John Coolidge Adams (born February 15, 1947) is an American composer and conductor whose music is rooted in
minimalism
In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Do ...
. Among the most regularly performed composers of
contemporary classical music
Contemporary classical music is classical music composed close to the present day. At the beginning of the 21st century, it commonly referred to the post-1945 Modernism (music), modern forms of Post-tonal music theory, post-tonal music after th ...
, he is particularly noted for his
opera
Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libr ...
s, which are often centered around recent historical events. Apart from opera, his ''oeuvre'' includes orchestral,
concertante
Sinfonia concertante (; also called ''symphonie concertante'') is an orchestral work, normally in several movements, in which one or more solo instruments contrast with the full orchestra.Collins: ''Encyclopedia of Music'', William Collins Sons & C ...
, vocal, choral,
chamber
Chamber or the chamber may refer to:
In government and organizations
*Chamber of commerce, an organization of business owners to promote commercial interests
*Legislative chamber, in politics
*Debate chamber, the space or room that houses deliber ...
Worcester, Massachusetts
Worcester ( , ) is a city and county seat of Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Named after Worcester, England, the city's population was 206,518 at the 2020 census, making it the second- most populous city in New England after ...
, Adams grew up in a musical family, being regularly exposed to
classical music
Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" al ...
,
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...
,
musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through words, music, movemen ...
and
rock music
Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as " rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles in the mid-1960s and later, particularly in the United States a ...
. He attended
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...
, studying with
Kirchner
Kirchner, a surname of German origin, from the Middle High German word, 'kirchenaere' (English: ' sexton'). Kirchner originated as an occupational surname for a church worker, such as a priest, church assistant or a church property administrator. N ...
, Sessions and Del Tredici among others. Though his earliest work was aligned with modernist music, he began to disagree with its tenets upon reading
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading f ...
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...
, his large-scale orchestral works ''
Harmonium
The pump organ is a type of free-reed organ that generates sound as air flows past a vibrating piece of thin metal in a frame. The piece of metal is called a reed. Specific types of pump organ include the reed organ, harmonium, and melodeon. Th ...
'' and '' Harmonielehre'' (1985) first gained him national attention. Other popular works from this time include the
fanfare
A fanfare (or fanfarade or flourish) is a short musical flourish which is typically played by trumpets, French horns or other brass instruments, often accompanied by percussion. It is a "brief improvised introduction to an instrumental perf ...
''
Short Ride in a Fast Machine
''Short Ride in a Fast Machine'' is a 1986 orchestral work by John Adams. Adams applies the description "fanfare for orchestra" to this work and to the earlier '' Tromba Lontana'' (1986). The former is also known as ''Fanfare for Great Woods'' be ...
'' (1986) and the orchestral work ''El Dorado'' (1991).
Adams's first opera was '' Nixon in China'' (1987), which recounts
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
's 1972 visit to China and was the first of many collaborations with theatre director
Peter Sellars
Peter Sellars (born September 27, 1957) is an American theatre director, noted for his unique contemporary stagings of classical and contemporary operas and plays. Sellars is professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), whe ...
. Though the work's reception was initially mixed, it has become increasingly favored since its premiere, receiving performances worldwide. Begun soon after ''Nixon in China'', the opera ''
The Death of Klinghoffer
''The Death of Klinghoffer'' is an American opera, with music by John Adams to an English-language libretto by Alice Goodman. First produced in Brussels and New York in 1991, the opera is based on the hijacking of the passenger liner ''Achille ...
'' (1991) was based on the
Palestinian Liberation Front
The Palestinian Liberation Front ( ar, جبهة التحرير الفلسطينية, PLF) is a Palestinian political faction. Since 1997, the PLF has been a designated terrorist organization by the United States and by Canada since 2003. The P ...
Leon Klinghoffer
Leon Klinghoffer (September 24, 1916 – October 8, 1985) was an American man who was shot, killed and thrown overboard from the cruise ship ''Achille Lauro'' by members of the Palestinian Liberation Front who hijacked the ship in 1985.
P ...
and incited considerable controversy over its content and choice of subject matter. His next notable works include a Chamber Symphony (1992), a Violin Concerto (1993), the opera-
oratorio
An oratorio () is a large musical composition for orchestra, choir, and soloists. Like most operas, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an instrumental ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias. However, opera is ...
''
El Niño
El Niño (; ; ) is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific (approximately between the International Date ...
electric violin
An electric violin is a violin equipped with an electronic output of its sound. The term most properly refers to an instrument intentionally made to be electrified with built-in pickups, usually with a solid body. It can also refer to a violin fi ...
Pulitzer Prize for Music
The Pulitzer Prize for Music is one of seven Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually in Letters, Drama, and Music. It was first given in 1943. Joseph Pulitzer arranged for a music scholarship to be awarded each year, and this was eventually converted ...
September 11, 2001, attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...
. Continuing with historical subjects, Adams wrote the opera ''
Doctor Atomic
''Doctor Atomic'' is an opera by the contemporary American composer John Adams, with libretto by Peter Sellars. It premiered at the San Francisco Opera on October 1, 2005. The work focuses on how leading figures at Los Alamos dealt with the gre ...
'' (2005), based on
J. Robert Oppenheimer
J. Robert Oppenheimer (; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist. A professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is oft ...
, the
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...
, and the building of the first
atomic bomb
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions ( thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...
. Later operas include ''
A Flowering Tree
''A Flowering Tree'' is an opera in two acts composed by John Adams with libretto by Adams and Peter Sellars, and commissioned by the New Crowned Hope Festival in Vienna, the San Francisco Symphony, the Barbican Centre in London, the Lincoln Cente ...
'' (2006) and '' Girls of the Golden West'' (2017).
In many ways Adams's music is developed from the minimalist tradition of
Steve Reich
Stephen Michael Reich ( ; born October 3, 1936) is an American composer known for his contribution to the development of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, ...
and
Philip Glass
Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an American composer and pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been associated with minimalism, being built up from repetitive ...
; however, he tends to more readily engage in the immense orchestral textures and climaxes of late
Romanticism
Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...
in the vein of
Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...
and
Mahler
Gustav Mahler (; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism ...
. His style is to a considerable extent a reaction against the modernist
serialism
In music, serialism is a method of composition using series of pitches, rhythms, dynamics, timbres or other musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though some of his contemporaries were al ...
Darmstadt School
Darmstadt School refers to a group of composers who were associated with the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music (Darmstädter Ferienkurse) from the early 1950s to the early 1960s in Darmstadt, Germany, and who shared some aesthe ...
. In addition to the Pulitzer, Adams has received the
Erasmus Prize
The Erasmus Prize is an annual prize awarded by the board of the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation to individuals or institutions that have made exceptional contributions to culture, society, or social science in Europe and the rest of the world. I ...
, a
Grawemeyer Award
The Grawemeyer Awards () are five awards given annually by the University of Louisville. The prizes are presented to individuals in the fields of education, ideas improving world order, music composition, religion, and psychology. The religion awa ...
, five
Grammy Award
The Grammy Awards (stylized as GRAMMY), or simply known as the Grammys, are awards presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize "outstanding" achievements in the music industry. They are regarded by many as the most pr ...
Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
The ''Ordre des Arts et des Lettres'' (Order of Arts and Letters) is an order of France established on 2 May 1957 by the Minister of Culture. Its supplementary status to the was confirmed by President Charles de Gaulle in 1963. Its purpose is ...
, and six honorary doctorates.
Life and career
Youth and early career
John Adams, in full John Coolidge Adams, was born in
Worcester, Massachusetts
Worcester ( , ) is a city and county seat of Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Named after Worcester, England, the city's population was 206,518 at the 2020 census, making it the second- most populous city in New England after ...
, on February 15, 1947. As an adolescent, he lived in
Woodstock, Vermont
Woodstock is the shire town (county seat) of Windsor County, Vermont, United States. As of the 2020 census, the town population was 3,005. It includes the villages of Woodstock, South Woodstock, Taftsville, and West Woodstock.
History
Cha ...
Lake Winnipesaukee
Lake Winnipesaukee () is the largest lake in the U.S. state of New Hampshire, located in the Lakes Region at the foothills of the White Mountains. It is approximately long (northwest-southeast) and from wide (northeast-southwest), covering ...
, where his grandfather ran a dance hall. Adams' family didn't own a television, and didn't have a record player until he was ten. However, both his parents were musicians; his mother was a singer with big bands, and his father was a clarinetist. He grew up with
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...
