Harmony (Adams)
The three-movement orchestral work Harmonielehre by the American composer John Adams (* 1947) premiered in 1985. The title of the work refers to Arnold Schönberg's “Harmonielehre”, published in 1911 .
Origin, premiere and reception
The theory of harmony originated in 1984/85. At the time, Adams was composer in residence with the San Francisco Symphony , and the work marked the end of a lengthy creative crisis for John Adams. Other works quickly followed, such as Short Ride in a Fast Machine, one of his most famous compositions in 1986, and his first opera in China in 1987 with Nixon .
The world premiere of Harmonielehre took place on March 21, 1985 at Davies Hall in San Francisco with the San Francisco Symphony conducted by Edo de Waart . The first recording took place three days later with the same performers. Several other recordings are available. Harmony was printed by Associated Music Publishers (G. Schirmer).
Instrumentation and duration of performance
The score of the harmony of John Adams provides for the following big orchestra from: 4 flutes (three of them also piccolo ), 3 oboes (third and English horn ), 4 clarinets in B (two and bass clarinet ), 3 bassoons , contrabassoon , 4 horns in F, 4 trumpets in C, 3 trombones , 2 tubas , timpani , percussion with 4 players (2 marimbas , vibraphone , xylophone , tubular bells , crotales , glockenspiel , 2 hanging cymbals , effect cymbals (sizzle cymbals, small crash cymbals), bell tree , 2 Tamtams , 2 triangles , bass drum ), 2 harps , piano , celesta and strings .
The performance of the work is around 40 minutes.
characterization
The title of the work makes explicit reference to the 1911 “Harmonielehre” by Arnold Schönberg , a composer to whom John Adams has an ambivalent relationship. Adams studied at Harvard with Leon Kirchner , who in turn was a student of Schönberg. Adams respects the importance and mastery of Schönberg, but rejects his atonality and twelve-tone music from an aesthetic point of view. The harmony theory of John Adams can be understood as a parody, but without ironic intentions. It contains multiple references to music at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, such as Gustav Mahler , Jean Sibelius , Claude Debussy and the early Schönberg. As a large-scale three-movement orchestral work, it combines minimal music techniques with the expressive world of late romanticism and impressionism in the post-modernist sense.
According to John Adams, the first, unmarked movement corresponds to a 17-minute, inverted arc. Two “energetic” parts frame an extensive longing wandering section. According to the composer, the massive E minor chords at the beginning and end are inspired by a dream in which he saw a supertanker entering San Francisco Bay, which suddenly rose into the sky like a Saturn rocket .
It follows a slow middle movement, whose title "The Amfortas Wound" a result of former employment Adams' with the writings of Carl Jung 's, namely its disputes with medieval mythology and the character of Amfortas , the in Richard Wagner's Parsifal appearing King of the Grail legend with his never healing wound. An elegiac trumpet melody sounds over slowly changing minor triads. Towards the end of the shadowy, gloomy movement there are two dissonant climbs, the second of which is unashamedly based on the cluster-like nine-tone chord in the Adagio movement of Gustav Mahler's unfinished 10th Symphony .
The strange title of the third movement "Meister Eckhardt and Quackie" is based on a surreal dream by John Adams in which he saw his little daughter (nickname "Quackie") sitting on the shoulders of the medieval mystic Meister Eckhardt , floating between celestial bodies like figures on the ceilings of old cathedrals. Beginning as a tender lullaby, the movement gains more and more speed and orchestral mass, which ends in a tidal wave of brass and percussion over an E flat major organ point .
literature
- CD supplement Chandos CHSA5129, J. Adams: Harmonielehre u. a., Royal Scottish Nat. Orchestra, Peter Oundjian, text Mervyn Cooke
- CD supplement SFS Media 82193600532, J. Adams: Harmonielehre u. a., San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas, text James M. Keller