John Adams (1947 - Present)

## **Introduction**

American composer John Adams was born on February 15th 1947 in Worcester, Massachusetts and would be the first student from Harvard to be allowed to submit a musical composition as a senior thesis.  Though praised for his contemporary classical music, Adams also drew from outside sources like pop, jazz, electronic music, and even minimalism.

https://johnadamscomposer.com - Photo

## **Work Analysis**

In 1985, John Adams would premiere Harmonielehre as part of a commission by Meet the Composer Orchestra residency program and was also funded by the Exxon Corporation, Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Harmonielehre or the “Book of Harmony”, is a 3 movement piece that takes influence from the work of Arnold Schoenberg and the book he wrote that shares the same name. Even though Adams looks to the work of Schoenberg for this piece, he surprisingly isn't a fan of his 12 tone music.Schoenberg individualist work nearly killed the already small classical music group that Adams was apart and saw his work more as a retread of 19th century techniques. Adams does however respect however Schoenberg still pushing the idea that great music could still be made in a Tonal environment. When asked what this piece means to him, Adams was quoted saying that Harmonielehre “marries the developmental techniques of Minimalism with the harmonic and expressive world of fin de siècle late Romanticism”. The work was first played on March 21st, 1985 by the San Francisco Symphony, with Edo de Waart conducting an orchestra composed of 4 flutes, 3 oboes, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, 2 tubas, timpani, percussion (4 players) 2 harps, piano, celesta, and strings. The first movement is filled with high energy that is based around e minor. Adams got the idea for the intro from a dream he had where he saw a supertanker burst from the San Francisco bay and into the sky. This intro also shows the minimalist influence on Adams by how it repeats the motif over e minor. After this, Adams leads into an arch form that calms the music down. The middle section, as Adams describes it, is long “Sehnsucht” section that has a yearning characteristic. This movement ends by reverting back to the repetition of e minor chords with the same energy as the intro.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDZace7wL4A

## **Comparisons**

Besides the obvious connection to Schoenberg, Adams also has been quoted saying that his second movement was influenced by Sibelius’ 4th Symphony and Mahler's 10th Symphony.

## **Observations**

I thought it was clever how Adams used the same name Schoenberg had for his book as the title of his piece. He even said that he did this un-ironically to add onto the use of more Tonal music. Knowing about Adams’ dream also adds to the music, imagining a huge tanker just lift from the water with such force.

## **Works Cited**

https://www.earbox.com/harmonielehre/

https://www.theguardian.com/music/tomserviceblog/2014/mar/11/symphony-guide-john-adams-harmonielehre-tom-service

https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Adams-American-composer-and-conductor