Plural Styles, Personal Style - The Music of Thomas Adès

PLURAL STYLES, PERSONAL STYLE: THE MUSIC OF THOMAS ADÈS
Author(s): Dominic Wells

Source: Tempo, Vol. 66, No. 260 (APRIL 2012), pp. 2-14
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23263083
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2 Tempo 66 (260) 2-14 © 2012 Cambridge University Press
doi:10.1017/S0040298212000125 Printed in the United Kingdom
PLURAL STYLES, PERSONAL STYLE:

THE MUSIC OF THOMAS ADES
Dominic Wells
Abstract: The eclectic taste of Thomas Ades has led writers to comment upon the plethora of
influences in his music. Ades himself has made no secret of such composers, frequently perform
ing the works of those who have been a particular source of inspiration to him. While the present
study initially acknowledges this vast array of disparate styles, the second section considers the
extent to which Ades is influencing himself. It identifies certain trends that are evolving across his
oeuvre, and central to this is the distinctive treatment of a pair of intervals, evident in the opening
bars of almost a quarter of his published works to date.
While the influences of others remain undoubtedly significant to any discussion of Ades, it is
now also appropriate to examine the way in which some of the composer's own characteristic
gestures form musical relationships between his works.
On1March201 ThomasAdes,oneofthemostcel bratedandsuc es

fulofal early21st-centuryBritshcomposers,turned40.Adesi wel
knownforhisecl ticmusicalstyles,embracingmusicnotonlyfrom
thevastexpanseofWesternClas icalmusic,butalsofromJaz and
Pop.Variouslabelshavebe nas ignedtohim:pluralist;postmodern
ist;neor mantic;postminmalist;polystylist,etc.Dep ndingonwhich
workoneisref r ingto,any,sev raloral ofthes termsmayreason
ablydescribehismusical p roach,thoughtousetheterm'polystylist'
isperhapsmisleading.Becauseofits trongas ociatonwithSchnit ke,
whocoinedtheterm,polystylismimpliestheoften-harshjuxtaposi
tionofdispar temusicalstyles,wher asAdes' musicgen ralyavoids
thisextremeconflict.Ratherthanapolystylist,heisastylistcplural
ThomasAdes(phot :BrianVoce)
ist,alowinghismusictoconversewithwhatev rmusichehears,beit
'low'or'high'art,historicalorcontempora y.
Thefol wingdiscus ionexplores omeofthekeyinfluencesin
Ades' music,andisdivde intotwosections:thepluralstylesofother
composersevidentinhisworks;andhisown,personalstylethathas
gradualyemerged.Thefirstpartsurveys ev ralcomposersandawide
rangeofmusicalstylesfromsev ralcenturies.Manyofthefiguresa so
ciatedwithAdeshavebe nmentionedadnauseaminmusicjournalism,
butfarles oinac demia.Themostpromine tcomposer-as ociaton,
withBrit en,isexaminedbelow.Havingset hepluralist cen inthis
first ection,thes condpartintialyconsidersfeaturesAdeshastaken
frompreviouscomposersandhowhehasexploitedthes tosuchan
extent hat heyhavenowbecometypicaly'Adesian',anaturalpart
ofhiscompositonal anguage.Howev rthis ectionalsoconsiders
Ades' musicnotinrelationto thercomposers,butinrelationtoAdes
himself,specifcalywithref rencetoarecur ingmusicalfigurethatis
foundintheopeni gbarsofaconsiderablenumberofhisworks.
PLURAL STYLES, PERSONAL STYLE: THE MUSIC OF THOMAS ADES 3
In a valuable paper from 2004 concerning Ades's opera The Tempest

and Piano Quintet, composer Christopher Fox simultaneously warns of
the danger of devoting analytical effort and critical time to composers
still making their reputations, and expresses his surprise that the music
of Ades has been subjected to so little critical scrutiny.1 Eight years later,
with Ades now in his forties and with 80% of his works2 commercially
available on recordings from EMI Classics, his reputation has been now
been firmly established. We have therefore reached a point where it is
appropriate to consider not only external influences upon the composer,
but also his own influences upon himself, and the musical characteristics
and patterns that materialize across a body of work now spanning more
than two decades.
Plural Styles: Dowland, Couperin, Mozart, Janacek, Stravinsky,

