ABANDONING BEAUTY?:

Washed in the Sound of Souls in Transit (ANTHONY TOMMASINI, September 21, 2002, NY Times)

It's understandable that so far most American composers of note have avoided writing works that deal with Sept. 11. The event is still too close, too immense. But the need to come to terms with it artistically, at least in some manner, is also real. So give John Adams credit for trying. Mr. Adams's "On the Transmigration of Souls," commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center's Great Performers series, received its premiere on Thursday night at the first subscription concert of the Philharmonic's season, conducted by Lorin Maazel in his second appearance as the orchestra's music director.

Mr. Adams is reticent about calling this work a musical composition. His intent, as he wrote in the program note, was to create a "memory space" where "you can go and be alone with your thoughts and emotions." He wanted to make the concert hall something akin to a great cathedral, where you feel in the presence of generations of souls even as you are surrounded by other people: whispered voices, children whimpering, shoes scuffling on the stone floor. [...]

The music crests and swells and turns on itself; piercing dissonances make you wince, like the aural equivalent of staring into glaring light. Finally, the chorus sings almost hysterical repetitions of the word "light" as the orchestra music dissolves, breaking into squiggles, remnants and sputtering sounds. It's as good a guess as any at what the transmigration process must be.

Some listeners may find Mr. Adams's material to be insufficiently involving on a purely musical level. But this atypical concert work asks you to put aside typical expectations. And there is real musical method to its structure, for 30 minutes passed by almost too quickly.

Yeah, yeah, we get it, but isn't dissonance and hysteria too easy an out? If we wanted just an aural replica of the event we could listen to tapes shot by film crews. Is it too much to ask that modernist composers make music that communicates and sounds beautiful? Posted by Orrin Judd at September 21, 2002 8:14 AM