# The bashing John Adams thread



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

isorhythm said:


> I see almost no bashing of Adams or other more conservative composers.


A simple oversight or a sign of a darker plot? In any case, we all know the old rhyme, "John Adams, a dog, and a walnut tree, the more ye beat 'em the better they be."

So this thread is offered as a place to bash John Adams (either of them) or other non-modernist composers who you think may benefit from it.


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## Skilmarilion (Apr 6, 2013)

The opening measures of Harmonielehre are surely the most bashing John Adams. ;-)


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

I have not listened that much to his music.
I saw Nixon in China on TV once and thought it was boring. I have been listening to A Flowering Tree and thought the same. Because of that I have had little interest in listening to his music.


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## Guest (Jan 11, 2016)

I feel I should hear more of his works before I start bashing him.


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

Where's the thread where we can bash these types of threads?


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## Dr Johnson (Jun 26, 2015)

A _walnut_ tree, surely?


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## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

GreenMamba said:


> Where's the thread where we can bash these types of threads?


But most importantly, where is the poll?!?!?!?


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Meh. .


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## geralmar (Feb 15, 2013)

Die Harmonielehre (San Francisco Symphony/de Wart) was used to stunning effect as the soundtrack to The Cabinet of Dr. Ramirez (1991). But we're not really talking about movie music, are we?


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

Being unfamiliar with Adams' oeuvre, is there anything of his worth listening to (or recommendable). I seriously doubt that everything he had written is that bad (or hopelessly boring or bland). The one-dimensionalism here and in the comments regarding his music on Boulez' thread (whether he's a great composer) got me curious, and at the same time, quite alarmed. 

Then again, I may be missing something, which I hope is not the case.


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## Skilmarilion (Apr 6, 2013)

Orfeo said:


> Being unfamiliar with Adams' oeuvre, is there anything of his worth listening to (or recommendable).


Absolutely ... you'll be best off diving into his remarkably varied ouevre pretty much anywhere and making up your own mind.

Works of his that I enjoy (there are still a fair few I have yet to hear):

China Gates
Christian Zeal and Activity
Grand Pianola Music
Shaker Loops
Nixon in China (mainly first act)
Violin Concerto
Naive and Sentimental Music
Harmonielehre
Doctor Atomic (the "Batter my heart" number is a highlight)
The Dharma at Big Sur

Some selected movements would be the first part of Absolute Jest, first part of Harmonium and the final movement of Gnarly Buttons. Eros Piano is also highly worthwhile, and rather unlike anything else of his that I've heard.


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## Guest (Jan 11, 2016)

The fact that the pot-stirring context of these otherwise innocent threads is completely overlooked... well, I find that fact troublesome, moderators.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

How is John Adams a "conservative" composer? He's one of the main founders of the American Minimalist movement (a term he tries to distance himself from, but I'll use it anyway). The Minimalist movement and the subsequent post-minimalist composer's style became one of the dominant musical forms across America and parts of Europe. Doesn't seem conservative at all to me.

To me, a "conservative" composer would be one that deliberately composes in an older style...not just a composer that uses more triads than previous composers or some nonsense like that. If anything Adams was slightly ahead of his time (along with Reich and others) considering the direction American music has taken within the last 40 years or so.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

I'd call him post-minimalist rather than minimalist. He's a decade younger than Reich, Glass, Riley and Young, and he was never interested in extreme limitation of musical materials or gradual process music like they were. Even _Shaker Loops_ sounds more like a fusion of minimalist techniques with a neo-Romantic aesthetic than minimalism as such, to me.

I haven't studied his music, so I don't know if I'd call his musical language conservative, but I think his sensibility is conservative.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

JA composes as if he were an individual person (if you get my drift*). Shaker Loops, The Dharma At Big Sur and Gnarly Buttons are what I think of as 'reaction music', or maybe 'my take music'. He does a fine job of communicating the essence of his take.