Ligeti, Jazz, Pop...
Since the tremendous success and scandalous controversy that accom
panied the first performances of his first opera, Powder Her Face (1995),
music journalists have been keen to make associations between Ades
and Britten, hailing the former as the greatest English composer since
the latter. There are many factors connecting the two composers. Both
were prodigiously gifted in music from a young age, with Britten com
posing accomplished works as a child, while Ades came second in the
piano class of the prestigious BBC Young Musician of the Year competi
tion in 1989; both Ades and Britten were/are highly successful in three
roles as musicians: composer, pianist and conductor, and they both con
ducted, performed and recorded not only their own works but also the
works of others. Britten, together with Peter Pears and Eric Crozier,
founded the Aldeburgh Festival in 1948, and Ades was Music Director of
the that festival for over a decade (1999-2009). Both have written operas
based on works by Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night's Dream and The
Tempest), and in 1997 Ades was made the Benjamin Britten Professor of
Music at the Royal Academy of Music. In addition, both composers have
enjoyed great popularity, appealing to both critics and audiences. This
is thanks in no small part to each composer's association with a major
record label, securing an exclusive record contract with Decca (Britten)3
and EMI Classics (Ades). For a contemporary composer to benefit from
such high-level promotion through one of the most prominent record
companies is rare indeed, and this was undoubtedly instrumental in
making a wide audience aware of Ades's music.
Another connexion refers to each composer's personal relationships.
It is well known that Britten composed numerous works for tenor,
which were written specifically with the voice of his life-long partner
Peter Pears in mind. Similarly, video-artist Tal Rosner has had a direct
effect upon Ades's recent works, including In Seven Days (2008) and
Polaris (2010). Ades and Rosner were among the first couples in the UK
to enter a civil partnership in 2006, within weeks of the new legislation
being put in place. In Seven Days is a 30-minute video-ballet-piano-con
1 Fox, Christopher. 'Tempestuous Times: The Recent Music of Thomas Ades'. The Musical
Times, Vol. 145, No. 1888 (Autumn, 2004), pp. 41-56.
2 At the time of writing, Ades had 40 works in his published catalogue and 32 of these had
been recorded.
3 The relationship between Britten and Decca is far from straightforward, not least because
of the composer's dealings with EMI Classics for several years. For a detailed account of this
issue, see: Kildea, Paul. Selling Britten's Music and the Marketplace (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2002), pp. 194-232.
4 TEMPO
certo which includes Rosner's video-art displayed on six screens

