Prom 72 (5.9.12): John Adams – Nixon in China

[heliocentric]

Adams described himself in the 1980s as "a minimalist bored with minimalism"

That hits the nail on the head as regards my finding Adams' music generally sort of half-baked and unsatisfying - leaving aside the cult-like connotations of "ist" and "ism", if he was "bored" with the idea of minmal music then he'd never really engaged with it in the first place.

[Serial_Apologist]

That hits the nail on the head as regards my finding Adams' music generally sort of half-baked and unsatisfying - leaving aside the cult-like connotations of "ist" and "ism", if he was "bored" with the idea of minmal music then he'd never really engaged with it in the first place.

I think the difference with the pro-Adams following here is that the latter seem content with music composed today marking little or no advance on where harmonic and rhythmic idioms were around 100 years ago, and we hear it as stuck, and analogous with reproduction furniture, as Boulez would put it.

But hey - we need a bit of escapism, don't we? - as one of the panellists said to universal agreement on a TV chat show this morning - Dallas is back! Capitalism hasn't changed its spots, if anything in worse state now than in the Thatcher/Reagan era; it needs its aesthetic cosmeticians to keep on churning out bling filled/fuelled myths. It just surprises me that Adams, purportedly a man of the "left", has self-elected to take on the role of apologist, and people abandon their usual critical perspectives. This is broadway musical stuff, not opera.

[Simon B]

Conflating enjoying the noise Adams's not-really-minimalist noodlings make with e.g. unthinking/unconscious support for the capitalist hegemony in its current form is a nice narrative from some perspectives. It might even be true in some cases. It might also be a tiresome trope that only a wise illuminati can see it for what it is while the rest of us receive it as some sort of opiate-of-the-masses.

Me, I'm simple. I just like major triads a lot

[prokkyshosty]

I think the difference with the pro-Adams following here is that the latter seem content with music composed today marking little or no advance on where harmonic and rhythmic idioms were around 100 years ago, and we hear it as stuck, and analogous with reproduction furniture, as Boulez would put it.

But hey - we need a bit of escapism, don't we? - as one of the panellists said to universal agreement on a TV chat show this morning - Dallas is back! Capitalism hasn't changed its spots, if anything in worse state now than in the Thatcher/Reagan era; it needs its aesthetic cosmeticians to keep on churning out bling filled/fuelled myths. It just surprises me that Adams, purportedly a man of the "left", has self-elected to take on the role of apologist, and people abandon their usual critical perspectives. This is broadway musical stuff, not opera.

[EDIT] Never mind. On second thought I will hold my tongue. Sorry.

[amateur51]

I think the difference with the pro-Adams following here is that the latter seem content with music composed today marking little or no advance on where harmonic and rhythmic idioms were around 100 years ago, and we hear it as stuck, and analogous with reproduction furniture, as Boulez would put it.

But hey - we need a bit of escapism, don't we? - as one of the panellists said to universal agreement on a TV chat show this morning - Dallas is back! Capitalism hasn't changed its spots, if anything in worse state now than in the Thatcher/Reagan era; it needs its aesthetic cosmeticians to keep on churning out bling filled/fuelled myths. It just surprises me that Adams, purportedly a man of the "left", has self-elected to take on the role of apologist, and people abandon their usual critical perspectives. This is broadway musical stuff, not opera.

I've seen NiC once, at ENO and I confess that I was bored witless, as I was by their production of Poul Ruder's The Handmaid's Tale.

In both cases my principal beef is with composers who write for voices and then drown them in the orchestra's wake or strangle them with high tessitura. In neither case could I make out the words and in both cases they are very important. So it becomes an evening of waiting for some orchestral interest.

I don't believe that opera in the 21st century has to be like this and I'm certain that amplification is not the answer. It's about technique and expertise and commitment to opera as a public form, surely?

[Serial_Apologist]

Conflating enjoying the noise Adams's not-really-minimalist noodlings make with e.g. unthinking/unconscious support for the capitalist hegemony in its current form is a nice narrative from some perspectives. It might even be true in some cases. It might also be a tiresome trope that only a wise illuminati can see it for what it is while the rest of us receive it as some sort of opiate-of-the-masses.

Me, I'm simple. I just like major triads a lot

Ground Control to Major Triad...