* Yeah, I have to drift into the wake of his drift, but (God loves me) I can do that often enough.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

isorhythm said:


> I'd call him post-minimalist rather than minimalist. He's a decade younger than Reich, Glass, Riley and Young, and he was never interested in extreme limitation of musical materials or gradual process music like they were. Even _Shaker Loops_ sounds more like a fusion of minimalist techniques with a neo-Romantic aesthetic than minimalism as such, to me.
> 
> I haven't studied his music, so I don't know if I'd call his musical language conservative, but I think his sensibility is conservative.


Conservative - or independent? A conservative is suspicious of the new and different, and I don't think Adams ever was. He tried falling in line with current orthopraxy, and realized one day that there were things in him that weren't finding expression there. He's taken what he needs from what's around him, used what he can of it, and rejected what he can't. That's my impression, anyway, gleaned from the works I've heard and statements of his that I've read. He just goes his own way, identifying with no school or movement, and I admire him for it. But I really don't have a general opinion of his music; I've enjoyed some pieces, others not so much, and he isn't high on my "must hear" list.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Dr Johnson said:


> A _walnut_ tree, surely?


Oops! Memory plays cruel tricks on us. Fixed.


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

Forget "suspicious of the new and different" - Adams' style, such as it is, consists of suspicion of the no-longer-quite-new-in-his-own-time (minimalism and rock). Of course, the same could be said of, for example, Puccini's selective appropriations from Wagner and Debussy, but then, Puccini was a genius hack and Adams is just a hack.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Reading up on Adams a little, I came across something kinda funny...in a 2013 New York Times article:



> Despite the boplike licks in his new concerto, the 66-year-old Mr. Adams expresses reservations about the fad for pop sounds in younger composers' music.
> 
> "We seem to have gone from the era of fearsome dissonance and complexity - from the period of high modernism and Babbitt and Carter - and gone to suddenly these just extremely simplistic, user-friendly, lightweight, sort of music lite," he said. "People are winning Pulitzer Prizes writing this stuff now."
> 
> ...


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/18/a...-john-adams-concerto.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Harold in Columbia said:


> Forget "suspicious of the new and different" - Adams' style, *such as it is*, consists of suspicion of the no-longer-quite-new-in-his-own-time (minimalism and rock). Of course, the same could be said of, for example, *Puccini's selective appropriations from Wagner and Debussy,* but then, *Puccini was a genius hack* and *Adams is just a hack.*


Maybe I just don't get around, but I don't often see such glibly expressed loathing for a composer's music as you've been throwing at Adams'. I have no position on Adams' work as a whole - I'd say it's variable - so mine isn't the defensive reaction of a fan such as we're seeing in the Boulez discussions, where the suggestion that Boulez may be less than a "great" composer sends some people into conniptions. Calling a reputable composer a "hack" whose music "sucks" is pretty classless, don't you think? And Puccini, whose music was respected by the likes of Schoenberg (didn't know that, did you?), a "genius hack"? A "hack" is someone hired to produce routine or commercial work. So far as I know, that doesn't describe the professional status of either man, both of whom I believe to be motivated by sincerely held artistic goals (actually it much more accurately describes J. S. Bach, whom I haven't recently seen being called a hack). Puccini no more "appropriated" the music of other composers than did Verdi before him or Donizetti before _him;_ echoes of Wagner and Debussy in his work are well-integrated influences feeding a style very distinctively his own and steadily evolving in accordance with his own creative impulses. Perhaps you still hold to the Boulezian creed - now such a quaint relic of high(handed) Modernism - that the past should be destroyed, in this case with reference to the style of a composer, in order for anything valid to emerge?