, Americana, and
Broadway musicals
Broadway theatre,Although ''theater'' is generally the spelling for this common noun in the United States (see American and British English spelling differences), 130 of the 144 extant and extinct Broadway venues use (used) the spelling ''Th ...
, once meeting
Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous jazz orchestra from 1923 through the rest of his life. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Ellington was bas ...
at his grandfather's dance hall. Adams also played baseball as a boy.
In the third grade, Adams took up the clarinet, initially taking lessons from his father, Carl Adams, and later with
Boston Symphony Orchestra
The Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) is an American orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the second-oldest of the five major American symphony orchestras commonly referred to as the " Big Five". Founded by Henry Lee Higginson in 18 ...
bass clarinetist Felix Viscuglia. He also played in various local orchestras, concert bands, and marching bands while a student. Adams began composing at the age of ten and first heard his music performed as a teenager. He graduated from Concord High School in 1965.
Adams next enrolled in
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...
, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1969 and a Master of Arts in 1971, studying composition under
Leon Kirchner
Leon Kirchner (January 24, 1919 – September 17, 2009) was an American composer of contemporary classical music. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he won a Pulitzer Pr ...
,
Roger Sessions
Roger Huntington Sessions (December 28, 1896March 16, 1985) was an American composer, teacher and musicologist. He had initially started his career writing in a neoclassical style, but gradually moved further towards more complex harmonies and ...
Harold Shapero
Harold Samuel Shapero (April 29, 1920 – May 17, 2013) was an American composer.
Early years
Shapero was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, on April 29, 1920. He and his family later moved to nearby Newton. He learned to play the piano as a chi ...
and David Del Tredici. As an undergraduate, he conducted Harvard's student ensemble, the Bach Society Orchestra, for a year and a half; his ambitious programming drew criticism in the student newspaper, where one of his concerts was called "the major disappointment of last week's musical offerings." Adams also became engrossed by the strict
modernism
Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...
of the 20th century (such as that of
Boulez
Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war Western classical music.
Born in Mon ...
) while at Harvard, and believed that music had to continue progressing, to the extent that he once wrote a letter to
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein ( ; August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Considered to be one of the most important conductors of his time, he was the first America ...
criticizing the supposed stylistic reactionism of ''
Chichester Psalms
''Chichester Psalms'' is an extended choral composition in three movements by Leonard Bernstein for boy treble or countertenor, choir and orchestra. The text was arranged by the composer from the Book of Psalms in the original Hebrew. Part 1 use ...
''. By night, however, Adams enjoyed listening to
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatles, most influential band of al ...
,
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942September 18, 1970) was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter. Although his mainstream career spanned only four years, he is widely regarded as one of the most ...
, and
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
, and has relayed he once stood in line at eight in the morning to purchase a copy of ''
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' is the eighth studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. Released on 26May 1967, ''Sgt. Pepper'' is regarded by musicologists as an early concept album that advanced the roles of sound composi ...
.''
Adams was the first student at Harvard to be allowed to write a musical composition for his senior thesis. For his thesis, he wrote ''The Electric Wake'' for "electric" (i.e. amplified) soprano accompanied by an ensemble of "electric" strings, keyboards, harp, and percussion. However, a performance could not be put together at the time, and Adams has never heard the piece performed. Adams received his
B.A.
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...
magna cum laude
Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sou ...
and completed his
M.A.
A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...
, also at Harvard, in 1971.
After graduating, Adams received a copy of
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading f ...
's book '' Silence: Lectures and Writings'' from his mother. Largely shaken of his loyalty to modernism, he was inspired to move to San Francisco, where he taught at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music from 1972 until 1982, teaching classes and directing the school's New Music Ensemble. In the early 1970s, Adams wrote several pieces of
electronic music
Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electro ...
for a homemade
modular synthesizer
Modular synthesizers are synthesizers composed of separate modules for different functions. The modules can be connected together by the user to create a patch. The outputs from the modules may include audio signals, analog control voltages, o ...
he called the "Studebaker". He also wrote '' American Standard'', composed of three movements, a
march
March is the third month of the year in both the Julian and Gregorian calendars. It is the second of seven months to have a length of 31 days. In the Northern Hemisphere, the meteorological beginning of spring occurs on the first day of March ...
, a
hymn
A hymn is a type of song, and partially synonymous with devotional song, specifically written for the purpose of adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification. The word ''hymn ...
, and a jazz ballad, which was recorded and released on
Obscure Records
Obscure Records was a U.K. record label which existed from 1975 to 1978. It was created and curated by Brian Eno. Ten albums were issued in the series. Most have detailed liner notes on their back covers, analyzing the compositions and providi ...
in 1975.
1977 to ''Nixon in China''
In 1977, Adams wrote the half-hour-long solo piano piece '' Phrygian Gates'', which he later called "my first mature composition, my official 'opus one'", as well as its much shorter companion piece, '' China Gates''. The next year, he finished '' Shaker Loops'', a string septet based on an earlier, unsuccessful
string quartet
The term string quartet can refer to either a type of musical composition or a group of four people who play them. Many composers from the mid-18th century onwards wrote string quartets. The associated musical ensemble consists of two violinist ...
called ''Wavemaker''. In 1979, he finished his first orchestral work, ''Common Tones in Simple Time'', which was premiered by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Orchestra under Adams' baton.
In 1979, Adams became the New Music Adviser for the
San Francisco Symphony
The San Francisco Symphony (SFS), founded in 1911, is an American orchestra based in San Francisco, California. Since 1980 the orchestra has been resident at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in the city's Hayes Valley neighborhood. The San F ...
and created the symphony's New and Unusual Music concerts. A commission from the symphony resulted in Adams' large, three-movement
choral symphony
A choral symphony is a musical composition for orchestra, choir, and sometimes solo vocalists that, in its internal workings and overall musical architecture, adheres broadly to symphonic musical form. The term "choral symphony" in this contex ...
''
Harmonium
The pump organ is a type of free-reed organ that generates sound as air flows past a vibrating piece of thin metal in a frame. The piece of metal is called a reed. Specific types of pump organ include the reed organ, harmonium, and melodeon. Th ...
'' (1980–81) setting texts by
John Donne
John Donne ( ; 22 January 1572 – 31 March 1631) was an English poet, scholar, soldier and secretary born into a recusant family, who later became a cleric in the Church of England. Under royal patronage, he was made Dean of St Paul's Cathe ...
and
Emily Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Little-known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry.
Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massac ...
. He followed this up with the three-movement, orchestral piece (without strings), '' Grand Pianola Music'' (1982). That summer, he wrote the score for ''Matter of Heart'', a documentary about psychoanalyst
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, ph ...
, a score he later derided as being "of stunning mediocrity". In the winter of 1982–83, Adams worked on the purely-electronic score for ''Available Light'', a dance choreographed by
Lucinda Childs
Lucinda Childs (born June 26, 1940) is an American postmodern dancer/choreographer and actress. Her compositions are known for their minimalistic movements yet complex transitions. Childs is most famous for being able to turn the slightest movem ...
with sets by architect
Frank Gehry
Frank Owen Gehry, , FAIA (; ; born ) is a Canadian-born American architect and designer. A number of his buildings, including his private residence in Santa Monica, California, have become world-renowned attractions.
His works are considered ...
. Without dance, the electronic piece alone is called ''Light Over Water''.
After an eighteen-month period of
writer's block
Writer's block is a condition, primarily associated with writing, in which an author is either unable to produce new work or experiences a creative slowdown. Mike Rose found that this creative stall is not a result of commitment problems or th ...
, Adams wrote his three-movement, orchestral piece '' Harmonielehre'' (1984–85), which he described as "a statement of belief in the power of
tonality
Tonality is the arrangement of pitches and/or chords of a musical work in a hierarchy of perceived relations, stabilities, attractions and directionality. In this hierarchy, the single pitch or triadic chord with the greatest stability is ca ...
at a time when I was uncertain about its future." As with many of Adams' pieces, it was inspired by a dream, in this case, a dream in which he was driving across the
San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge
The San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, known locally as the Bay Bridge, is a complex of bridges spanning San Francisco Bay in California. As part of Interstate 80 and the direct road between San Francisco and Oakland, it carries about 260,000 ...
and saw an oil tanker on the surface of the water abruptly turn upright and take off like a
Saturn V
Saturn V is a retired American super heavy-lift launch vehicle developed by NASA under the Apollo program for human exploration of the Moon. The rocket was human-rated, with multistage rocket, three stages, and powered with liquid-propellant r ...
rocket.
From 1985 to 1987, Adams composed his first
opera
Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libr ...
libretto
A libretto (Italian for "booklet") is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major li ...
