Thursday, November 04, 1999
Composer's reputation anything but minimalist
BY JANELLE GELFAND
The Cincinnati Enquirer
“In our age,” says American composer John Adams, 52, “a composer has to create his or her own style. You can use elements of what's in the air at the time — in the way that I used minimalism — but it takes a long time for a composer to develop a unique voice.”
Although many know Mr. Adams' work through his widely hailed operas, Nixon in China (1985-86) and The Death of Klinghoffer (1990-91), he found his unique voice a few years earlier in works such as Harmonium (1980).
Mr. Adams conducts the Cincinnati premiere of Harmonium with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the May Festival Chorus in Music Hall this weekend. It is the first minimalist composition to use large-scale orchestral and choral forces.
With its strong sense of pulse and tonal harmonies, Harmonium was directly influenced by the minimalist style being practiced by Steve Reich and Philip Glass — the hypnotic repetition of short patterns.
“But I think I go beyond that, to create a very large, sensual sonic experience which has its roots in composers like Ravel and Sibelius,” Mr. Adams says from his home in Berkeley, Calif. The fact that he has also programmed Sibelius is no coincidence. He hopes that Sibelius' sonic landscape will shed light on his own piece.
Mr. Adams has captured the public's imagination because he is constantly re-inventing himself. His music synthesizes a diverse feast of everything he admires, from Beethoven and Benny Goodman to electronically-produced sounds.
His cranked-up Short Ride in a Fast Machine (1986) owes as much to the big-band writing of Duke Ellington and Stan Kenton as to minimalism, he writes in the liner notes of a fascinating new, 10-CD retrospective, The John Adams Earbox, released this week on Nonesuch.
It is rich, engaging, energetic and satisfying music. Yet, Mr. Adams has inherited the curse of today's composers, who live with the ghosts of Schoenberg and other atonal and 12-tone composers — and the effect they had on the concert-going public.
“If there's a John Adams piece on the symphony program, the concertgoer says, oh, it's some contemporary piece by John Adams, it must be ugly. Let's not go, dear,” he says. “People have come to assume that if it's a new piece, it's going to be unpleasant. And that's a really distressing state of affairs.”
Mr. Adams never tried to write user-friendly music.
“I think a composer has to write to please himself or herself,” he says. “On the other hand, a composer has to have in mind at all times an imaginary dialogue with the audience ... One always has to keep in mind the fact that music is fundamentally a communicative experience.”
Whether visionary or merely inventive, Mr. Adams' music from the beginning was a revolt against the intellectual, East Coast establishment, where he grew up.
He first began to experiment with minimalism as a young Harvard grad, when, disillusioned with the highbrow European tradition espoused by music schools, he fled to California in 1971.
“I would leave the music department having had to study Webern, and would walk across Harvard Yard and hear Jimi Hendrix blaring out of somebody's window,” he says. “I would think, there's something not right about this picture.”
He was in search of “a more tolerant atmosphere, a better mix of cultural experience,” he says. “John Cage was on everybody's lips in those days, and synthesizers, chance music and environmental music. I was very involved in that. I found there was a wonderful sense of play and freedom and humor and experiment going on (in California).”
But he also found much of that superficial. He knew, deep down, his own “meat and potatoes” were Beethoven, Stravinsky and Duke Ellington. He had to find a way to create his own alchemy.
His piece, Shaker Loops (1978) is the first example of what he considers “the real me.” As he began writing opera in the 1980s, he gradually learned to write melody.
“That may sound, to the average reader like, oh gosh, he finally figured out how to invent the wheel,” he says, laughing. “But in fact, writing melody that is original and doesn't sound like someone who lived 100 years ago is a difficult thing to do now.”
In the meantime, he began conducting his own works with major orchestras, enjoying being able to “fly in like Don Juan and have a wonderful week,” without the responsibilities of a music director.
Although he will make his New York Philharmonic debut next month, he does not want to pursue the life of a conductor.
“My real mission in life is to continue to write music” he says.
His current project is an oratorio modeled after Handel's Messiah on the Nativity, with his frequent collaborator, director Peter Sellars. The text is poems by Latin American women. It will premiere in Paris in December 2000.
Where will American music be in the next century? He considers himself as “a cheerful pessimist.”
Orchestras will continue to play the great literature of previous centuries, he believes. But the important composers coming up are not writing for orchestra, but rather for small ensembles.
“I think that orchestra music as we know it will be seen to have had a finite period of flourishing,” he says. “We're at the very tail of it — I consider myself on the coda. Something else is already in its embryonic stages that will replace the orchestra as the current mode of expression.”
Today, Mr. Adams rarely writes for “just plain orchestra.” He is experimenting with music for synthesizers and samplers, even writing pieces for hybrid rock bands.
“I could no more predict what's going to happen in the next 50 years, than Elgar could predict the electric guitar,” he says. “My only hope would be that we continue to move in classical music to a better rapport between the composer and audience, and heal the tremendous rift of suspicion and hostility that began with Schoenberg.”
IF YOU GO
• What: Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, John Adams, conductor; the May Festival Chorus, Robert Porco, director.
• When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
• Where: Music Hall.
• Tickets: $12-$46; $10 students. 381-3300; www.cincinnatisymphony.org
• The program: John Adams, Harmonium; Sibelius, Finlandia; Symphony No. 4 in A Minor.
DNA testing points to 2 rapists
Police raid new Hustler store
On guard, online
Filtering software varies - here's 4 of the best
Internet safety resource guides
Kids' rules for online safety
Tips for parents
Drug costs for seniors continue to rise sharply
Fort Washington workers pounding away
Kids' political donations at issue
Sales-tax holiday gives counties no joy
Students mourn crash victim
$20 M ax to fall on Cincinnati schools
Luken still has magic
New mayor visits old haunt
City Council vote by wards
Ky. Dems see win as rebound
Lost vote key to issue
Patton romped in often Republican N.Ky. precincts
Some close races await walk-in, absentee counts
Change of heart spells levy win
New Miami schools chief exults over bond issue OK
Ohio's voters back schools
Suburban voters warm up to levies
Talawanda will ask another levy
Warren voters shake things up
A post-election thank-you note
Ex-Q102 director throws starry bash
Composer's reputation anything but minimalist
GET TO IT
Serving the Lord and oyster stew
A sister with a mother's touch
Asthma-free mice bred at UC
Chesley to receive Shalom Peace Award
Father charged in death of infant
Fire routs three Avondale families
Fisherman reels in record catfish
Longtime recorder to step down
Middletown prepared for snow
Middletown rejects countywide cable system
New mayor out to boost police morale
State rules for special ed rile school chiefs
Team cleans up by picking up
TRISTATE DIGEST
Union wants new route for 42 bypass