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> Maybe I just don't get around, but I don't often see such glibly expressed loathing for a composer's music as you've been throwing at Adams'. I have no position on Adams' work as a whole - I'd say it's variable - *so mine isn't the defensive reaction of a fan such as we're seeing in the Boulez discussions, where the suggestion that Boulez may be less than a "great" composer sends some people into conniptions. Calling a reputable composer a "hack" whose music "sucks" is pretty classless, don't you think?* And Puccini, whose music was respected by the likes of Schoenberg (didn't know that, did you?), a "genius hack"? A "hack" is someone hired to produce routine or commercial work. So far as I know, that doesn't describe the professional status of either man, both of whom I believe to be motivated by sincerely held artistic goals (actually it much more accurately describes J. S. Bach, whom I haven't recently seen being called a hack). Puccini no more "appropriated" the music of other composers than did Verdi before him or Donizetti before _him;_ echoes of Wagner and Debussy in his work are well-integrated influences feeding a style very distinctively his own and steadily evolving in accordance with his own creative impulses. Perhaps you still hold to the Boulezian creed - now such a quaint relic of high(handed) Modernism - that the past should be destroyed, in this case with reference to the style of a composer, in order for anything valid to emerge?


Talk of "Emperor's New Clothes" and conspiracies to trick people into thinking a piece is related to the past is pretty similar to calling a composer a hack, wouldn't you say?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

(A quote): On the subject of commercialism and marketing in new music, Mr. Adams said, “What I’m concerned with is people that are 20, 30 years younger than me are sort of writing down to a cultural level that’s very, very vacuous and very superficial.”

Age certainly does tell on us. Even John Adams is becoming a curmudgeon!

"Things was different when I was young!"


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

violadude said:


> Talk of "Emperor's New Clothes" and conspiracies to trick people into thinking a piece is related to the past is pretty similar to calling a composer a hack, wouldn't you say?


Nope.

I didn't use the phrase "emperor's new clothes." Check again. As for the "tricking" part, I have neither tricked anyone nor accused anyone else of tricking anyone.

If you want to play a game of tit-for-tat, you'll need to be clearer and more accurate about the tat.

:tiphat:


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> Nope.
> 
> I didn't use the phrase "emperor's new clothes." Check again. As for the "tricking" part, I have neither tricked anyone nor accused anyone else of tricking anyone.
> 
> ...


I didn't say that you said those things. You were comparing Boulez fans to Adams fans and saying that the Boulez fans were only reacting to valid criticism while the Adams fans were reacting to people calling the composer a hack. Not you, but others have used the Emperor's New Clothes thing to define what Boulez's music is like, which is basically the same thing as calling him a hack.


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> Maybe I just don't get around, but I don't often see such glibly expressed loathing for a composer's music as you've been throwing at Adams'.


I don't loathe Adams' music. I loathe Steve Reich's music, maybe. John Coolidge Adams isn't talented enough to loathe.



Woodduck said:


> And Puccini, whose music was respected by the likes of Schoenberg (didn't know that, did you?), a "genius hack"?


I don't know what "the likes of Schoenberg" means. I do know that Schoenberg respected Puccini. It's not clear to me why you think I would be surprised by this, when I just called Puccini a genius.



Woodduck said:


> A "hack" is someone hired to produce routine or commercial work.


Exactly.



Woodduck said:


> echoes of Wagner and Debussy in his [Puccini's] work are well-integrated influences feeding a style very distinctively his own and steadily evolving in accordance with his own creative impulses.


But they're aren't.



Woodduck said:


> Perhaps you still hold to the Boulezian creed - now such a quaint relic of high(handed) Modernism -


The phrase "a quaint relic of high(handed) Modernism" is a quaint relic of both neo-classicism and pop art - both of which are also modernist. (Post-modernism doesn't care.)



Woodduck said:


> that the past should be destroyed, in this case with reference to the style of a composer, in order for anything valid to emerge?


Man, first _you want_ to destroy a "quaint relic of the past," now you're talking like it's a bad thing. I think you should make up your mind.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I'm a bit disappointed in the quality of the Adams bashing in this thread. Restraint is sometimes admirable, but this is ridiculous. Even Harold, for whom I held high hopes, can come up only with "John Coolidge Adams isn't talented enough to loathe."

Well, not bad I suppose, but certainly we can do better!


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

violadude said:


> I didn't say that you said those things. You were comparing Boulez fans to Adams fans and saying that the Boulez fans were only reacting to valid criticism while the Adams fans were reacting to people calling the composer a hack. Not you, but others have used the Emperor's New Clothes thing to define what Boulez's music is like, which is basically the same thing as calling him a hack.