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
's 1972 visit to China. The opera marked the first collaboration between Adams and
theatre director
A theatre director or stage director is a professional in the theatre field who oversees and orchestrates the mounting of a theatre production such as a play, opera, dance, drama, musical theatre performance, etc. by unifying various endeavors a ...
Peter Sellars
Peter Sellars (born September 27, 1957) is an American theatre director, noted for his unique contemporary stagings of classical and contemporary operas and plays. Sellars is professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), whe ...
, who had proposed it to Adams in 1983. Adams has subsequently worked with Sellars on all of his operas.
During this time, Adams also wrote '' The Chairman Dances'' (1985), which he described as an "'out-take' of Act III of ''Nixon in China''", to fulfill a long-delayed commission for the
Milwaukee Symphony
The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra (MSO) is an American symphony orchestra based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The orchestra performs primarily at the Bradley Symphony Center in Allen-Bradley Hall. The orchestra also serves as the orchestra for Florentine ...
. He also wrote the short orchestral
fanfare
A fanfare (or fanfarade or flourish) is a short musical flourish which is typically played by trumpets, French horns or other brass instruments, often accompanied by percussion. It is a "brief improvised introduction to an instrumental perf ...
''
Short Ride in a Fast Machine
''Short Ride in a Fast Machine'' is a 1986 orchestral work by John Adams. Adams applies the description "fanfare for orchestra" to this work and to the earlier '' Tromba Lontana'' (1986). The former is also known as ''Fanfare for Great Woods'' be ...
'' (1986).
1988 to ''Doctor Atomic''
Adams wrote two orchestral pieces in 1988: ''Fearful Symmetries'', a 25-minute work in the same style as ''Nixon in China'', and '' The Wound-Dresser'', a setting of
Walt Whitman
Walter Whitman (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among ...
's 1865 poem of the same title, written when Whitman was volunteering at a military hospital during the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...
. ''The Wound-Dresser'' is scored for baritone voice, two flutes (or two piccolos), two oboes, clarinet, bass clarinet, two bassoons, two horns, trumpet (or piccolo trumpet), timpani, synthesizer, and strings.
During this time, Adams established an international career as a conductor. From 1988 to 1990, he served as conductor and music advisor for the
Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra
The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (SPCO) is a full-time professional chamber orchestra based in Saint Paul, Minnesota. In collaboration with five Artistic Partners, the orchestra's musicians present more than 130 concerts and educational programs ea ...
. He has also served as artistic director and conductor of the
Ojai
Ojai ( ; Chumash: ''’Awhaỳ'') is a city in Ventura County, California. Located in the Ojai Valley, it is northwest of Los Angeles and east of Santa Barbara. The valley is part of the east–west trending Western Transverse Ranges and is ...
and
Cabrillo Music Festival
The Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music is an annual Festival dedicated to contemporary symphonic music by living composers. The music director since 2017 has been Cristian Măcelaru. According to Jesse Rosen, CEO of the League of American Orc ...
s in California. He has conducted orchestras around the world, including the
New York Philharmonic
The New York Philharmonic, officially the Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York, Inc., globally known as New York Philharmonic Orchestra (NYPO) or New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra, is a symphony orchestra based in New York City. It is ...
, the
Chicago Symphony
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) was founded by Theodore Thomas in 1891. The ensemble makes its home at Orchestra Hall in Chicago and plays a summer season at the Ravinia Festival. The music director is Riccardo Muti, who began his tenure ...
, the
Cleveland Orchestra
The Cleveland Orchestra, based in Cleveland, is one of the five American orchestras informally referred to as the " Big Five". Founded in 1918 by the pianist and impresario Adella Prentiss Hughes, the orchestra plays most of its concerts at Sev ...
, the
Los Angeles Philharmonic
The Los Angeles Philharmonic, commonly referred to as the LA Phil, is an American orchestra based in Los Angeles, California. It has a regular season of concerts from October through June at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and a summer season at th ...
, the
London Symphony Orchestra
The London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) is a British symphony orchestra based in London. Founded in 1904, the LSO is the oldest of London's orchestras, symphony orchestras. The LSO was created by a group of players who left Henry Wood's Queen's ...
, and the
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra ( nl, Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest, ) is a Dutch symphony orchestra, based at the Amsterdam Royal Concertgebouw (concert hall). Considered one of the world's leading orchestras, Queen Beatrix conferred the "R ...
, performing pieces by composers as diverse as
Debussy
(Achille) Claude Debussy (; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term. He was among the most influential composers of the ...
Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century clas ...
,
Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn ( , ; 31 March 173231 May 1809) was an Austrian composer of the Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the string quartet and piano trio. His contributions to musical form have led ...
,
Reich
''Reich'' (; ) is a German language, German noun whose meaning is analogous to the meaning of the English word "realm"; this is not to be confused with the German adjective "reich" which means "rich". The terms ' (literally the "realm of an emp ...
Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...
, as well as his own works.
He completed his second opera, ''
The Death of Klinghoffer
''The Death of Klinghoffer'' is an American opera, with music by John Adams to an English-language libretto by Alice Goodman. First produced in Brussels and New York in 1991, the opera is based on the hijacking of the passenger liner ''Achille ...
Leon Klinghoffer
Leon Klinghoffer (September 24, 1916 – October 8, 1985) was an American man who was shot, killed and thrown overboard from the cruise ship ''Achille Lauro'' by members of the Palestinian Liberation Front who hijacked the ship in 1985.
P ...
, a retired, physically disabled American Jew. The opera has generated controversy, including allegations that it is
antisemitic
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
and glorifies terrorism.
Adams' next piece, '' Chamber Symphony'' (1992), is for a 15-member
chamber orchestra
Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small numbe ...
. Written in three movements, the work is inspired by an unlikely combination of sources:
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (, ; ; 13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was as ...
's Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9 (which Adams was studying at the time) and the "hyperactive, insistently aggressive and acrobatic" music of the cartoons his young son was watching.
The next year, he composed his Violin Concerto for American violinist
Jorja Fleezanis
Jorja Kay Fleezanis (March 19, 1952 – September 9, 2022) was an American violinist and the Henry A. Upper Chair at Indiana University.
Fleezanis grew up in Detroit, Michigan, the daughter of Greek immigrants. A graduate of Cass Technical High S ...
. Lasting a little more than half an hour, this work is also in three movements: a "long extended
rhapsody
Rhapsody may refer to:
* A work of epic poetry, or part of one, that is suitable for recitation at one time
** Rhapsode, a classical Greek professional performer of epic poetry
Computer software
* Rhapsody (online music service), an online m ...
for the violin" is followed by a slow
chaconne
A chaconne (; ; es, chacona, links=no; it, ciaccona, links=no, ; earlier English: ''chacony'') is a type of musical composition often used as a vehicle for variation on a repeated short harmonic progression, often involving a fairly short rep ...
(titled "Body through which the dream flows", a phrase from a poem by Robert Haas), and the piece ends with an energetic toccare. Adams received the
Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition
The Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition () is an annual prize instituted by Henry Charles Grawemeyer, industrialist and entrepreneur, at the University of Louisville in 1984. The award was first given in 1985. Subsequently, the Grawemeyer Awar ...
for his violin concerto.
In 1995, he completed ''
I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky
''I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky'' is a 1995 "song play" with music composed by John Adams and a libretto by June Jordan.
Summary
The story takes place in the aftermath of the 1994 earthquake in Los Angeles, and covers the r ...
'', a stage piece with libretto by poet
June Jordan
June Millicent Jordan (July 9, 1936 – June 14, 2002) was an American poet, essayist, teacher, and activist. In her writing she explored issues of gender, race, immigration, and representation.
Jordan was passionate about using Black English i ...
and staging by Peter Sellars. Inspired by musicals, Adams referred to the piece as a "songplay in two acts". The main characters are seven young Americans from different social and ethnic backgrounds, all living in
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
, with stories that take place around the
1994 Northridge earthquake
The 1994 Northridge earthquake was a moment 6.7 (), blind thrust earthquake that occurred on January 17, 1994, at 4:30:55 a.m. PST in the San Fernando Valley region of the City of Los Angeles.
The quake had a duration of approximately ...
.
''
Hallelujah Junction
''Hallelujah Junction'' is a composition for two pianos written in 1996 by the American composer John Adams. Adams titled his autobiography after this composition. A two-CD retrospective album of works by Adams on the Nonesuch label is also entit ...
