''Slonimsky's Earbox'' is an orchestral work written in 1996 by American composer

John Adams John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Befor ...

. The world premiere was given by the

Halle Halle may refer to: Places Germany * Halle (Saale), also called Halle an der Saale, a city in Saxony-Anhalt ** Halle (region), a former administrative region in Saxony-Anhalt ** Bezirk Halle, a former administrative division of East Germany ** Hall ...

Orchestra, conducted by Kent Nagano on September 11, 1996 as part of the opening night celebrations for

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

Bridgewater Hall The Bridgewater Hall is a concert venue in Manchester city centre, England. It cost around £42 million to build in the 1990s, and hosts over 250 performances a year. It is home to the 165-year-old Hallé Orchestra as well as to the Hallé ...

. The piece is based on

Igor 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 composers of the ...

's work ''

Le chant du rossignol ''Le chant du rossignol'' (English: ''The Song of the Nightingale'') is a symphonic poem written by Igor Stravinsky in 1917. The score is adapted from his earlier work, ''Le rossignol'' (''The Nightingale''), an opera from 1914. The opera, based o ...

'', as Adams was drawn to the modal harmonies that Stravinsky employed. It is a step toward integrating standard minimalist techniques with a more complex

contrapuntal In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradi ...

style. It is approximately 13 minutes in length. Adams wrote the piece in tribute to his friend, the Russian-American composer, critic and musicologist

Nicolas Slonimsky Nicolas Slonimsky ( – December 25, 1995), born Nikolai Leonidovich Slonimskiy (russian: Никола́й Леони́дович Сло́нимский), was a Russian-born American conductor, author, pianist, composer and lexicographer. B ...

, who had recently died. Slonimsky, the long-time editor of '' Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians,'' was the author of ''The Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns,'' a book of which Adams has made frequent use. Adams describes Slonimsky as "a character of mind-boggling ability", and says that ''Slonimsky's Earbox'' "memorializes his wit and hyper-energetic activity."

BBC Radio 3 BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, Radio drama, drama, High culture, culture and the arts ...

'
''Afternoon on 3'' program
3 May 2010

References

Compositions by John Adams (composer) 1996 compositions Funerary and memorial compositions {{Classical-composition-stub