You should re-read the Emperor's New Clothes story because the real point of it is about the reaction of the bystanders, that if something is new, different and unusual enough, it is assumed to be special and profound, whether it really is or not. And yes, I was the one who said it in the other thread but it was about SOME of the listeners, not Boulez' music.


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

Not bashing, but simply an observation: John Luther Adams is clearly replacing John Coolidge Adams as America's unofficial composer laureate, the reason being, obviously, that now that we have Luther to fill the slot of Steve Reich epigone who writes for big orchestras, we don't need Coolidge any more.


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## Balthazar (Aug 30, 2014)

KenOC said:


> I'm a bit disappointed in the quality of the Adams bashing in this thread. Restraint is sometimes admirable, but this is ridiculous.


But John Adams is still alive!

It would seem that the bashers' thrill is optimized when the object of derision is still only slightly warm.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

I didn't much care for some of the things that were pointed out to me in the past (Shaker Loops, Lollapalooza), but I have started to come across works that have pleasantly surprised me. The earlier 'repeating patterns' stuff hits me like a walk through a mausoleum, but I think his more recent work is likely to start to pique my interest more.


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## Guest (Jan 12, 2016)

I think of J. C. Adams as a worthy successor to Aaron Copland, in a way. Not stylistically, but in the sense that both composers have a fine way of melding compositional integrity with populism. Neither Aaron Copland nor John Adams are anywhere near my favorite composers, but they have their worthy place in history. 

Threads like this (and the provocative Pierre Boulez polls), however, do not make me happy. Don't take it personally, Ken, but perhaps do take it as a suggestion. I have no desire to bicker, bash, provoke, etc. But "turning the other cheek" only works so well, sometimes, and I do not care for the way other posters and myself feel toyed with.

But a suggestion, it shall remain. Just because I have occasionally felt manipulated or harassed does not mean it breaches the almighty ToS. Carry on. *Sigh of the century*


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

KenOC said:


> I'm a bit disappointed in the quality of the Adams bashing in this thread. Restraint is sometimes admirable, but this is ridiculous. Even Harold, for whom I held high hopes, can come up only with "John Coolidge Adams isn't talented enough to loathe."
> 
> Well, not bad I suppose, but certainly we can do better!


I don't think most people care much to bash John Adams. He's a well-respected composer.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

KenOC said:


> I'm a bit disappointed in the quality of the Adams bashing in this thread. Restraint is sometimes admirable, but this is ridiculous. Even Harold, for whom I held high hopes, can come up only with "John Coolidge Adams isn't talented enough to loathe."
> 
> Well, not bad I suppose, but certainly we can do better!


I feared this would happen. There are Adams-bashers out there, but they just don't put the effort in. They are a petulant bunch, but lazy with it. Whereas your average Boulez-basher really puts in the hours. Some of them even go on training courses at the weekends.
And I suspect too, that even if a proper Adams-basher shows up, the Adams-defenders will be so out of practice the whole thing will fizzle out.
It's a shambles, Ken! Maybe an "Einaudi needs a Grawemeyer Prize" thread is necessary?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Nereffid said:


> I feared this would happen. There are Adams-bashers out there, but they just don't put the effort in. They are a petulant bunch, but lazy with it. Whereas your average Boulez-basher really puts in the hours. Some of them even go on training courses at the weekends.
> And I suspect too, that even if a proper Adams-basher shows up, the Adams-defenders will be so out of practice the whole thing will fizzle out.
> It's a shambles, Ken! Maybe an "Einaudi needs a Grawemeyer Prize" thread is necessary?


Yes, well I'm disappointed too. I had such high hopes, but not to be fulfilled I guess. Maybe next time?


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## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

Sorry, but


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

violadude said:


> I didn't say that you said those things. You were comparing Boulez fans to Adams fans and saying that the Boulez fans were only reacting to valid criticism while the Adams fans were reacting to people calling the composer a hack. Not you, but others have used the Emperor's New Clothes thing to define what Boulez's music is like, which is basically the same thing as calling him a hack.