'' (1996) is a three-movement composition for two piano, which employs variations of a repeated two-note rhythm. The intervals between the notes remain the same through much of the piece. Adams used the same phrase for the title of his 2008 memoir.
Written to celebrate the millennium, ''
El Niño
El Niño (; ; ) is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific (approximately between the International Date ...
'' (2000) is an "
oratorio
An oratorio () is a large musical composition for orchestra, choir, and soloists. Like most operas, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an instrumental ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias. However, opera is ...
about birth in general and about the Nativity in specific". The piece incorporates a wide range of texts, including biblical texts as well as poems by Hispanic poets like
Rosario Castellanos
Rosario Castellanos Figueroa (; 25 May 1925 – 7 August 1974) was a Mexican poet and author. She was one of Mexico's most important literary voices in the last century. Throughout her life, she wrote eloquently about issues of cultural and gend ...
,
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
Sor may refer to:
* Fernando Sor (1778–1839), Spanish guitarist and composer
* Sor, Ariège, a French commune
* SOR Libchavy, a Czech bus manufacturer
* Sor, Azerbaijan, a village
* Sor, Senegal, an offshore island
* Sor River, a river in the Or ...
,
Gabriela Mistral
Lucila Godoy Alcayaga (; 7 April 1889 – 10 January 1957), known by her pseudonym Gabriela Mistral (), was a Chilean poet-diplomat, educator and humanist. In 1945 she became the first Latin American author to receive a Nobel Prize in Lite ...
,
Vicente Huidobro
Vicente García-Huidobro Fernández (; January 10, 1893 – January 2, 1948) was a Chilean poet born to an aristocratic family. He promoted the avant-garde literary movement in Chile and was the creator and greatest exponent of the literary m ...
, and
Rubén Darío
Félix Rubén García Sarmiento (January 18, 1867 – February 6, 1916), known as Rubén Darío ( , ), was a Nicaraguan poet who initiated the Spanish-language literary movement known as ''modernismo'' (modernism) that flourished at the end of ...
,
After the
September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commerci ...
on the
World Trade Center
World Trade Centers are sites recognized by the World Trade Centers Association.
World Trade Center may refer to:
Buildings
* List of World Trade Centers
* World Trade Center (2001–present), a building complex that includes five skyscrapers, a ...
, the
New York Philharmonic
The New York Philharmonic, officially the Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York, Inc., globally known as New York Philharmonic Orchestra (NYPO) or New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra, is a symphony orchestra based in New York City. It is ...
commissioned Adams to write a memorial piece for the victims of the attacks. The resulting piece, '' On the Transmigration of Souls'', was premiered around the first anniversary of the attacks. ''On the Transmigration of Souls'' is scored for
orchestra
An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families.
There are typically four main sections of instruments:
* bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, c ...
,
chorus
Chorus may refer to:
Music
* Chorus (song) or refrain, line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse
* Chorus effect, the perception of similar sounds from multiple sources as a single, richer sound
* Chorus form, song in which all verse ...
, and
children's choir
A choir ( ; also known as a chorale or chorus) is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which sp ...
, accompanied by taped readings of the names of the victims mixed with the sounds of the city. It won the 2003
Pulitzer Prize for Music
The Pulitzer Prize for Music is one of seven Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually in Letters, Drama, and Music. It was first given in 1943. Joseph Pulitzer arranged for a music scholarship to be awarded each year, and this was eventually converted ...
as well as the 2005
Grammy Award
The Grammy Awards (stylized as GRAMMY), or simply known as the Grammys, are awards presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize "outstanding" achievements in the music industry. They are regarded by many as the most pr ...
for Best Contemporary Composition.
Commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony, Adams' orchestral piece '' My Father Knew Charles Ives'' (2003) is cast in three movements: "Concord", "The Lake", and "The Mountain". Though his father did not actually know American composer
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives (; October 20, 1874May 19, 1954) was an American modernist composer, one of the first American composers of international renown. His music was largely ignored during his early career, and many of his works went unperformed f ...
, Adams saw many similarities between the two men's lives and between their lives and his own, including their love of small-town New England life and their unfulfilled musical dreams.
Written for the
Los Angeles Philharmonic
The Los Angeles Philharmonic, commonly referred to as the LA Phil, is an American orchestra based in Los Angeles, California. It has a regular season of concerts from October through June at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and a summer season at th ...
to celebrate the opening of
Disney Hall
The Walt Disney Concert Hall at 111 South Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, California, is the fourth hall of the Los Angeles Music Center and was designed by Frank Gehry. It was opened on October 24, 2003. Bounded by Hope Street, Grand ...
in 2003, '' The Dharma at Big Sur'' (2003) is a two-movement work for solo electric six-string violin and orchestra. Adams wrote that with ''Dharma'', he "wanted to compose a piece that embodied the feeling of being on the West Coast – literally standing on a precipice overlooking the geographic shelf with the ocean extending far out to the horizon…" Inspired by the music of
Lou Harrison
Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917 – February 2, 2003) was an American composer, music critic, music theorist, painter, and creator of unique musical instruments. Harrison initially wrote in a dissonant, ultramodernist style similar to his form ...
, the piece calls for some instruments (
harp
The harp is a stringed musical instrument that has a number of individual strings running at an angle to its soundboard; the strings are plucked with the fingers. Harps can be made and played in various ways, standing or sitting, and in orche ...
,
piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...
, samplers) to use
just intonation
In music, just intonation or pure intonation is the tuning of musical intervals
Interval may refer to:
Mathematics and physics
* Interval (mathematics), a range of numbers
** Partially ordered set#Intervals, its generalization from numbers to ...
, a
tuning system
In music, there are two common meanings for tuning:
* Tuning practice, the act of tuning an instrument or voice.
* Tuning systems, the various systems of pitches used to tune an instrument, and their theoretical bases.
Tuning practice
Tun ...
in which intervals sound pure, rather than
equal temperament
An equal temperament is a musical temperament or tuning system, which approximates just intervals by dividing an octave (or other interval) into equal steps. This means the ratio of the frequencies of any adjacent pair of notes is the same, wh ...
, the common Western tuning system in which all intervals except the octave are impure.
Adams' third opera, ''
Doctor Atomic
''Doctor Atomic'' is an opera by the contemporary American composer John Adams, with libretto by Peter Sellars. It premiered at the San Francisco Opera on October 1, 2005. The work focuses on how leading figures at Los Alamos dealt with the gre ...
'' (2005), is about physicist
J. Robert Oppenheimer
J. Robert Oppenheimer (; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist. A professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is oft ...
, the
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...
, and the creation and testing of the first atomic bomb. The libretto of ''Doctor Atomic'', written by Peter Sellars, draws on original source material, including personal memoirs, recorded interviews, technical manuals of nuclear physics, declassified government documents, and the poetry of the ''
Bhagavad Gita
The Bhagavad Gita (; sa, श्रीमद्भगवद्गीता, lit=The Song by God, translit=śrīmadbhagavadgītā;), often referred to as the Gita (), is a 700- verse Hindu scripture that is part of the epic ''Mahabharata'' (c ...
'',
John Donne
John Donne ( ; 22 January 1572 – 31 March 1631) was an English poet, scholar, soldier and secretary born into a recusant family, who later became a cleric in the Church of England. Under royal patronage, he was made Dean of St Paul's Cathe ...
,
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poetry, French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticis ...
, and
Muriel Rukeyser
Muriel Rukeyser (December 15, 1913 – February 12, 1980) was an American poet and political activist, best known for her poems about equality, feminism, social justice, and Judaism. Kenneth Rexroth said that she was the greatest poet of her "ex ...
. The opera takes place in June and July 1945, mainly over the last few hours before the first atomic bomb explodes at the test site in New Mexico. Characters include Oppenheimer and his wife Kitty,
Edward Teller
Edward Teller ( hu, Teller Ede; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" (see the Teller–Ulam design), although he did not care fo ...
, General
Leslie Groves
Lieutenant General Leslie Richard Groves Jr. (17 August 1896 – 13 July 1970) was a United States Army Corps of Engineers officer who oversaw the construction of the Pentagon and directed the Manhattan Project, a top secret research project ...
A Flowering Tree
''A Flowering Tree'' is an opera in two acts composed by John Adams with libretto by Adams and Peter Sellars, and commissioned by the New Crowned Hope Festival in Vienna, the San Francisco Symphony, the Barbican Centre in London, the Lincoln Cente ...
'' (2006) with libretto by Adams and Sellars, is based on a folktale from the
Kannada language
Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native sp ...
of southern India as translated by
A.K. Ramanujan
Attipate Krishnaswami Ramanujan (16 March 1929 – 13 July 1993) was an Indian poet and scholar of Indian literature and Linguistics. Ramanujan was also a professor of Linguistics at University of Chicago.
