John Adams - Harmonium (1981)

0:00 1. Negative Love. A warm, pulsating cluster of sound slowly builds
2:31 The chorus takes up a sweet soft melody under luminous string harmonics, growing to an epic climax at 4:11
4:16 A more optimistic section, traveling through several "harmonic gates"
5:24, 6:08 Frantic tremolos and arpeggios behind a relentless driving chorus
8:01 An agitated crescendo into a huge climax at 8:54 before...
9:08 ...a suddenly calm ending with mellow horns and bright ostinatos

10:29 2. Because I Could Not Stop for Death. Bittersweet clusters underline a somber choral melody
12:58 The sound warms up as the chorus takes up a light, free-floating melody
14:28 A strong sense of nostalgia imbues the music (16:22, 17:28 glowingly beautiful timbre and harmony here)
18:04 The bitter sound of the beginning of the movement returns (19:39 the cowbells and chorus here create such a wonderful soundscape)
20:15 A grand accelerando and crescendo into...

22:41 3. Wild Nights. (self-explanatory)
24:49 Highly agitated
25:40, 26:21 An ecstasy of trombone glissandos pushes towards a very wild climax
26:59, 27:44 Gentle soothing waves of sound bring a comforting end

Composer: John Coolidge Adams (February 15, 1947 – )
Orchestra: San Francisco Symphony conducted by John Adams
Chorus: San Francisco Symphony Chorus directed by Vance George
Nonesuch

Harmonium (1980) and Shaker Loops (1978) represent my first mature statements in a language that was born out of my initial exposure to Minimalism. From the very start my own brand of Minimalism began to push the envelope. What was orderly and patiently evolving in the works of Reich or Glass was in my works already subject to violent changes in gesture and mood...

Harmonium was composed in 1980 in a small studio on the third floor of an old Victorian house in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. Those of my friends who knew both the room and the piece of music were amused that a piece of such spaciousness should emerge from such cramped quarters. The title of the work was all that survived from my initial intention to set poems from Wallace Stevens’s collection of the same name. After I realized that Stevens’s language and rhythmic sense was not my own, I cast far and wide for a text to satisfy a musical image that I had in mind. That image was one of human voices–many of them–riding upon waves of rippling sound. Ultimately I settled on three poems of transcendental vision. “Negative Love” by John Donne examines the qualities of various forms of love, ascending in the manner of Plato’s Symposium, from the carnal to the divine. I viewed this “ascent” as a kind of vector, having both velocity and direction. Musically, this meant a formal shape that began with a single, pulsing note (a D above middle C) that, by the process of accretion, becomes a tone cluster, then a chord, and eventually a huge, calmly rippling current of sound that takes on energy and mass until it eventually crests on an immense cataract of sound some ten minutes later. To date, I still consider “Negative Love” one of the most satisfying architectural experiments in all my work.

The two Dickinson poems show the polar opposites of her poetic voice. “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” is the intimate, hushed Dickinson, whose beyond-the-grave monologue is a sequence of images from a short life, a kind of pastoral elegy expressed through the lens of a slow-motion camera. Like Aaron Copland before me, I unknowingly set the bowdlerized version of the original, being unaware at the time that the poet’s original version differed significantly in syntax from the more smoothed-out, conventional version made by Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

Following the last palpitations of the slow movement the music enters a transition section, a kind of bardo stage between the end of one life and the beginning of a new one. Again, as in “Negative Love,” the music gradually assumes weight, force and speed until it is hurled headlong into the bright, vibrant clangor of “Wild Nights.” Here is the other side of Emily Dickinson, saturated with an intoxicated, ecstatic, pressing urge to dissolve herself in some private and unknowable union of eros and death. The metaphors, at once violent and sexually hypercharged, play upon the image of a “heart in port”, secure and out of danger from the wild storm-tossed sea. So much has been written about Emily Dickinson, and her mysterious persona has been subjected to so much speculative analysis, that it is always a shock to encounter these texts alone and away from any kind of exegesis.

[paulmorin]

The first time I heard this (or any John Adams) was at a performance conducted by Simon Rattle at the Boston Symphony. I was astonished -- I had never heard music like this before and hearing it live was a visceral experience to say the least. Several years later, I was fortunate to be a tenor in the San Francisco Symphony Chorus performing this piece under John Adams himself and am, indeed on this recording.