the orchestra. In January 2011 another Ades-Rosner musical-
collaboration, Polaris, inaugurated the Miami New World Symp
building designed by Frank Gehry.
While such similarities may excite music journalists and rais
expectations of eager listeners, these common characteristics t
absolutely nothing about Ades's music. Indeed, the association
Britten, which is based almost solely on extramusical rather than
cal connexions, is highly deceptive, for of the many musical infl
alluded to in Ades's oeuvre Britten is scarcely found at all. This is
imply that Britten is altogether absent from Ades's music (Tevot
recall the tempestuous seascape of Peter Grimes for certain list
and Powder her Face contains echoes of Britten's cabaret songs), bu
regard to the music alone, there are many other composers in
music whose voices are more prominent than Britten's. Ades i
cially interested in the music of Janacek4, Ligeti, Messiaen, Nanc
and Stravinsky,5 and his music reflects this. He has recorded the
complete works for violin and piano with Anthony Marwood
dedicatee of Ades's Violin Concerto).6 With regard to his own c
tions, it is especially the neoclassicism of Stravinsky that appea
this is exhibited in several neoclassical works, indicating a par
attraction to the French Baroque, and specifically the keyboard
of Couperin. In addition to Sonata da Caccia, op. 11 (1993) Ade
arranged several pieces by Couperin in a neo-baroque style, inc
Les Barricades Mysterieuses (1994) and Three Studies after Couperin (
He has also 'recomposed' works, such as Darknesse Visible (1992), w
takes Dowland's In Darknesse Let Me Dwell and subjects it to a con
rary interpretation without adding any notes from the original (i
some notes are removed). Other expressions of neoclassical tend
are apparent in Ades's musical forms, writing symphonies and so
concertos with a three-movement, fast-slow-fast structure. H
traditional structures such as a theme and variations, as in the cr
myth-inspired In Seven Days (whose fifth movement comprises a
to represent the 'Creatures of the Sea and Sky'), and even strict s
form, as in his Piano Quintet (2000), one of the few works to pos
purely musical (rather than extramusical) title.7
These neoclassical/neobaroque traits represent just sever
Ades's diverse musical tastes. Two strong American styles frequ
pervade many of his works: Minimalism and Jazz. Elements of
ter occur in various guises, such as the bluesy third movement
Violin Concerto ('Concentric Paths'), or even more explicitly in th
minute scena, Life Story. In this latter piece, scored for soprano, tw
clarinets and string bass with a text by Tennessee Williams, Ades
in the performance notes that the late style of Billie Holiday sho
used as a model for the singer. He has also alluded to British Jazz
4 Ades has recorded an all-Janacek CD with tenor Ian Bostridge and mezzo-soprano
Philogene for EMI Classics (EMI 5 57219 2, 2002). The disc comprises the song-cycle
of One who Disappeared, as well as several works for solo piano. He has also contri
chapter to a book on Janacek: Ades, Thomas. 'Nothing but Pranks and Puns: The So
Music of Janacek' in Paul Wingfield (ed.),Janacek Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge Unive
Press, 1999), pp. 18-35.
5 In 2000 Ades recorded a solo disc of piano music for EMI Classics, simply entitled,
Ades: Piano (EMI 5 57051 2). The disc includes works by Janacek, Stravinsky, B
Castiglioni, Nancarrow, Grieg, Kurtag and Stanchinsky.
6 Stravinsky: Complete Works for Violin and Piano. Anthony Marwood, Thomas Ades. (Hy
2010: CDA67723, 2-CD set).
7 At the time of writing, Ades had only written five works which make no reference t
thing extramusical: Concerto Conciso; Chamber Symphony; Sonata da Caccia;Three Studie
Couperin; and Piano Quintet.
PLURAL STYLES, PERSONAL STYLE: THE MUSIC OF THOMAS ADES 5
the 1930s, with Powder Her Face often aping the style typically associated
with the music of Noel Coward, as well as including waltzes, foxtrots
and tangos. Regarding minimalism, although it would be inaccurate
to refer to Ades's music as minimalist, certain pieces might justifiably
be described as 'postminimalist', borrowing some of the techniques of
American minimalists such as Reich, Glass and Adams, but not subject
ing the musical material to such extreme minimalist treatment. Several
of his works begin with a repeated 'cell' of notes which gradually devel
ops and extends, as in America: A Prophecy, In Seven Days, Polaris, and the
famous nightclub-infused third movement of Asyla, 'ecstasio'.
The climactic movement of Asyla is by no means the sole example of
pop music finding a voice in works by Ades, who admitted in an inter
view for the newspaper The Times that the entirety of the music stored
on his iPod was pop music:
When asked about the content of his iPod, he admits that there's nothing clas
sical among the 2,000-odd tracks. When asked to reveal its current playlist, he
sheepishly admits to the 1980s Norwegian pop heart-throbs Aha, and says that
he and Tal have been downloading nu electro from the Italian internet radio
station Pig Radio. When I ask what music they had at their civil partnership
ceremony, I get a surprising response. We were up all night trying to figure out
what the right music would be," Ades smiles. 'In the end we had Girls Aloud's
Love Machine.'8
Perhaps the most obvious example of a specific pop song influencing