If you know I didn't say those things, why did you bring them up to me? It's a big enough job around here to have one's own statements treated intelligently and respectfully - just have a look at new member Harold in Columbia's snarky nitpicking of my defense of Adams' and Puccini's dignity - without being expected to respond on behalf of other posters who can speak for themselves. I believe Becca has done so, but I don't know who the "trickster" you referred to might be.

My point, which I'll repeat, is that throwing words like "hack" and "sucks" at composers is a crude and unattractive substitute for meaningful criticism - I doubt that you disagree - and has no other purpose than ego-gratification, unless it be annoying others. Funny what gratifies some people.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> If you know I didn't say those things, why did you bring them up to me? It's a big enough job around here to have one's own statements treated intelligently and respectfully - just have a look at new member Harold in Columbia's snarky nitpicking of my defense of Adams' and Puccini's dignity - without being expected to respond on behalf of other posters who can speak for themselves. I believe Becca has done so, but I don't know who the "trickster" you referred to might be.
> 
> My point, which I'll repeat, is that throwing words like "hack" and "sucks" at composers is a crude and unattractive substitute for meaningful criticism - I doubt that you disagree - and has no other purpose than ego-gratification, unless it be annoying others. Funny what gratifies some people.


I brought it up to you because you're the one saying that Adam's detractors are the ones saying that he's a hack, while Boulez detractors aren't.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Arsakes said:


> Sorry, but


... and the Iron Throne, too!


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Adams' music is shiny and boring, better crafted than Glass but just as lacking in ideas. Slick like a polished turd. I've also heard from several sources that he's quite an unpleasant and demanding man. He makes big bucks for a composer tho - kudos

Did I do good? I am always keen to lower the tone

<<I love Boulez>>


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

dgee said:


> Adams' music is shiny and boring, better crafted than Glass but just as lacking in ideas. Slick like a polished turd. I've also heard from several sources that he's quite an unpleasant and demanding man. He makes big bucks for a composer tho - kudos
> 
> Did I do good? I am always keen to lower the tone
> 
> <<I love Boulez>>


A very nice effort, I'll leave it to others to determine your score. Sincerely, though, thanks for playing!


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

John leaves m cold. But Abigail -- she was really cool!


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## Abraham Lincoln (Oct 3, 2015)

Bashing John Adams?

I learned nothing about John Adams in history class other than the fact that he was one of the Founding Fathers. Too forgettable. Blaaaah

Like this?


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

John Adams is a satanist (so I've heard).


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Adams is OK.

I really hate "A Short Ride in a Fast Machine" though.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

violadude said:


> I brought it up to you because you're the one saying that Adam's detractors are the ones saying that he's a hack, while Boulez detractors aren't.


No one has called Boulez a hack, violadude, nor do I think that anyone considers him a hack, although I'm just guessing. On the other hand, someone has actually called Adams a hack. That is not something I made up. It actually happened. Any equivalences you want to see between what anyone has said about either are in your mind.

Do you know what a hack is, by the way?


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

dgee said:


> Adams' music is shiny and boring, better crafted than Glass but just as lacking in ideas.


Glass isn't (wasn't?) lacking in ideas. (Adele stole a tune from him!)

Seriously, even if Adams had talent, I think an equation of him and Philip Glass would be a mistake. Leaving aside arguments over what exactly "minimalism" is, Glass started out, at least up through _Einstein on the Beach_, as a member of the avant-garde. Adams' style consisted from the beginning in taking the edge off the avant-garde. I've thought before that Glass and Reich can maybe be usefully understood as analogues to Meyerbeer (with Terry Riley as Carl Maria Weber and early '60s popular music as Italian opera - needless to say, they don't seem to have produced a Wagner - maybe the leaven of a Berlioz analog is the missing ingredient), and maybe that could be usefully expanded to consider Coolidge Adams as an analog to Gounod, with _Nixon in China_ as _Faust_ and the dippy New Ageisms/belated beatnikisms of some of his other works analogous to Gounod's cozy Catholicism - except that Gounod had talent (certainly Adams has nothing to set beside the individual songs and arias that Ravel identified as the origin of French art song).


