Harmonium (Adams)

Harmonium is a composition for chorus and orchestra by the American composer John Adams, written in 1980-1981 for the first season of Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, California. The work is based on poetry by John Donne and Emily Dickinson and is regarded as one of the key compositions of Adams' "minimalist" period.[1]

The work was premiered by the San Francisco Symphony and San Francisco Symphony Chorus, with conductor Edo de Waart, on 15 April 1981, and subsequently recorded it.[2] The UK premiere was on 13 October 1987 at Birmingham Town Hall, with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) conducted by Simon Rattle.[3] Rattle and the CBSO gave the London premiere on 28 July 1990 at The Proms.[4]

Music
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Each movement is a setting of an entire poem:

  1. "Negative Love" (by John Donne)
  2. "Because I could not stop for Death" (by Emily Dickinson)
  3. "Wild Nights" (by Dickinson)

"Because I could not stop for Death" ends with an orchestral interlude that segues into "Wild Nights" without a pause. A typical performance takes about 35 minutes.

Timothy Johnson has discussed various aspects of the harmonic language of Harmonium in detail.[5] K. Robert Schwarz has noted the influence of the musical techniques of Steve Reich on Harmonium, and also has commented on the less schematic and more "intuitive" manner of Adams' composition in the work.[6]

"Negative Love" is featured in the film Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol (1990).[7]

Instrumentation

Recordings

References

  1. Heisinger, Brent (1989). "American Minimalism in the 1980s". American Music. American Music, Vol. 7, No. 4. 187 (4): 430–447. doi:10.2307/3051914. JSTOR 3051914.
  2. John Rockwell (10 February 1985). "Expanding on Minimalist Music". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-02-20.
  3. Clements, Andrew (December 1987). "Reports: Birmingham". The Musical Times. The Musical Times, Vol. 128, No. 1738. 128 (1738): 706–709. doi:10.2307/964828. JSTOR 964828.
  4. Rye, Matthew (November 1990). "Opera, Concert and Festival Reports: London, Proms 1". The Musical Times. 131 (1773): 606–620. doi:10.2307/966196. JSTOR 966196.
  5. Johnson, Timothy A. (Spring 1993). "Harmonic Vocabulary in the Music of John Adams: A Hierarchical Approach". Journal of Music Theory. Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 37, No. 1. 37 (1): 117–156. doi:10.2307/843946. JSTOR 843946.
  6. Schwarz, K. Robert (Autumn 1990). "Process vs. Intuition in the Recent Works of Steve Reich and John Adams". American Music. American Music, Vol. 8, No. 3. 8 (3): 245–273. doi:10.2307/3052096. JSTOR 3052096.
  7. Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol (1990) - IMDb, retrieved 2021-04-05

Bibliography

  • Steinberg, Michael, Choral Masterworks (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). ISBN to come.
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