his own music is Cardiac Arrest (1995), an arrangement of the epony
mous song by 1980s British ska/pop band, Madness.9 Transcribing it for
an unusual septet of clarinet, bass clarinet, viola, cello, double bass, and
two pianos, Ades makes very few alterations to the song, maintaining
a similar duration of approximately three minutes, and even using the
same key as the original.
In addition to these explorations into popular music genres, there are
also allusions to earlier composers of classical music in Ades's output.
His anti-homage Brahms, scored for baritone and orchestra with words
by pianist Alfred Brendel, includes musical gestures typical of Brahms's
orchestral writing. Arnold Whittall has claimed such allusions to his
torical models carry no element of fear or anxiety, nor genuflection to
the past.10 Ades approaches the music of the French Baroque, Classical,
Romantic, 20th century, Pop and Jazz styles all in the same manner.
There is no great respect for the past, necessarily, nor a Mahlerian
sense of weight upon his shoulders from his many great compositional
ancestors.
To this extent, Ades's concept of time differs from Berio's, who shared
Mahler's historical angst - amply demonstrated by the distressed singer
in Recital I - but it has an affinity with that of Bernd Alois Zimmermann,
whose serial language differs profoundly from the tonal-centredness of
Ades's music, but which also includes classical models, as well as pop
music and Jazz. Zimmermann famously invented the metaphor of the
'sphericality of time', a space in which the past, present and future were
all equidistant from the centre.11 Developed from this concept was a
8 Bustin, Steve. 'Thomas Ades's piano concerto In Seven Days is a labour of love', The Times,
18 April 2008: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/
music/article 3766003.ece.
9 Cardiac Arrest was the first track on Madness's 1981 album, 7. The text of the song concerns
a stressed commuter who has a fatal heart attack while on the bus to work.
10 Whittall, Arnold. 'James Dillon, Thomas Ades and the Pleasures of Allusion' in Peter
O'Hagan (ed.), Aspects of British Music in the 1990s (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), p. 5.
11 Metzer, David. Quotation and Cultural Meaning in Twentieth-Century Music (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 111.
6 TEMPO
term coined by another polystylist, George Rochberg, who saw t

'radial', exposing the delusion behind the modernist renunciation
past and offering a vision of time in which all three periods are i
nected.12
For Ades, allusions to other musical styles and composers f
musical history are in no way a deliberate reaction against the
rasa/year zero' approach of some of the high-modernists. The
between tradition and modernism is simply not an issue for h
merely refers to the music he enjoys, which may be a British po
from the 1980s or a harpsichord piece by Couperin. Indeed, it m
argued that rather than following a 'spherical' or 'radial' appr
time, Ades' musical allusions reveal a sense of timelessness, ina
as he divorces the music from its historical or other extramusical con
and approaches it on purely musical grounds. The composer is
a product of his time. Born in an age of technological advancem
where a considerable amount of music became accessible with e
interprets disparate musical styles from the past not in historica
but as part of his contemporary musical landscape:
When I was younger, in some institutions where I was taught it was no
you liked and what you didn't like, but what you should like and shouldn't
of course, completely reject that ... It's not just a pluralistic world that
in, it's also one where times and eras no longer have to be put in a par
order. In a sense, we live closer to the extreme past than we ever have
because we can hear music from any period at the click of a switch or
of a mouse. These things, the French Baroque or Gregorian chant or Vi
parlour music or whatever it might be, are actually not the past but our e
ment. Anything you want can be your environment, so with that in mi
can use any model and still be in the present.13
The composer sees no distinction between past and present, ab

plural styles from history into his own musical language quite na
and unselfconsciously.
Personal Style: Emerging Patterns and the Adesian '5+2'

Signature
As well as this eclectic range of sources, Ades's career over the past
20 years also includes several features that have become distinctively
'Adesian'. One of the most prominent and frequent of these charac
teristics is the composer's predilection for stratospheric tessituras,
exploiting instruments and voices often by pushing performers to their
limits. String harmonics are evident in almost every piece Ades has writ
ten where strings are included, as are piccolos. Such extreme heights
in pitch are made explicit in his writing for solo instruments, such as
the first movement of Violin Concerto, or the penultimate movement of
Lieux retrouves, where the cello's register at the end extends beyond the
fingerboard. However, the most famous example is undoubtedly the
coloratura soprano of Ariel in The Tempest, whose part opens with an
octave leap to a top E:
12 Ibid.
13 Ades in interview with Andrew Ford in 'The Music Show', ABC Radio National, 9 October
2010.
PLURAL STYLES, PERSONAL STYLE! THE MUSIC OF THOMAS ADES 7
Example 1:
Ades: The Tempest, Act I Scene 3,
bb. 1-6 (Ariel's part only)
In a radio interview in October 2010,14 Ades explained that his