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

^^ Criticism of Adams for not being avant-garde, _plus_ a labored analogy that includes a beautifully dismissive comparison to Wagner.

We may have a winner, albeit from an admittedly weak field. :clap:


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

I find his name highly objectionable since it's ubiquity makes it quite difficult to google information about him. Just plug "John Adams" into a search engine and see what happens--you're more likely to get a bunch of crap about an American president than anything else. Even "John Adams + composer" will result in a lot of irrelevant information. Though he may not be entirely to blame for this, I can't help but lament his lack of foresight.


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## Prodromides (Mar 18, 2012)

Take this - John Adams! (punch)

That's for arguing with Leon Kirchner during the 1960s.


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

Skilmarilion said:


> Absolutely ... you'll be best off diving into his remarkably varied ouevre pretty much anywhere and making up your own mind.
> 
> Works of his that I enjoy (there are still a fair few I have yet to hear):
> 
> ...


Much obliged Skilmarilion. I think I'll try Nixon in China, having read much about it in years past.
:tiphat:


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

Harold in Columbia said:


> I've thought before that Glass and Reich can maybe be usefully understood as analogues to Meyerbeer (with Terry Riley as Carl Maria Weber and early '60s popular music as Italian opera - needless to say, they don't seem to have produced a Wagner - maybe the leaven of a Berlioz analog is the missing ingredient)


Come to think of it, Grisey would have filled the Berlioz role perfectly. So maybe the real problem is that all the potential Wagners were off somewhere making rock or trip hop.



Harold in Columbia said:


> and maybe that could be usefully expanded to consider Coolidge Adams as an analog to Gounod, with _Nixon in China_ as _Faust_ and the dippy New Ageisms/belated beatnikisms of some of his other works analogous to Gounod's cozy Catholicism - except that Gounod had talent


Another flaw in this analogy is that Catholicism in 19th century France was a conservative gesture, while Adams' dharmas and transmigrating souls are liberal, God help us (speaking as a liberal).


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

I really don't like to 'bash' any composer - or anyone else (well, except several high muckymucks in the 3rd Reich and Joe Stalin etc) because I am vulnerable to counterattacks - or would be if anyone knew me from Adams.

[Horrible pseudo-pun intended]


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## Guest (Jan 12, 2016)

Bash Adams? His music is barely on my radar given that I have bigger fish to fry. All very pleasant stuff, give the guy some dollars and a cigar and send him on his way. On the other hand, that Boulez fellow. French. Difficult. Opinionated. Sensual. Clever. Tricky-dicky. Nice conducting gestures. Lived in Germany in preference to France. Good move. QED.


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## Skilmarilion (Apr 6, 2013)

For anyone interested, here's Adams on Schoenberg in the context of his own Harmonielehre:

_Harmonielehre is roughly translated as "the book of harmony" or "treatise on harmony." It is the title of a huge study of tonal harmony, part textbook, part philosophical rumination, that Arnold Schoenberg published in 1911 just as he was embarking on a voyage into unknown waters, one in which he would more or less permanently renounce the laws of tonality. My own relationship to Schoenberg needs some explanation.

Leon Kirchner, with whom I studied at Harvard, had himself been a student of Schoenberg in Los Angeles during the 1940s. Kirchner had no interest in the serial system that Schoenberg had invented, but he shared a sense of high seriousness and an intensely critical view of the legacy of the past. Through Kirchner I became highly sensitized to what Schoenberg and his art represented. He was a "master" in the same sense that Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms were masters. That notion in itself appealed to me then and continues to do so. But Schoenberg also represented to me something twisted and contorted. He was the first composer to assume the role of high-priest, a creative mind whose entire life ran unfailingly against the grain of society, almost as if he had chosen the role of irritant.