Ramanujan was a poet, scholar, Lingui ...
about a young girl who discovers that she has the magic ability to transform into a flowering tree. The two-act opera was commissioned as part of the Vienna New Crowned Hope Festival to celebrate the 250th anniversary of
Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his ra ...
's birth. As such, it has many parallels with Mozart's ''
The Magic Flute
''The Magic Flute'' (German: , ), K. 620, is an opera in two acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a ''Singspiel'', a popular form during the time it was written that inclu ...
'', including its themes of "magic, transformation and the dawning of moral awareness."
Adams wrote three pieces for the
St. Lawrence String Quartet
The St. Lawrence String Quartet is a Canadians, Canadian string quartet, and one of Canada's premier chamber ensembles.
The Quartet was founded in 1989 and has served residencies at the Juilliard School, Yale University, the University of Toront ...
: his First Quartet (2008), his concerto for
string quartet
The term string quartet can refer to either a type of musical composition or a group of four people who play them. Many composers from the mid-18th century onwards wrote string quartets. The associated musical ensemble consists of two violinist ...
and orchestra, ''
Absolute Jest
''Absolute Jest'' is a concerto for string quartet and orchestra by the American composer John Adams. The work was commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony for the orchestra's centennial. Its world premiere was given at the Louise M. Davies Sy ...
'' (2012), and his Second Quartet (2014). Both ''Absolute Jest'' and the Second Quartet are based on fragments from
Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical ...
Große Fuge
The ''Grosse Fuge'' (German spelling: ''Große'' ''Fuge'', also known in English as the ''Great Fugue'' or ''Grand Fugue''), Op. 133, is a single-movement composition for string quartet by Ludwig van Beethoven. An immense double fugue, it was ...
'') and the Second Quartet drawing from Beethoven's Opus 110 and 111
piano sonatas Piano sonatas may refer to:
* Piano sonatas (Beethoven)
* Piano sonatas (Boulez)
* Piano sonatas (Chopin)
Frédéric Chopin composed three piano sonata
A piano sonata is a sonata written for a solo piano. Piano sonatas are usually written in ...
.
From 2011 to 2013, Adams wrote his two-act Passion oratorio, ''
The Gospel According to the Other Mary
''The Gospel According to the Other Mary'' is an opera-oratorio by the American composer John Adams (composer), John Adams. The world premiere took place on May 31, 2012, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles with Gustavo Dudamel conducti ...
'', a decade after his Nativity oratorio, ''El Niño''. The work focuses on the final few weeks of the life of
Jesus
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...
from the point of view of "the other Mary",
Mary of Bethany
Mary of Bethany is a biblical figure mentioned only by name in the Gospel of John in the Christian New Testament. Together with her siblings Lazarus and Martha, she is described by John as living in the village of Bethany, a small village in Juda ...
(sometimes mis-identified as
Mary Magdalene
Mary Magdalene (sometimes called Mary of Magdala, or simply the Magdalene or the Madeleine) was a woman who, according to the four canonical gospels, traveled with Jesus as one of his followers and was a witness to crucifixion of Jesus, his cru ...
), her sister
Martha
Martha (Hebrew: מָרְתָא) is a biblical figure described in the Gospels of Luke and John. Together with her siblings Lazarus and Mary of Bethany, she is described as living in the village of Bethany near Jerusalem. She was witness to ...
, and her brother, Lazarus. The libretto by Peter Sellars draws its texts from the
Old Testament
The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...
and
New Testament
The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christ ...
of the
Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
and from
Rosario Castellanos
Rosario Castellanos Figueroa (; 25 May 1925 – 7 August 1974) was a Mexican poet and author. She was one of Mexico's most important literary voices in the last century. Throughout her life, she wrote eloquently about issues of cultural and gend ...
,
Rubén Darío
Félix Rubén García Sarmiento (January 18, 1867 – February 6, 1916), known as Rubén Darío ( , ), was a Nicaraguan poet who initiated the Spanish-language literary movement known as ''modernismo'' (modernism) that flourished at the end of ...
,
Dorothy Day
Dorothy Day (November 8, 1897 – November 29, 1980) was an American journalist, social activist and anarchist who, after a bohemian youth, became a Catholic without abandoning her social and anarchist activism. She was perhaps the best-known ...
,
Louise Erdrich
Louise Erdrich ( ; born Karen Louise Erdrich, June 7, 1954) is an American author of novels, poetry, and children's books featuring Native American characters and settings. She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indian ...
,
Hildegard von Bingen
Hildegard of Bingen (german: Hildegard von Bingen; la, Hildegardis Bingensis; 17 September 1179), also known as Saint Hildegard and the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess and polymath active as a writer, composer, philosopher ...
,
June Jordan
June Millicent Jordan (July 9, 1936 – June 14, 2002) was an American poet, essayist, teacher, and activist. In her writing she explored issues of gender, race, immigration, and representation.
Jordan was passionate about using Black English i ...
, and
Primo Levi
Primo Michele Levi (; 31 July 1919 – 11 April 1987) was an Italian chemist, partisan, writer, and Jewish Holocaust survivor. He was the author of several books, collections of short stories, essays, poems and one novel. His best-known works ...
.
''
Scheherazade.2 ''Scheherazade.2'' is a dramatic symphony for solo violin and orchestra by the American composer John Adams. The work was jointly commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, the Concertgebouw & the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the Sydney Sym ...
'' (2014) is a four-movement "dramatic symphony" for violin and orchestra. Written for violinist
Leila Josefowicz
Leila Bronia Josefowicz ( ; born October 20, 1977) is an American-Canadian classical violinist.
Biography
Josefowicz was born in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. When she was a young child her family moved to Los Angeles, California, where she sta ...
who frequently performed Adams' Violin Concerto and ''The Dharma at Big Sur'', the work was inspired by the character
Scheherazade
Scheherazade () is a major female character and the storyteller in the frame narrative of the Middle Eastern collection of tales known as the ''One Thousand and One Nights''.
Name
According to modern scholarship, the name ''Scheherazade'' deri ...
(from ''
One Thousand and One Nights
''One Thousand and One Nights'' ( ar, أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ, italic=yes, ) is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the ''Arabian ...
'') who, after being forced into marriage, recounts tales to her husband in order to delay her death. Adams associated modern examples of suffering and injustice towards women around the world, with acts in
Tahrir Square
Tahrir Square ( ar, ميدان التحرير ', , English language, English: Liberation Square), also known as "Martyr Square", is a major public town square in downtown Cairo, Egypt. The square has been the location and focus for political dem ...
during the
Egyptian revolution of 2011
The 2011 Egyptian revolution, also known as the 25 January revolution ( ar, ثورة ٢٥ يناير; ), began on 25 January 2011 and spread across Egypt. The date was set by various youth groups to coincide with the annual Egyptian "Police ho ...
,
Kabul
Kabul (; ps, , ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province; it is administratively divided into 22 municipal districts. Acco ...
, and comments from ''
The Rush Limbaugh Show
''The Rush Limbaugh Show'' is an American conservative talk radio show hosted by Rush Limbaugh. Since its nationally syndicated premiere in 1988, ''The Rush Limbaugh Show'' became the highest-rated talk radio show in the United States. At its ...
''.
Adams' most recent opera, '' Girls of the Golden West'' (2017), with a libretto by Sellars based on historical sources, is set in mining camps during the
California Gold Rush
The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) was a gold rush that began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California fro ...
of the 1850s. Sellars described the opera this way: "These true stories of the Forty-Niners name for people who took part in the 1849 Gold Rushare overwhelming in their heroism, passion and cruelty, telling tales of racial conflicts, colorful and humorous exploits, political strife and struggles to build anew a life and to decide what it would mean to be American."
Personal life
Adams was married to Hawley Currens, a music teacher, from 1970 to 1974. He is married to photographer Deborah O'Grady, with whom he has a daughter, Emily, and a son, the composer
Samuel Carl Adams
Samuel Adams (born December 30, 1985) is an American composer. He was born in San Francisco, California. He is a recipient of a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship.
Life and career
Adams grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he performed double b ...
.
Musical style
The music of Adams is usually categorized as
minimalist
In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Don ...
or post-minimalist, although in an interview he said that his music is part of the 'post-style' era at the end of the twentieth century. While Adams employs minimalist techniques, such as repeating patterns, he is not a strict follower of the movement. Though Adams did adopt much of the minimalist technique of predecessors
Steve Reich
Stephen Michael Reich ( ; born October 3, 1936) is an American composer known for his contribution to the development of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, ...
and
Philip Glass
Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an American composer and pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been associated with minimalism, being built up from repetitive ...