[Serial_Apologist]

[EDIT] Never mind. On second thought I will hold my tongue. Sorry.

Wot no irony emoticon? What's to apologise for?

[Simon B]

Ground Control to Major Triad...

Indeed...

To clarify (in my inarticulate way) I, at least partially, agree with many aspects of your critique of Adams's music and its context. I just don't let it stop me from enjoying its sonic facade.

[Serial_Apologist]

Indeed...

To clarify (in my inarticulate way) I, at least partially, agree with many aspects of your critique of Adams's music and its context. I just don't let it stop me from enjoying its sonic facade.

Don't get me wrong - I'd have loved this if it had been a collaborative effort between Rachmaninov and Ravel back in let's say 1912!

[heliocentric]

I think the difference with the pro-Adams following here is that the latter seem content with music composed today marking little or no advance on where harmonic and rhythmic idioms were around 100 years ago, and we hear it as stuck, and analogous with reproduction furniture, as Boulez would put it.

I like a major triad as much as the next person. What I find distasteful about something like Nixon in China is the half-committed, seemingly cynical way it "brands" itself - it's minimal music for people who are bored by minimal music, it's an opera but sounds mostly like a musical with operatic pretensions, its libretto is political but not really political, it wears its "ironic" superficiality like a badge of honour, and so on... it's like an opera conceived and written by an advertising agency, with all the seductiveness that implies.

[Serial_Apologist]

I like a major triad as much as the next person. What I find distasteful about something like Nixon in China is the half-committed, seemingly cynical way it "brands" itself - it's minimal music for people who are bored by minimal music, it's an opera but sounds mostly like a musical with operatic pretensions, its libretto is political but not really political, it wears its "ironic" superficiality like a badge of honour, and so on... it's like an opera conceived and written by an advertising agency, with all the seductiveness that implies.

And I should have added, Ravel and Rachmaninov would have come up with much better tunes!

Seriously, though, I can't think of any serious composer in 1912 still composing (or for that matter returning to) the idioms of 1812 - however conservative in terms of 1912 that composer might have been considered as being.

[ardcarp]

NiC is a bit like Marmite then. I heard it all through for the first time, and I have to say my reaction was similar to Caliban's. The quote 'a minimalist tired of minimalism' seems at first quite apt, but I got the impression of a minimalist being drawn into thinking more like a 'normal' composer because of the sheer length of the work and the sense of progression that an OPERA needs to have. For instance, Adams had to think of how to juxtapose one key plateau with another.....you can't do C major for 3 hours after all. The plink-plonk-plink rhythmic outlining of chords is a minimalist's tool of the trade, but isn't 20 minutes of that just about the limit of what a standard brain can cope with?

On a positive, I'm all for hearing the words, and I have no objection to miking up the soloists, even if it freaks out opera purists. I guess this is a work which has grabbed attention by its subject and to some extent by its originality of concept, but maybe we'll have to wait until hindsight kicks in (in 100 years or so?) to decide whether it's a masterpiece or not. In an earlier post, someone said that the vocal lines never really took flight. I thought they almost did sometimes, but then Adams reeled them in for fear of writing a tune.

[amateur51]

I like a major triad as much as the next person. What I find distasteful about something like Nixon in China is the half-committed, seemingly cynical way it "brands" itself - it's minimal music for people who are bored by minimal music, it's an opera but sounds mostly like a musical with operatic pretensions, its libretto is political but not really political, it wears its "ironic" superficiality like a badge of honour, and so on... it's like an opera conceived and written by an advertising agency, with all the seductiveness that implies.

Now that's spooky, heliocentric

As I followed this post the words that popped into my head were 'advertising agency'

You've got it about right there, I reckon

[Serial_Apologist]

Now that's spooky, heliocentric

As I followed this post the words that popped into my head were 'advertising agency'

You've got it about right there, I reckon

Great minds think alike, Amsey, as has been said. I like to think History destined us to be brought together, here, on this forum.

[heliocentric]

I got the impression of a minimalist being drawn into thinking more like a 'normal' composer because of the sheer length of the work and the sense of progression that an OPERA needs to have.

... which begs the question, why bother with writing operas if they require you to compromise or abandon some of the fundamental aspects of a means of expression you're supposedly committed to - Steve Reich, Terry Riley and La Monte Young, for example, have had no truck with opera.