harvard - earning the distinction of being the first student at America's oldest higher learning institution to be permitted to submit a musical composition as an undergraduate thesis - in 1971, he made the shift from East Coast to left coast that informs his piece Dharma at Big Sur. In his own words:
When I was asked by [ ... ] the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s music director to compose a special piece for the opening of Disney Hall in LA, I immediately began searching my mind for an image, either verbal or pictorial, that could summon up the feelings of being an emigrant to the Pacific Coast—as I am, and as are so many who’ve made the journey here, both physically and spiritually.
I wanted to express the moment, the so-called “shock of recognition”, when one reaches the edge of the continental land mass. ... Rather than gently yielding ground to the water the Western shelf drops off violently, often from dizzying heights, as it does at Big Sur, the stretch of coastal precipice midway between Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara. Here the current pounds and smashes the littoral in a slow, lazy rhythm of terrifying power. For a newcomer the first exposure produces a visceral effect of great emotional complexity. [ ... It evokes a ] sense of liberation and excitement, an ecstasy that is nevertheless tinged with that melancholy expressed in the first of Buddha’s Four Noble Truths: “All life is sorrowful.” (1)
(Dharma at Big Sur is the work that definitively got me hooked on Adams's music. I'm a musical illiterate - I barely consider myself qualified to do this writeup - but I hear whale song, wind and water, great heights, and California in Dharma at Big Sur. I heard it for the first time shortly after spending an inspiring weekend in California, so it always turns a key in my Midwestern heart.)
Adams spent the next thirteen years in a teaching position at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and as composer-in-residence for the San Francisco Symphony. He still lives in the Bay Area, but his music has become a national and international phenomenon - he's been distinguished with an honorary doctorate from Cambridge and an honorary membership in Phi Beta Kappa, and has been an Artist-in-Association with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. And who doesn't like the BBC?
I find the politics of Adams' career pretty fascinating, too. In 2003, his 9/11 commemorative composition for "orchestra, children's choir, and pre-recorded tape," On the Transmigration of Souls, won a Pulitzer prize and three Grammy Awards. I'll inappropriately insert his eloquence on his own work again:
I want to avoid words like "requiem" or "memorial" when describing this piece because they too easily suggest conventions that this piece doesn’t share. If pressed, I’d probably call the piece a "memory space". It’s a place where you can go and be alone with your thoughts and emotions. The link to a particular historical event – in this case to 9/11 – is there if you want to contemplate it. But I hope that the piece will summon human experience that goes beyond this particular event.
[ ... ]
I am always nervous with the term "healing" as it applies to a work of art. I am reminded that we Americans can find a lot of things "healing". These days a criminal sentenced to death is executed and then we speak of "healing". It’s perplexing. So it’s not my intention to attempt "healing" in this piece. (2)
In my mind, these expressions of the underpinnings of On the Transmigration of Souls do a lot to explain how Adams' work diverges from acceptable Americanism, possibly why his other works haven't been so well received in the United States, and certainly why he has the honor of belonging to the U.S. Homeland Security department's official blacklist.
Three of his operas have been based on recent history, and embody politics in a way that's less easy to gloss over in nationalistic fervor: Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, and Doctor Atomic. In John W. Freeman's book The Metropolitan Opera: Stories of the Great Operas, these are referred to as CNN operas.
Nixon in China drew attention for its critical slant on Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (and how can you even talk about Nixon without sticking your tongue out at him just a little). Nixon in China's staging incorporates a giant projection of the actual footage from Nixon's visits to Beijing, emphasizing the towering press presence (televised news being just a few decades old at this point).
The Death of Klinghoffer is based on the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro by four members of the Palestian Liberation Front. The Death of Klinghoffer has been called anti-Semitic, anti-American, and anti-Palestinian. Yes, all three. After 9/11, the Boston Symphony Orchestra self-censored a performance of Klinghoffer's "Chorus of Exiled Palestinians" and "Chorus of Exiled Jews" - why, it's unclear to me, since Israel and Palestine have little to do with 9/11, except, of course, if you consider all dissent to be unpatriotic.