, his writing synthesizes this with the immense orchestral textures of Wagner,
Mahler
Gustav Mahler (; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism ...
and
Sibelius
Jean Sibelius ( ; ; born Johan Julius Christian Sibelius; 8 December 186520 September 1957) was a Finnish composer of the late Romantic and early-modern periods. He is widely regarded as his country's greatest composer, and his music is often ...
. Comparing ''Shaker Loops'' to the minimalist composer
Terry Riley
Terrence Mitchell "Terry" Riley (born June 24, 1935) is an American composer and performing musician best known as a pioneer of the minimalist school of composition. Influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, his music became notable for it ...
's piece ''
In C
''In C'' is a musical piece composed by Terry Riley in 1964 for an indefinite number of performers. He suggests "a group of about 35 is desired if possible but smaller or larger groups will work". A series of short melodic fragments, ''In C'' is o ...
'', Adams remarked:
Many of Adams's ideas in composition are a reaction to the philosophy of
serialism
In music, serialism is a method of composition using series of pitches, rhythms, dynamics, timbres or other musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though some of his contemporaries were al ...
and its depictions of "the composer as scientist". The
Darmstadt School
Darmstadt School refers to a group of composers who were associated with the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music (Darmstädter Ferienkurse) from the early 1950s to the early 1960s in Darmstadt, Germany, and who shared some aesthe ...
of
twelve tone
The twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition first devised by Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer, who published his "law o ...
composition was dominant during the time that Adams was receiving his college education, and he compared class to a "mausoleum where we would sit and count tone-rows in
Webern
Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 188315 September 1945), better known as Anton Webern (), was an Austrian composer and conductor whose music was among the most radical of its milieu in its sheer concision, even aphorism, and stead ...
".
Adams experienced a musical epiphany after reading
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading f ...
's book ''Silence'' (1973), which he claimed "dropped into ispsyche like a time bomb". Cage posed fundamental questions about what music was, and regarded all types of sounds as viable sources of music. This perspective offered to Adams a liberating alternative to the rule-based techniques of serialism. Cage's own music, however, Adams found equally restricting. At this point, Adams began to experiment with electronic music, and his experiences are reflected in the writing of ''Phrygian Gates'' (1977–78), in which the constant shifting between modules in
Lydian mode
The modern Lydian mode is a seven-tone musical scale formed from a rising pattern of pitches comprising three whole tones, a semitone, two more whole tones, and a final semitone.
:
Because of the importance of the major scale in modern music ...
and
Phrygian mode
The Phrygian mode (pronounced ) can refer to three different musical modes: the ancient Greek ''tonos'' or ''harmonia,'' sometimes called Phrygian, formed on a particular set of octave species or scales; the Medieval Phrygian mode, and the modern ...
refers to activating
electronic gate
A logic gate is an idealized or physical device implementing a Boolean function, a logical operation performed on one or more Binary number, binary inputs that produces a single binary output. Depending on the context, the term may refer to an id ...
s rather than architectural ones. Adams explained that working with synthesizers caused a "diatonic conversion", a reversion to the belief that tonality was a force of nature.
Some of Adams's compositions are an amalgamation of different styles. One example is ''Grand Pianola Music'' (1981–82), a humorous piece that purposely draws its content from musical cliches. In ''The Dharma at Big Sur,'' Adams draws from literary texts such as
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.
Of French-Canadian a ...
,
Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder (born May 8, 1930) is an American poet, essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist. His early poetry has been associated with the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Renaissance and he has been described as the "poet laureate of ...
, and
Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) was an American novelist. He broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical ref ...
to illustrate the California landscape. Adams professes his love of other genres other than classical music; his parents were
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...
musicians, and he has also listened to
rock music
Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as " rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles in the mid-1960s and later, particularly in the United States a ...
, albeit only passively. Adams once claimed that originality wasn't an urgent concern for him the way it was necessary for the minimalists and compared his position to that of
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler (; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism ...
,
J.S. Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late baroque music, Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the ''Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suite ...
, and
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms (; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the mid- Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his professional life in Vienna. He is sometimes grouped wit ...
, who "were standing at the end of an era and were embracing all of the evolutions that occurred over the previous thirty to fifty years".
Adams, like other minimalists of his time (e.g.
Philip Glass
Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an American composer and pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been associated with minimalism, being built up from repetitive ...
), used a steady pulse that defines and controls the music. The pulse was best known from
Terry Riley
Terrence Mitchell "Terry" Riley (born June 24, 1935) is an American composer and performing musician best known as a pioneer of the minimalist school of composition. Influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, his music became notable for it ...
's early composition ''
In C
''In C'' is a musical piece composed by Terry Riley in 1964 for an indefinite number of performers. He suggests "a group of about 35 is desired if possible but smaller or larger groups will work". A series of short melodic fragments, ''In C'' is o ...
'', and slowly more and more composers used it as a common practice. Jonathan Bernard highlighted this adoption by comparing ''Phrygian Gates'', written in 1977, and ''Fearful Symmetries'' written eleven years later in 1988.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Adams started to add a new character to his music, which he called "the Trickster". The Trickster allowed Adams to use the repetitive style and rhythmic drive of minimalism, yet poke fun at it at the same time. When Adams commented on his own characterization of particular minimalist music, he stated that he went joyriding on "those Great Prairies of non-event".
Critical reception
Overview
Adams won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2003 for his 9/11 memorial piece, '' On the Transmigration of Souls''. Response to his output as a whole has been more divided, and Adams's works have been described as both brilliant and boring in reviews that stretch across both ends of the rating spectrum. '' Shaker Loops'' has been described as "hauntingly ethereal", while 1999's '' Naïve and Sentimental Music'' has been called "an exploration of a marvelously extended spinning melody". ''The New York Times'' called 1996's ''
Hallelujah Junction
''Hallelujah Junction'' is a composition for two pianos written in 1996 by the American composer John Adams. Adams titled his autobiography after this composition. A two-CD retrospective album of works by Adams on the Nonesuch label is also entit ...
'' "a two-piano work played with appealingly sharp edges", and 2001's '' American Berserk'' "a short, volatile solo piano work".
The most critically divisive pieces in Adams's collection are his historical operas. At first release, ''Nixon in China'' received mostly negative press feedback.
Donal Henahan
Donal Henahan (February 28, 1921 – August 19, 2012) was an American music critic and journalist who had lengthy associations with the ''Chicago Daily News'' and ''The New York Times''. With the ''Times'' he won the annual Pulitzer Prize for ...
, writing in ''The New York Times'', called the
Houston Grand Opera
Houston Grand Opera (HGO) is an American opera company located in Houston, Texas. Founded in 1955 by German-born impresario Walter Herbert and three local Houstonians,Giesberg, Robert I., Carl Cunningham, and Alan Rich. ''Houston Grand Opera at ...
world premiere of the work "worth a few giggles but hardly a strong candidate for the standard repertory" and "visually striking but coy and insubstantial". James Wierzbicki for the ''St. Louis Post-Dispatch'' described Adams's score as the weak point in an otherwise well-staged performance, noting the music as "inappropriately placid", "cliché-ridden in the abstract" and " raffickedheavily in Adams's worn-out Minimalist clichés". With time, however, the opera has come to be revered as a great and influential production.
Robert Hugill
Robert Hugill (born 1955) is a British composer, journalist, lecturer and blogger. He runs classical music blog "Planet Hugill".
Opera
''The Genesis of Frankenstein'' (setting a libretto by the composer based on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein) wa ...
for ''Music and Vision'' called the production "astonishing ... nearly twenty years after its premier", while ''The Guardians
Fiona Maddocks
Fiona Maddocks is a British music critic and author who specializes in classical music. Described as "one of the UK's leading writers and commentators on classical music", Maddocks has been chief music critic of ''The Observer'' since 2010. She ...
praised the score's "diverse and subtle palette" and Adams' "rhythmic ingenuity".
More recently, ''The New York Times'' writer
Anthony Tommasini
Anthony Carl Tommasini (born April 14, 1948) is an American music critic and author who specializes in classical music. Described as "a discerning critic, whose taste, knowledge and judgment have made him a must-read", Tommasini was the chief ...
commended Adams for his work conducting the
American Composers Orchestra
The American Composers Orchestra (ACO) is an American orchestra administratively based in New York City, specialising in contemporary American music. The ACO gives concerts at various concert venues in New York City, including:
* Zankel Hall at ...