employment of such high-pitch writing was emphatically not for
expressive means, contrary to its traditional use:
Sometimes when a singer hits their top note in an opera, that's the climax and
everyone applauds when that happens, but you get an exciting feeling if you
treat those notes as simply another part of the instrument's range. That's why
Ariel's up there. She sings very, very high, and the Queen of the Night has this in
Mozart, singing these phenomenally high notes, but she doesn't make a big deal
about it... And it makes her all the more terrifying that for her it's just another
note. So that's why I wrote for Ariel like that, because it's not a human being
who would sing a high E and then sit back, exhausted, and wait for the applause;
it's the wind, an elemental force of nature. Similarly, when you have the notes
on a cello or a violin, it can take us to an emotional point we might not other
wise reach, perhaps.15
It is worth noting this reference to The Queen of the Night from

Mozart's Die Zauberflote, for Ades explicitly alludes to the second of this
character's two arias ('Der Holle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen') in
the final bar of the second movement of his string quartet, Arcadiana.
This work also contains a reference to Schubert in its third movement,
whose title Auf dem Wasser zu singen' refers to Schubert's eponymous
song, and whose music makes specific allusions to this song's 'rippling'
piano accompaniment.
However, while these other allusions to earlier composers have been
noted by journalists and musicologists, there has been scant mention
of the composer to whom Ades refers most frequently of all: himself.
As with the references to historical composers, these self-references
should be considered allusions rather than quotations, not only because
of their brevity, but also because they are relatively subtle (relative to,
for example, James MacMillan's bold and explicit self-quotation of the
'Sanctus' of his St Anne's Mass at the end of his St John Passion). Yet the
recurrence of one particular gesture demands attention. This is not a
melody, or even a motif, but a pair of two intervals, occurring in the
opening bars of more than ten of Ades' 40 works. These two intervals
include a perfect fifth (or its inversion, a perfect fourth) together with a
descending minor second.
Arnold Whitall briefly notes that the opening and concluding
movements of the string quartet Arcadiana organize their post-tonal
harmonies around perfect fifths.16 Despite focusing on the topic of
allusion in this work, Whittall makes no reference to the relationship
between the opening of Arcadiana and that of Ligeti's Violin Concerto,
which also begins with open fifths, and whose harmony also shifts down
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Whittall, Arnold. 'James Dillon, Thomas Ades and the Pleasures of Allusion', p. 22
an augmented fifth (in Ades from a C#- to F-centred tonality; in Ligeti,
from a D- to F#- centred tonality). Given that Ligeti has often been men
tioned in music journalism as a source of inspiration for Ades, and the
Example 2a:
composer himself has praised his Hungarian predecessor, it is surprising
Ades: Arcadiana, Mvt. I 'Venezia that this pair of remarkably similar - indeed, almost identical - openings
notturna', bb. 1-2 has not been noted:
J. = 76 ritardando
sul tasto
The first example from Arcadiana (Ex. 2a) demonstrates not only the
typical Adesian use of string harmonics, but also a descending minor
second: in the first movement, the C# in the second violin falls to a C,
while the cello similarly offers a pair of descending chromatic notes,
with its C# and F# harmonics fallingto C and F via aglissando. Similarly,
in Ex. 2a the four strings of a violin, G-D-A-E, provide the pitches for
all four instruments in the opening bars of the final movement, 'Lethe',
but this purity of fifths soon becomes polluted by a B flat in the viola at
the beginning of bar three. The descending minor second here is thus
implied rather than stated, since if one were to continue with the pat
tern of fifths, the next note after G-D-A-E would be B.
^ = 70 Calmissimo
Example 2b continued
bow change ad lib.

