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Composition Master Class
Some students will preface their presentations by an anecdote: “I got this rhythmic idea from the weird way my roommate snores.”
Windbag
Jul 07, 2010My mother’s family was half Irish, and my memory of family gatherings is full of the same kind of gab and repartee that I find in the Aeolus chapter of “Ulysses.” The Catholic Church is never far offstage. One moment it’s the butt of scurrilous humor, and then a minute later it becomes the source of a sudden seizure of piety.
12 Comments Continue ReadingEl Tanguero
Jun 27, 2010What impresses most about Astor Piazzolla is the extraordinary clarity of his thought. He could be brutal—just like the counterpoint exercises Nadia Boulanger assigned him —but his musical and intellectual mental processes were both profoundly absorptive and shrewdly practical. In this way he was much like his idol, Stravinsky.
5 Comments Continue ReadingThe Perpetual Orgy
Jun 22, 2010How to write a masterpiece? I haven’t a clue, but if a young composer were to ask me that question on this particular day I would unhesitatingly direct him or her to “The Perpetual Orgy” by Mario Vargas Llosa.
11 Comments Continue ReadingThe Adulteress
Jun 16, 2010In the last few weeks I read “Madame Bovary” twice—in English, which I’m passably good at. I can’t say that of any novel I’ve ever read—that I’ve wanted to go right back to page one and do it all over again. I now understand why Nabokov says you haven’t really read a book if you’ve just read it once.
6 Comments Continue ReadingConcentration
Jun 08, 2010There’s always a part of you that is begging for relief, ready to jump ship at the slightest prompt, cut yourself loose from the humiliating confrontation of your pitifully weak brain with the intractable material you’re trying to manipulate and create meaning out of.
14 Comments Continue ReadingAnger Builds at Dudamel's Mishandling of Oil Leak
Jun 03, 2010Public rates Dudamel’s performance as “poor” to “very poor” in his handling of the crisis. New York Post headline: “Slick? Who’s Slick Now?”
9 Comments Continue Reading"I didn't realize I was sitting next to the composer!"
May 31, 2010Sitting in the audience while your piece is being played can be risky business…You find your place in row W and quietly slide into it, trying to be as anonymous as possible. The guy in the business suit next to you nods perfunctorily. He doesn’t know you from Adam. (Certainly not from Adams.)
29 Comments Continue ReadingJagged Edge
May 25, 2010Moving back and forth between performing and composing, between a public self and private one, can be a transition with jagged edges that can take weeks to overcome.
19 Comments Continue ReadingTaking Back Our Country
May 21, 2010“Marcel,” I say, “I’m happy to see you want to take back your country. Can I ask from whom you want to take it back? Someone take it away from you?”
12 Comments Continue ReadingEscape from the Gigue Zone
May 16, 2010Some aggressively chipper Baroque music chases our correspondent from a Georgetown Dean & Deluca patio…he needs a musical Jacques Derrida to help him decode the way in which ambient music is used in our culture to achieve the desired susceptibility in targeted consumers.
10 Comments Continue ReadingDo What I Say, Not What I Do! (Or maybe not....)
May 13, 2010What do we do when a composer gives one tempo in the printed score and then makes a recording that differs wildly with it? Follow the score or follow the recording?
14 Comments Continue ReadingMarcel Proost, Laptop Composer
May 11, 2010Doctor Bob, my optometrist, reaches into a drawer and pulls out his Mac Pro. He hits a key and up pops a page of staves, a 4/4 time signature and a several rows of perfectly “engraved” eighth notes. He hits the space bar and it launches a composition of his called “Pink Tequila.” “Cool, huh?” he says.
25 Comments Continue ReadingCopyright © 2010 by John Adams
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