Listening to this again, floods of memories come back to me -- how kind and patient John was to us in the chorus, how he re-jiggered sections of the piece for the clarity of the text, how much fun the trombones had playing their wild glissandi and of course the honor of performing a piece for its composer. Once in a lifetime!

[bobbijoforcoroner]

Learned of this piece in the book “1, 000 Recordings to Listen to Before You Die”. Glad I found the book and found this music. Wow.

[Marinecreature]

I was working in an (unbearably hot) animation studio in Wardour Street, 1989 or 90, my first serious job. It's impossible to listen to music while key animating but once we got onto the hard slog of trace and paint and inbetweening we'd look for whatever tapes were lying around to feed the little radio/tape machine, and there was this TDK with 'Harmonium John Adams' written in ball point pen on the cassette label, no other info. Could not believe what I was hearing. I was desperate to find out what this music was, nobody seemed to know where the tape came from. It became and remains in my top three or four treasured works of music.
Fast forward to 2001 and I see that 'Naive and Sentimental Music' is getting a premiere at that September's Proms, conducted by Adams. I was back working in Soho for another company so could head for the Royal Albert Hall in time for the first classical music concert I'd been to since a child. Discovered the whole Proms thing but most of all was literally floored by the first part, by nothing else but music.

[TimCutts]

I performed this piece once while at Cambridge University, probably in about 1998 or so. I was a bass in the chorus. One of the most difficult pieces I've ever performed. When it's being melodic it's quite easy, but during the fast repetitive sections, it's viciously difficult to keep count. The opening in particular, and the end of the first part; the "dat dat dat dat" stuff was probably the hardest part of the whole piece. "Wild nights" is tough just because it's so high; no composer normally makes basses sing a top B flat. That's tenor territory, and quite high tenor territory at that. But he deliberately wants it to sound a bit uncontrolled and raucous at that point, as you might expect from the words.

Still, hard though it was, I came out of that concert in Cambridge Corn Exchange absolutely buzzing (the fact that we did Carmina Burana on the same programme made it a doubly fantastic concert!)

[brancepethbob]

I had forgotten how wonderful this piece is ...

[Scriabin_fan]

I've loved this piece ever since I first discovered it 2 yrs ago. I love the orchestration so much. The trumpets at 9:05 always give me goosebumps.

[TheJanda]

I learned so much about music just watching the timing and parts all come together like this!

[alinkbetweengames]

When I first heard this piece 5 years ago, I had never heard English singing sound like that. This piece made me realize that good choral music can be written in English.

[Schubertd]

Those trombone glissandos at 25:40 are wonderful

[kevinchen]

stuff like this makes me glad the internet exists

[_rstcm]

The harmonic gliss in the violins at 2:45 is so Tromba Lontana....

[shootsyscores]

first time ive heard this. incredible.

[stephenjablonsky]

This is most certainly one of John's most successful works. He may have been inspired by the two poets to honor them with high quality settings.

[GuilhermeCarvalhoComposer]

I'm not usually the biggest fan of Adams' music, but there's just no denying that this is not only a _very_ well-written piece, it's also very much a landmark in minimalist music that redefines/opens up basically what is possible within that style.
Definitely a must, thanks for uploading it!

[gthobaben]

He’s had a long and prolific career. But boy this piece and Shaker Loops are hard to beat in terms of incredibly inspired writing.

[minsekfau]

The thumbnail is so chaotic I love it lmao

[samuelconnolly]

Always love a Cmaj7 upload, and a John Adams piece makes it even better! Commenting now so I don't get distracted with the comments while I actually watch/listen! Thanks in advance for what I know is a fantastic piece.

[looney]

Drawn in by that crazy thumbnail and became obsessed with this piece ever since. Occasionally a piece of music will captivate me so much that I immediately decide to devote all my time to listening/analyzing/reading it and you've triggered that lol. GORGEOUS piece. Always loved Short Ride, but never thought the style of that piece couldn't translate into something lyrical and emotionally moving, but it does. Absolutely gorgeous!

[nusquam-e.q.u.e.]

Made my day, and might make many other days of my life, thank you Cmaj7

[eltonwild]

Could you upload the score of john adams harmonielehre?