Doctor Atomic is the story of the invention and use of J. Robert Oppenheimer's atomic bomb. Doctor Atomic addresses the U.S. government's mishandling of the first nuclear test (panic in Los Alamos the night of the first test was such that several soldiers had to be sedated and removed), Oppenheimer's association with Communism, the opposition of many scientists to the work being done on the bomb, nuclear guilt, and peace. These are still sensitive themes, despite being solidly grounded in very recent memory. I haven't seen Doctor Atomic staged in person, but it's famous for its great reveal of the bomb itself, which is, true to life, kind of weird-looking.
List of Works(3)
Stage Works
Nixon in China
opera in three acts (1985-87)
The Death of Klinghoffer
opera in two acts (1990-91)
I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky
songplay in two acts (1995)
El Niño
A Nativity Oratorio (1999-2000)
Doctor Atomic
opera in two acts (2004-5)
A Flowering Tree
opera in two acts (2006)
Orchestra
Common Tones in Simple Time
(1979)
Harmonium
for chorus and large orchestra (1980-81)
Shaker Loops
version for string orchestra (1983)
Harmonielehre
(1984-85)
The Chairman Dances
foxtrot for orchestra (1985)
Tromba lontana
fanfare for orchestra (1985)
Short Ride in a Fast Machine
fanfare for orchestra (1986)
Fearful Symmetries
(1988)
Eros Piano
for piano and orchestra (1989)
Violin Concerto
(1993)
El Dorado
(1991)
Lollapalooza
(1995)
Slonimsky’s Earbox
(1996)
Century Rolls
for piano and orchestra (1996)
Naive and Sentimental Music
(1997-98)
Guide to Strange Places
(2001)
On the Transmigration of Souls
for orchestra, chorus, children’s choir and pre-recorded soundtrack
(2002)
My Father Knew Charles Ives
(2003)
Dharma at Big Sur
for electric violin and orchestra (2003)
Doctor Atomic Symphony
(2007)
Voice and orchestra
The Nixon Tapes
three suites for voices and orchestra from Nixon in China (1987)
The Wound-Dresser
for baritone voice and orchestra (1988)
Chamber Music
Piano Quintet
(1970)
Shaker Loops
for string septet (1978)
Chamber Symphony
(1992)
John’s Book of Alleged Dances
for string quartet (1994)
Road Movies
for violin & piano (1995)
Gnarly Buttons
for clarinet and chamber ensemble (1996)
Son of Chamber Symphony
(2007)
String Quartet
(2008)
Other ensemble works
American Standard
for unspecified chamber ensemble (1973)
Christian Zeal & Activity
for unspecified chamber ensemble (1973)
Grounding
for six voices, three saxophones and live electronics (1975)
Grand Pianola Music
for 2 pianos, 3 female voices, winds, brass & percussion (1982)
Scratchband
for amplified ensemble (1996)
Chorus
Ktaadn
for mixed chorus, osciallators and filters (1974)
Harmonium
for chorus and large orchestra (1980-81)
Choruses from The Death of Klinghoffer
(1991)
On the Transmigration of Souls
for orchestra, chorus, children’s choir and pre-recorded soundtrack
(2002)
Tape and electronic compostions
Heavy Metal
two-channel tape (1970)
Studebaker Love Music
two channel tape (1976)
Onyx
four channel tape (1976)
Light Over Water
two channel tape (1983)
Hoodoo Zephyr
(1992-93)
Piano solo or duet
Phrygian Gates
for piano (1977)
China Gates
for piano (1977)
Hallelujah Junction
for two pianos (1996)
American Berserk
for solo piano (2001)
Film score
Matter of Heart
music for the documentary film about C.G. Jung (1982)
An American Tapestry
music for the film directed by Gregory Nava, produced by Barbara Martinez-Jitner, & released on the Showtime Cable Channel
Arrangements and Orchestrations
The Black Gondola
(orchestration of La Lugubre Gondola by Franz Liszt) (1990)
Berceuse élégiaque
(arrangement for small orchestra of Busoni’s original) (1991)
Le Livre de Baudelaire
mezzo soprano & orchestra (orchestration of four songs by Claude Debussy from Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire) (1993)
La Mufa
(orchestration of tango by Astor Piazzolla) (1995)
Todo Buenos Aires
(orchestration of tango by Astor Piazzolla) (1996)
Six Songs by Charles Ives
arranged for voice and chamber orchestra (1989-93)
(1) (2) Quotations are Adams' words as published on his website, earbox.com.
(3): also plagiarized from earbox.com.
Today I learned to make brackets . Thanks, Custodian!