. The concert, which took place in April 2007 at Carnegie Hall, was a celebratory performance of Adams's work on his sixtieth birthday. Tommasini called Adams a "skilled and dynamic conductor", and noted that the music "was gravely beautiful yet restless".
Klinghoffer controversy
The opera ''
The Death of Klinghoffer
''The Death of Klinghoffer'' is an American opera, with music by John Adams to an English-language libretto by Alice Goodman. First produced in Brussels and New York in 1991, the opera is based on the hijacking of the passenger liner ''Achille ...
'' has been criticized as
antisemitic
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
by some, including by the Klinghoffer family.
Leon Klinghoffer
Leon Klinghoffer (September 24, 1916 – October 8, 1985) was an American man who was shot, killed and thrown overboard from the cruise ship ''Achille Lauro'' by members of the Palestinian Liberation Front who hijacked the ship in 1985.
P ...
's daughters, Lisa and Ilsa, after attending the opera, released a statement saying: "We are outraged at the exploitation of our parents and the coldblooded murder of our father as the centerpiece of a production that appears to us to be anti-Semitic." In response to these accusations of antisemitism, composer and
Oberlin College
Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational liberal arts college in the United S ...
professor Conrad Cummings wrote a letter to the editor defending ''Klinghoffer'' as "the closest analogue to the experience of Bach's audience attending his most demanding works", and noted that, as a person of Jewish descent, he "found nothing anti-Semitic about the work".
After the September 11 attacks in 2001, performances by the Boston Symphony Orchestra of excerpts from ''Klinghoffer'' were canceled. BSO managing director Mark Volpe remarked of the decision: "We originally programmed the choruses from John Adams' The Death of Klinghoffer because we believe in it as a work of art, and we still hold that conviction. ... Tanglewood_Festival_Chorus">nowiki/>Tanglewood_Festival_Chorus_members.html" ;"title="Tanglewood_Festival_Chorus.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Tanglewood Festival Chorus">nowiki/>Tanglewood Festival Chorus members">Tanglewood_Festival_Chorus.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Tanglewood Festival Chorus">nowiki/>Tanglewood Festival Chorus membersexplained that it was a purely human reason, and that it wasn't in the least bit a criticism of the work." Adams and ''Klinghoffer'' librettist Alice Goodman criticized the decision, and Adams rejected a request to substitute a performance of ''Harmonium'', saying: "The reason that I asked them not to do ''Harmonium'' was that I felt that ''Klinghoffer'' is a serious and humane work, and it's also a work about which many people have made prejudicial judgments without even hearing it. I felt that if I said, 'OK, ''Klinghoffer'' is too hot to handle, do ''Harmonium'', that in a sense I would be agreeing with the judgment about ''Klinghoffer''.' " In response to an article by the ''San Francisco Chronicles David Wiegand denouncing the BSO decision, musicologist and critic Richard Taruskin accused the work of catering to "anti-American, anti-Semitic and anti-bourgeois" prejudices.
A 2014 revival by the Metropolitan Opera reignited debate. Former New York City mayor
Rudy Giuliani
Rudolph William Louis Giuliani (, ; born May 28, 1944) is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 107th Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He previously served as the United States Associate Attorney General from 1981 to 198 ...
, who marched in protest against the production, wrote: "This work is both a distortion of history and helped, in some ways, to foster a three decade long feckless policy of creating a moral equivalency between the
Palestinian Authority
The Palestinian National Authority (PA or PNA; ar, السلطة الوطنية الفلسطينية '), commonly known as the Palestinian Authority and officially the State of Palestine,
, a corrupt terrorist organization, and the state of Israel, a democracy ruled by law." The Mayor serving at the time,
Bill de Blasio
Bill de Blasio (; born Warren Wilhelm Jr., May 8, 1961; later Warren de Blasio-Wilhelm) is an American politician who served as the 109th mayor of New York City from 2014 to 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, he held the office of New Yor ...
, criticized Giuliani's participation in the protests, and
Oskar Eustis
Oskar Eustis (born July 31, 1958) has been the Artistic Director at the Public Theater in New York City since 2005. He has worked as a director, dramaturg, and artistic director for theaters around the United States.The Public Theater
The Public Theater is a New York City arts organization founded as the Shakespeare Workshop in 1954 by Joseph Papp, with the intention of showcasing the works of up-and-coming playwrights and performers.Epstein, Helen. ''Joe Papp: An American Li ...
, said in support of the production: "It is not only permissible for the Met to do this piece – it's required for the Met to do the piece. It is a powerful and important opera." A week after watching a Met performance of the opera, Supreme Court Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg ( ; ; March 15, 1933September 18, 2020) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in 2020. She was nominated by President ...
said "there was nothing anti-Semitic about the opera," and characterized the portrayal of the Klinghoffers as "very strong, very brave", and the terrorists as "bullies and irrational".
The Death of Klinghoffer
''The Death of Klinghoffer'' is an American opera, with music by John Adams to an English-language libretto by Alice Goodman. First produced in Brussels and New York in 1991, the opera is based on the hijacking of the passenger liner ''Achille ...
'' (1991)
* ''
I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky
''I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky'' is a 1995 "song play" with music composed by John Adams and a libretto by June Jordan.
Summary
The story takes place in the aftermath of the 1994 earthquake in Los Angeles, and covers the r ...
'' (song play) (1995)
* ''
El Niño
El Niño (; ; ) is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific (approximately between the International Date ...
'' (opera-oratorio) (2000)
* ''
Doctor Atomic
''Doctor Atomic'' is an opera by the contemporary American composer John Adams, with libretto by Peter Sellars. It premiered at the San Francisco Opera on October 1, 2005. The work focuses on how leading figures at Los Alamos dealt with the gre ...
'' (2005)
* ''
A Flowering Tree
''A Flowering Tree'' is an opera in two acts composed by John Adams with libretto by Adams and Peter Sellars, and commissioned by the New Crowned Hope Festival in Vienna, the San Francisco Symphony, the Barbican Centre in London, the Lincoln Cente ...
'' (2006)
* ''
The Gospel According to the Other Mary
''The Gospel According to the Other Mary'' is an opera-oratorio by the American composer John Adams (composer), John Adams. The world premiere took place on May 31, 2012, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles with Gustavo Dudamel conducti ...
'' (opera-oratorio) (2013)
* '' Girls of the Golden West'' (2017)
* ''Antony and Cleopatra'' (2022)
Tromba Lontana
''Tromba Lontana'' (lit. "distant trumpet") is an orchestral fanfare written by the American minimalist composer John Adams in 1986. The work was commissioned by the Houston Symphony in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Texas's declarati ...
'' (1986)
* ''
Short Ride in a Fast Machine
''Short Ride in a Fast Machine'' is a 1986 orchestral work by John Adams. Adams applies the description "fanfare for orchestra" to this work and to the earlier '' Tromba Lontana'' (1986). The former is also known as ''Fanfare for Great Woods'' be ...
Lollapalooza
Lollapalooza (Lolla) is an annual American four-day music festival held in Grant Park in Chicago. It originally started as a touring event in 1991 but several years later made Chicago the permanent location for the annual music festival. Musi ...
Guide to Strange Places
''Guide to Strange Places'' is an orchestral composition by the American composer John Adams. The work was commissioned by the Amsterdam broadcasting company VARA, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. It was given its w ...
City Noir
__NOTOC__''City Noir'' is a symphonic work by the composer John Adams. A primary inspiration for the piece is the work of historian Kevin Starr on urban California in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The composer characterizes the work as "jazz-in ...
Grawemeyer Award
The Grawemeyer Awards () are five awards given annually by the University of Louisville. The prizes are presented to individuals in the fields of education, ideas improving world order, music composition, religion, and psychology. The religion awa ...
for Music composition) (1993)
** '' The Dharma at Big Sur'' (concerto for solo electric violin and orchestra) (2003)
** ''
Scheherazade.2 ''Scheherazade.2'' is a dramatic symphony for solo violin and orchestra by the American composer John Adams. The work was jointly commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, the Concertgebouw & the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the Sydney Sym ...
'' (dramatic symphony for violin and orchestra) (2014)
*others
** ''
Absolute Jest
''Absolute Jest'' is a concerto for string quartet and orchestra by the American composer John Adams. The work was commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony for the orchestra's centennial. Its world premiere was given at the Louise M. Davies Sy ...