V simile
o o
Example 2c:
Ligeti: Violin Concerto, bb. 1-4
Taken in isolation, such a relationship between the first and f

movements of this string quartet may seem somewhat tenu
However, when considered in conjunction with the opening ba
other works from Ades's oeuvre, ranging from 1992 to 2007, th
for this fifth/falling minor second 'signature' is strengthened. Alth
usually presented as a perfect fifth, sometimes these same pitche
inverted, appearing as a perfect fourth, as in the opening of These Pre
are Alarmed (1998), which initially uses just three notes, F#-B-A
or January Writ (1999), which begins with a succession of descen
fourths in each part, with the exception of several sustained Gs in
upper soprano. As in the opening bars of the final movement f
Arcadiana, Ades employs the pitches of a violin's strings, G-D-A-E,
this time he extends the sequence of fifths to include B. Each of
pitches, sung by the sopranos and altos, is undermined by its semi
counterpart in the tenor and bass (F#-C#-G#-D#-A#: see Exam
3a). Ades had used the exact same principle five years earlier fo
opening of his Op. 2, TheOriginof tkeHflrp(1994).Thisbegins(Exa
3b) with descending fifths rather than fourths, but once again the pu
of these intervals in the opening bar (D#-G#-C#-F#) is almost i
diately threatened by an imposing D in the viola in the second bar:
10 TEMPO
In tempo severo (J = 50-52)
Example 3 a:
Ades: January Writ, bb. 1-5
J = 56 y (a tempo)
Example 3b:
Ades: The Origin of the Harp, bb. 1-4
While in the majority of cases the Adesian 'signature' comprises a

bare fifth and a descending minor second, there are also instances where
the established fifth is filled in with its third to complete the triad, as
in the opening of the third movement of Asyla, or the opening of The
Fayrfax Carol, both written in 1997. In the latter, an unambiguous E flat
minor tonality is initially stated but soon questioned by the descent of
the triad's minor third, G flat, to F in the second soprano at the end of
bar three, and continued by the first soprano in bar four (see Example
4a). Ades applies this in the context of a major tonality as well, as in the
D major opening of the second movement of America: A Prophecy (1999)
where, after the three notes of the triad have been rooted in the first two
bars, the D's semitonal counterpart (C#) enters in bar three, upsetting
the tonal stability (see Example 4b):
SOLO 1 (or 3 SOU)
Example 4a:
Ades: The Fayrfax Carol, bb. 1-4
Example 4b: The descending minor second in these examples from the open
Ades: America: A Prophecy, Mvt. ing bars of The Fayrfax Carol and America: A Prophecy exhibit a melodic
II, bb. 1-3
rather than harmonic shift. Harmonically, The Fayrfax Carol falls a tone
rather than a semitone (the E flat-D flat in the alto indicating a shift
from E flat minor to D flat major), and although the C# in bar three of
America: A Prophecy questions the D major tonality, it poses little threat
- indeed, for the next vocal phrase, the repeated haunting line 'On earth,
on earth, we shall burn, we shall burn, Ades is harmonically conven
tional, employing the relative minor of D major, B minor. Elsewhere
however, this falling minor second has harmonic rather than melodic
implications. This is especially evident in the openings of three works
written in close succession: The Tempest (2003-4); Violin Concerto (2005);
andTevot(2007).17
The Tempest opens with three pianississimo chords, before the chaotic
writing for the storm begins. The first of these chords establishes a B E
foundation, and a secure B major is established in the second chord/bar,
with the addition of D# and F#. The tension created by the addition
of these chromatic notes soon reaches a crisis point, and in bar four the
B major tonality is forced to shift down to another bare fifth of B flat-F
(see Ex. 5a). Exactly the same approach was adopted for the beginning
of the Violin Concerto, composed the following year (see Ex. 5b). The
workbegins with bare a bare fifth again, this time G-D, clearly establish
ing G as the tonic. Strain is then placed upon the G-centred tonality at
the end of bar two, with the inclusion of F# in the second flute and first
clarinet, soon joined by the first flute. Unable to sustain this tension for
more than several bars, the solo violin initially strives to maintain the G
major tonality by adding the third (B) in bar four, but to no avail, for in
this same bar the F# infects the solo violin as well. It finally relents to the
Example 5a: pressure applied by the wind, and allows the music to shift down to F#
Ades: The Tempest, Overture, bb. major in bar six, confirmed by its accented C# at the beginning of this
1-5 (piano reduction) bar and the three A#s that follow.
Scene 1
The Court, offstage in the shipwreck
J. = 120-124
While it is impossible to demonstrate musically /visually all instances