Despite my respect for and even intimdation by the persona of Schoenberg, I felt it only honest to acknowledge that I profoundly disliked the sound of twelve-tone music. His aesthetic was to me an overripening of 19th century Individualism, one in which the composer was a god of sorts, to which the listener would come as if to a sacramental altar. It was with Schoenberg that the "agony of modern music" had been born, and it was no secret that the audience classical music during the twentieth century was rapidly shrinking, in no small part because of the aural ugliness of so much of the new work being written.

It is difficult to understand why the Schoenbergian model became so profoundly influential for classical composers. Composers like Pierre Boulez and Gyorgy Ligeti have borne both the ethic and the aesthetic into our own time, and its immanence in present day university life and European musical festivals is still potent. Rejecting Schoenberg was like siding with the Philistines, and freeing myself from the model he represented was an act of enormous will power. Not surprisingly, my rejection took the form of parody…not a single parody, but several extremely different ones. In my Chamber Symphony the busy, hyperactive style of Schoenberg's own early work is placed in a salad spinner with Hollywood cartoon music. In The Death of Klinghoffer the priggish, disdainful Austrian Woman describes how she spent the entire hijacking hiding under her bed by singing in a Sprechstimme to the accompaniment of a Pierrot-like ensemble in the pit.

My own Harmonielehre is parody of a different sort in that it bears a "subsidiary relation" to a model (in this case a number of signal works from the turn of the century like Gurrelieder and the Sibelius Fourth Symphony), but it does so without the intent to ridicule._

*earbox.com*


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

The "agony of modern music" began long before Schoenberg, and it is only because Adams buys into the idea that Schoenberg renounced the "laws of tonality" that he can make such an assertion. In actuality, Harmonielehre is dedicated to the idea that there are no eternal laws in music, that all music is natural and all artificial, and that a thorough grounding in the techniques of the past is necessary for the building of a future.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

^^Whatever nice things I might say about Adams from time to time, his attacking Ligeti strikes me as laughable.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Mahlerian said:


> The "agony of modern music" began long before Schoenberg, and it is only because Adams buys into the idea that Schoenberg renounced the "laws of tonality" that he can make such an assertion. In actuality, Harmonielehre is dedicated to the idea that there are no eternal laws in music, that all music is natural and all artificial, _*and that a thorough grounding in the techniques of the past is necessary for the building of a future*_.


I find the highlighted statement to be almost hilarious in light of Boulez' many statements about destroying the past. Remember that they were not just made in his younger days. Where does that leave those that come after Boulez? What is it that they are building on?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Becca said:


> I find the highlighted statement to be almost hilarious in light of Boulez' many statements about destroying the past. Remember that they were not just made in his younger days. Where does that leave those that come after Boulez? What is it that they are building on?


We're not talking about Boulez here, but Schoenberg, whose music Boulez rejected early on in part because of its overt ties to tradition.

Regardless of what Boulez said, his own music is built on the tradition of Debussy, Webern, Messiaen, and yes, Schoenberg, among many others.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> Regardless of what Boulez said, his own music is built on the tradition of Debussy, Webern, Messiaen, and yes, Schoenberg, among many others.


All composers he conducted and recorded with distinction, incidentally.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Mahlerian said:


> We're not talking about Boulez here, but Schoenberg, whose music Boulez rejected early on in part because of its overt ties to tradition..


Yes, I had figured that out.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Becca said:


> Yes, I had figured that out.


Then how was Boulez at all relevant to the discussion regarding Adams' statements, except, perhaps, to point up how inappropriate it is for Adams to say that Boulez continued Schoenberg's ethos?


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## Skilmarilion (Apr 6, 2013)

> Rejecting Schoenberg was like siding with the Philistines, and freeing myself from the model he represented was an act of enormous will power.


I think the fact that Adams feels this way maybe gives an insight into how he assesses himself as a composer - one who can't be easily labelled a conservative, for sure.

Granted, Adams is constantly looking back to the past in so many of his works (as did Schoenberg), but he does so from the perspective of his own time, through a lens of minimalism, neo-romanticism and even orientalism, which ultimately has given him a language of expression uniquely his own.

In essence I think he's one of the prime examples of an artist who is at the same time both conservative and innovative in his approach, and imo he is one of today's more interesting composers for it.


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