American Master: A Portrait of John Adams 08 March'13 BBC4

[Guest]

A one-hour programme considering the music of American composer John Adams

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01r3pb9

[Apologies for very late alert for this -- only just noticed it]

[MrGongGong]

I gave up on it i'm afraid
I love some of his music
and read his blog
but I feel that he misses the point about what is interesting at times

when I listen to pieces like Shaker Loops (and in a similar way Reich's Mallet Instruments , Voices & Organ etc ) I hear what was previously the "inside" parts of music re-positioned to be the outside , as if one takes some of the great internal wind parts of a Sibelius Symphony and opens them out so that one can hear the detail. BUT when it has a "melodic" part over the top in the form of a soloist or a singer with a narrative text THEN (for me ) it relegates the interesting thing to become a "background" again. What I love about some of this music is that there is no background/foreground and in some of Adams (and Glass and Reich) by returning to the traditional dynamic the music looses it's way and simply sounds like competently scored film music.

[nersner]

Is anyone going to see "The Gospel According to the Other Mary" at The Barbican on 16/3/13? Please let us know what it was like. Seemed quite similar to "El Nino" (especially the vocal forces) from the short extract.

[LeMartinPecheur]

Enjoyable programme. Didn't transform my view of A's music (not a negative statement because I've always found him much the richest and most interesting of the American minimalists - possibly because he's not so extremely, simply Minimalist?) but because I found him personally deep and wide, somebody I'd like to meet and argue the toss with. Like which bits of Jung are he and his missus into??

[Richard Tarleton]

but because I found him personally deep and wide, somebody I'd like to meet and argue the toss with. Like which bits of Jung are he and his missus into??

Or his fictitious view of the Californian wilderness - the wholly false Ansel Adams/John Muir version of it as an empty space, a vessel for their sensibilities, and something to point a camera at - rather than a land quite densely occupied in places by its native American inhabitants before they were driven out (eg of Yosemite) in the name of wilderness....

An engaging and thoughtful man nevertheless. I can listen to more of his orchestral/instrumental music than to that of other minimalists (generally I feel a knot of tension developing at the back of my head - a strong physiological reaction). The music worked well with the photography, though I wasn't clear why the sierras were being shown as a backdrop to music from the Death of Klinghoffer, perhaps I needed to understand the words.

[MrGongGong]

He said something which I found rather odd about serial composers
that the music was somehow "unemotional" and somehow "cold" (I think that was the word he used ?)
to my ears Berg's music is often "too" emotional , if that is possible

I guess others hear that music differently to the way I do .........

[Serial_Apologist]

He said something which I found rather odd about serial composers
that the music was somehow "unemotional" and somehow "cold" (I think that was the word he used ?)
to my ears Berg's music is often "too" emotional , if that is possible

I guess others hear that music differently to the way I do .........

Not as happens in my case...

Interesting, your earlier comment about inner and outer musical processes, GG - I'd never thought of it that way.

[amateur51]

Not as happens in my case...

Interesting, your earlier comment about inner and outer musical processes, GG - I'd never thought of it that way.

Oh he's not just a powerful advocate for Arbroath smokies, y'know

[MrGongGong]

Thanks

Re reading the post about "inside" and "outside" I think what I mean is that there is no concept of "inside" and "outside" , abandoning the concept of music having a melody with accompaniment is one of the things that the American "minimalists" took from studying other musics, there's something about it in Reich's Writings about Music book talking about Ghanaian drumming. One can hear a similar thing in Webern.

[BBMmk2]

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Adams