Composer John Adams: Musical Landscapes

Music. Reflections on works by John Adams, occasioned by The John Adams Reader edited by Thomas May.

In a fine interview printed in The John Adams Reader, the composer describes his own music as driving (or flying) across a landscape: Once you start your motion forward, large objects pass by on the left and right, while others in the distance come into view, small at first, then large -- and others recede. Under all, there's the sound of the machine in motion. What a great way to think of a piece of music, an alternative to the sonata form that Haydn developed -- sort of the five - paragraph - essay of the music world -- followed or at least referenced by composers ever since.

Now thirty years into composing such pieces, John Adams' machine keeps working for me. Yes, there's a sameness to his work, and, yes, when he does something different, adding in some of very harsh sounds and awkward jagged edges, I don't like it as much as the more mellifluous and spacier 80s stuff.

On the other hand, a John Adams piece sounds like it's his, and Mozart's sounds like Mozart's, too, so that's not a bad thing in itself.

And, still on the other hand, many pieces of Adams soar, delight, and touch the heart, from the 70s "Shaker Loops" to the 80s vocal piece "The Wound - Dresser" (setting Walt Whitman's verse account of nursing Civil War soldiers) to the
millennial "Century Rolls" which I heard played by the Atlanta Symphony with the pianist for whom Adams wrote it, Emanuel Ax.

Finally, I'll go out on a limb and say that the opera NIXON IN CHINA has become one of my favorite works of art in any medium. Here, I have special authority, because I was at the premiere.

In 1987, I drove the ten hours to Houston to see the opera's world premiere. I admit that I got totally lost in the long bombastic scene with Nixon, Mao, Chou, Kissinger, and Mao's secretaries; that I was baffled (and bored) by the "ballet" in Act Two, and I had trouble staying awake in Act Three -- which shows us all the principals preparing to sleep after the final day of the summit, with six plain roll-a-beds, as if they're retiring to their cabin at summer camp.

As I walked among national TV crews and even literally ran into the entourage of the "kid wonder" director Peter Sellars, his orange hair standing straight up four inches -- I was thinking that the music was never less than pleasant, but I wasn't all that excited. I also couldn't decide what I thought about several places where the orchestra was reaching for big, ominous climaxes while the stage action was extremely banal, as when we watch Pat Nixon put on her hat and gloves for a day of touring. That seemed like bad staging to me.

Through recording and a video of that same performance, I grew to appreciate even those parts that baffled or bored me at the time. If I was baffled by Mao and his strident secretaries, well, so are Nixon and Kissinger. (Mao makes an oblique pronouncement and relaxes, leaving Nixon -- the dogged student and striver all his life -- to interpret it as a statement of policy; Chou En Lai reassures Nixon: "It was a riddle, not a test.") If Madame Mao's propaganda ballet seemed to dissolve into chaos as Pat and Dick rush on stage to help the heroine with a glass of water -- well, I've learned to see this as an amusing theatrical trick that embodies the difference between Mao's hard doctrines about classes and systems and empathetic Americans' visceral response to personal stories.

Chou En Lai's toast (sung originally with a silvery yet warm tone by remarkable baritone Sanford Sylvan), is one of Adams' slow rides across a vast landscape, with text that mirrors his method exactly: "We have begun to celebrate the different roads that led us to this mountain pass, this 'summit' where we stand. Look down, and see what we have undergone. Future and past lie far below, half visible..." This aria succeeds like nothing else I know, sweeping us up in pulsing and colorful accompaniment, long lines of melody, and gradual build up to a vision of "paths we have not taken yet" where "innumerable grains of wheat salute the sky," and a toast to a time when our children's children will look back on this moment. I get chills thinking about it even now.

That soporific third act has become the one I think about most, especially two moments near the end: All wound up and unable to sleep after the summmit, Nixon reminisces about camaraderie during the War and the Nixons' early struggles ("those damn slipcovers" Pat comments), talking at Pat but never acknowledging her as she hovers behind him, sometimes touching him. She finally gives up and sits alone on her bed. Just then, Nixon gives her a little kiss on the forehead and says, lamely, "This is my way of saying thanks." A bit later, Chou En Lai remains awake while the others seem to have finally fallen asleep, and a solo violin suggests bird call and sun rise, and Chou sings of age, weariness, futility, and beauty of the world -- and the last words of the opera are his. Having not slept, he is resigned: "To work."

From Thomas May's book, I see that the collaborators did not work well together, and the librettist Alice Goodman was most miffed. But I give her a lot of the credit for what's right in this show. She tried, she said, to represent each character "as
eloquently as possible" in the way that the character would want to be portrayed.

As a writer and composer myself, I'm inspired by these two ideas: Let the characters speak eloquently for themselves; give the music movement and shape like the landscapes we drive past.

Composer John Adams: Musical Landscapes | Category: Music