The John Adams Reader: Essential Writings on an American Composer
by Thomas May
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Book Summary Information
Author: Thomas MayEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2006-06-19
ISBN: 1574671324
Number of pages: 455
Publisher: Amadeus Press
Book Reviews of The John Adams Reader: Essential Writings on an American Composer
Book Review: A valuable compendium
Summary: 4 Stars
It is a measure of John Adam's success as a composer of art music, for want of a better term, that such a work as this has been published at all. Adams is barely 60 years old, still active, and arguably at his most influential, but hardly the stuff of the popular press. But Thomas May has done us a service. This is a serious book about a serious artist, consisting of dozens of articles and interviews by a range of contributors published over many years. Inevitably, some ground is covered more than once: for example, the composer's journey from an East Coast student of a student of Schoenberg, to a West Coast minimalist icon. Although Adam's music itself is often described as positive in its outlook in comparison to his post-serialist European peers, Adams has never stood back from tackling big philosophical matters such as China-Western relations or the labyrinth that is Middle Eastern politics. This is reflected in the extensive debate documented in this book in regard to the Adam's opera, The Death of Klinghoffer, which is a fictionalised account of the Palestian hijack of a cruise ship. There are controversial productions of the opera canon that create a furore, but few modern operas post World War II that generated such debate that the productions themselves were withdrawn. Much of the writing is very good, including Thomas May's own contributions, which speaks well of the capacity of a society to reflect on the contribution of an artist whose chosen art form is arcane to the great majority of the population. My only quibble is with the choice made to publish a comprehensive rather than a more selected set of articles which means the book will no doubt serve a purpose as a reference resource rather than a shorter publication readers might dig into on a more casual basis.
Summary of The John Adams Reader: Essential Writings on an American Composer
The John Adams Reader: Essential Writings on an American Composer gathers a colorful and wide-ranging selection of pieces from leading musical commentators and critics. Included are revealing interviews with the composer and such collaborators as Peter Sellars, as well as eloquent essays by Ingram Marshall, Michael Steinberg, Alex Ross, Sarah Cahill, Alan Rich, and many others. Editor Thomas May has grouped this collection into four sections: profiles of the artist (including a fascinating memory piece from Ingram Marshall on Adams's early San Francisco years), detailed essays on the major works, interviews with some leading collaborators and interpreters, and critical reception of a wide range of Adams's body of work. This reader should be of use both as an introduction for the general reader to a preeminently significant American artist and as a reference for the more serious student or scholar.Probing, often witty, always eloquent, the essays and interviews in this collection serve not only as a portrait of a preeminently significant American artist, but also as a window on the development of classical and art music in our time and the various cultural factors that shape it.
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