Harmonium
The pump organ is a type of free-reed organ that generates sound as air flows past a vibrating piece of thin metal in a frame. The piece of metal is called a reed. Specific types of pump organ include the reed organ, harmonium, and melodeon. Th ...
'' (1980)
* ''The Nixon Tapes'' (three suites from ''Nixon in China'') (1987)
* '' The Wound-Dresser'' (1989)
* ''
Choruses from The Death of Klinghoffer
''The Death of Klinghoffer'' is an American opera, with music by John Adams to an English-language libretto by Alice Goodman. First produced in Brussels and New York in 1991, the opera is based on the hijacking of the passenger liner ''Achille ...
Road Movies
A road movie is a film genre in which the main characters leave home on a road trip, typically altering the perspective from their everyday lives. Road movies often depict travel in the hinterlands, with the films exploring the theme of alienati ...
'' (for violin and piano) (1995)
* ''
Gnarly Buttons
''Gnarly Buttons'' is a composition for solo clarinet and chamber ensemble by the American composer John Adams. The London Sinfonietta and Present Music (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) co-commissioned the work. The work received its premiere at the Que ...
'' (for clarinet and chamber ensemble) (1996)
* ''Son of Chamber Symphony'' (2007)
* ''Fellow Traveler'' (for string quartet) (2007)
* First Quartet (2008)
* Second Quartet (2014)
Other ensemble works
* '' American Standard'', including "Christian Zeal and Activity" (1973)
* ''Grounding'' (1975)
* ''Scratchband'' (1996)
* ''Nancy's Fancy'' (2001)
Hallelujah Junction
''Hallelujah Junction'' is a composition for two pianos written in 1996 by the American composer John Adams. Adams titled his autobiography after this composition. A two-CD retrospective album of works by Adams on the Nonesuch label is also entit ...
'' (for two pianos) (1996)
* '' American Berserk'' (2001)
* ''Roll Over Beethoven'' (for two pianos) (2014)
* '' I Still Play'' (2017)
Film scores
* ''Matter of Heart'' (1982)
* ''
The Cabinet of Dr. Ramirez
''The Cabinet of Dr. Ramirez'' is a 1991 silent film directed by Peter Sellars and starring Mikhail Baryshnikov, Joan Cusack and Peter Gallagher. It is a loose remake of '' The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari''. However, the storyline was created as the ...
'' (1991)
* ''American Tapestry'' (1999)
* '' I Am Love (Io sono l'amore)'' – pre-existing pieces by Adams (2010)
* ''
Call Me by Your Name Call Me by Your Name may refer to:
* ''Call Me by Your Name'' (novel), a 2007 novel by André Aciman
* ''Call Me by Your Name'' (film), a 2017 film based on the novel, directed by Luca Guadagnino
** '' Call Me by Your Name: Original Motion Pictur ...
Berceuse élégiaque
''Berceuse élégiaque'', Op. 42 is an orchestral work composed by Ferruccio Busoni in 1909.Liszt's ''Wiegenlied'' (1881)) (1989)
* ''Six Songs by Charles Ives'' (
Ives
Ives is both a surname and a given name. Notable people with the name include:
Surname:
* Alice Emma Ives (1876–1930), American dramatist, journalist
* Burl Ives (1909–1995), American singer, author and actor
* Charles Ives (1874–1954), Ame ...
songs) (1989–93)
* ''Le Livre de Baudelaire'' ( Debussy's ''
Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire
The ''Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire'' ( L 64) constitute a song cycle for voice and piano by Claude Debussy, on poems taken from ''Les Fleurs du mal'' by Charles Baudelaire. Composed from December 1887 to March 1889, these five highly deve ...
tango
Tango is a partner dance and social dance that originated in the 1880s along the Río de la Plata, the natural border between Argentina and Uruguay. The tango was born in the impoverished port areas of these countries as the result of a combina ...
) (1995)
* ''Todo Buenos Aires'' (Piazzolla tango) (1996)
Awards and recognition
Major awards
*
Pulitzer Prize for Music
The Pulitzer Prize for Music is one of seven Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually in Letters, Drama, and Music. It was first given in 1943. Joseph Pulitzer arranged for a music scholarship to be awarded each year, and this was eventually converted ...
for ''On the Transmigration of Souls'' (2003)
**Pulitzer Prize for Music Finalist for ''Century Rolls'' (1998) and ''The Gospel According to the Other Mary'' (2014)
*
Erasmus Prize
The Erasmus Prize is an annual prize awarded by the board of the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation to individuals or institutions that have made exceptional contributions to culture, society, or social science in Europe and the rest of the world. I ...
(2019)
Grammy awards
* Best Contemporary Composition for ''Nixon in China'' (1989)
*Best Contemporary Composition for ''El Dorado'' (1998)
*
Best Classical Album
The Grammy Award for Best Classical Album was awarded from 1962 to 2011. The award had several minor name changes:
*From 1962 to 1963, 1965 to 1972 and 1974 to 1976 the award was known as Album of the Year – Classical
*In 1964 and 1977 it wa ...
for ''On the Transmigration of Souls'' (2004)
*
Best Orchestral Performance
The Grammy Award
The Grammy Awards (stylized as GRAMMY), or simply known as the Grammys, are awards presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize "outstanding" achievements in the music industry. They are regarded by man ...
Royal Philharmonic Society
The Royal Philharmonic Society (RPS) is a British music society, formed in 1813. Its original purpose was to promote performances of instrumental music in London. Many composers and performers have taken part in its concerts. It is now a memb ...
Music Award for Best Chamber Composition for ''Chamber Symphony'' (1994)
*
University of Louisville
The University of Louisville (UofL) is a public research university in Louisville, Kentucky. It is part of the Kentucky state university system. When founded in 1798, it was the first city-owned public university in the United States and one of ...
Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition
The Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition () is an annual prize instituted by Henry Charles Grawemeyer, industrialist and entrepreneur, at the University of Louisville in 1984. The award was first given in 1985. Subsequently, the Grawemeyer Awar ...
for ''Violin Concerto'' (1995)
*California Governor's Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts
* Cyril Magnin Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts
*''Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres'' ( Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) (2015)
* Harvard Arts Medal (2007)
*2018
BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award
The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards () are an international award programme recognizing significant contributions in the areas of scientific research and cultural creation. The categories that make up the Frontiers of Knowledge Awards ...
in the category of Music and Opera
Memberships
*Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...
(1997)
* Member of the
American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headqu ...
(1997)
Honorary Doctorates
*
Honorary Doctorate
An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hon ...
of Arts from
University of Cambridge
, mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts.
Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge.
, established =
, other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
(2003)
*Honorary Doctorate of Arts from
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world.
Charte ...
(2008)
* Honorary Doctorate of Music from
Duquesne University
Duquesne University of the Holy Spirit ( or ; Duquesne University or Duquesne) is a private Catholic research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Founded by members of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, Duquesne first opened as the Pittsbu ...
(2009)
* Honorary Doctorate of Music from
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...
(2012)
* Honorary Doctorate of Music from
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
(2013)
* Honorary Doctorate of Music from
Royal Academy of Music
The Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, England, is the oldest conservatoire in the UK, founded in 1822 by John Fane and Nicolas-Charles Bochsa. It received its royal charter in 1830 from King George IV with the support of the first Duke of ...
(2015)
Other
*Creative Chair of the Los Angeles Philharmonic (2009–present)
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Further reading
*Butterworth, Neil. "John Adams", ''Dictionary of American Classical Composers''. 2nd ed. New York and London: Rouledge, 2005.
*Daines, Matthew. "The Death of Klinghoffer by John Adams", '' American Music'' vol. 16, no. 3 (Autumn 1998), pp. 356–358. eview*Richardson, John. "John Adams: A Portrait and a Concert of American Music", ''American Music'' vol. 23, no. 1 (Spring 2005), pp. 131–133. eview*Rimer, J. Thomas. "''Nixon in China'' by John Adams", ''American Music'' vol. 12, no. 3 (Autumn 1994), pp. 338–341. eview*Schwarz, K. Robert. "Process vs. Intuition in the Recent Works of Steve Reich and John Adams", ''American Music'' vol. 8, no. 3 (Autumn 1990), pp. 245–273.
Boosey & Hawkes
Boosey & Hawkes is a British music publisher purported to be the largest specialist classical music publisher in the world. Until 2003, it was also a major manufacturer of brass, string and woodwind musical instruments.
Formed in 1930 throu ...
NPR Music
NPR Music is a project of National Public Radio, an American privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization, that launched in November 2007 to present public radio music programming and original editorial content for music ...