of this Ades 'signature', all of the musical examples shown above unar
guably reveal the gradual emergence of a pattern, and other examples
include: Traced overhead (1995-6); Lieux retrouves (upper notes of piano
part); and Darkness visible (1992). What strengthens the argument for
this 'signature' further is that in these and all the other works mentioned
above, this '5+2' progression - without exception - occurs in the open
ing bars of each piece (or movement of a piece, as in the third movement
of Asyla; the final movement of Arcadiana; and the second movement
of America: A Prophecy). Indeed, apart from the Violin Concerto, which
requires six bars, the Adesian '5+2' signature is clearly identifiable with
in the first four bars of each piece/movement, featuring in 12 works in
total: more than a quarter of the 40 published works in his catalogue by
mid-2011. Whether the composer himself is aware of this is unknown,
and to a certain degree it is irrelevant, but the pattern itself is beyond
dispute.
17 It is worth noting that in the same year that he composed Tevot, Ades was revising The
Tempest for its 2007 revival at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
Example 5b:
Ades: Violin Concerto, bb. 1-6
14 TEMPO
Five days after he turned 40, Ades was interviewed by a jou

from the Los Angeles Times, who described his music in the fo
manner:
No two works sound much alike, and his music typically in

of unpredictability, playful juxtaposition of extremes and hea
that can leave audiences both disoriented and elated. Proof
2007 symphonic work Tevot, recently released on CD by EMI w
Philharmonic.18
The material presented in this paper proves otherwise.

so much in common with In Seven Days that the two mig
be considered sister works: both comprise piano and or
begin with repetitive, gradually evolving, 'catchy' postmi
rial that is very similar; and both were composed simult
the creation of accompanying video material displayed
performances. In addition, the use of string harmonics, h
writing and the incorporation of 'blue' notes are very
acters in Ades's music. Both these features can be found i
such as Five Eliot Landscapes, op. 1 (1990), which requir
to sing several, sustained top D flats one after another at
and which opens with a relaxed, jazzy rhythm in the pian
recent compositions such as the Violin Concerto, Lieux
The Tempest. However, there is also Ades's own personal
ing in the form of the musical 'signature' described above
bare fifths or a triad, and almost immediately challenging
either melodically or harmonically, through the inclusi
semitone. It is unfortunate that the journalist from the Los
chose that CD in particular as proof to support his claim
Ades' works sound alike. If he were to listen to the first 15
the EMI disc he referred to, which begins with Tevot, an
to the next track and listen to the first 15 fifteen seconds
Concerto, the connexion would become instantly and ex
ent. If he were to then listen to the first 15 seconds of the overture to
The Tempest, he would hear how all three of these openings bear a strik
ing resemblance, for they are almost identical to each other, presenting
the '5+2' progression harmonically.
When a composer writes a new work, often the immediate reaction
of the critical listener is to search, even if only subliminally, for possible
sources of inspiration and echoes from the ghosts of composers past.
Ades is clearly at ease with such musical visitors in his works, and these
many and diverse influences should by no means be ignored. Now in
his fifth decade, however, it is perhaps appropriate to start considering
in greater depth Ades's own influence upon himself, and the trends that
can be identified across more than two remarkable decades of music.
Music examples © copyright Faber Music Ltd.
18 Erikson, Matthew, The Los Angeles Times, 6 March 2011: <http://articles.latimes.com/

2011/mar/06/entertainment/la-ca-spring-thomas-ades-20110306>

Plural Styles, Personal Style - The Music of Thomas Adès

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PLURAL STYLES, PERSONAL STYLE: THE MUSIC OF THOMAS ADÈS

Author(s): Dominic Wells

PLURAL STYLES, PERSONAL STYLE:

On1March201 ThomasAdes,oneofthemostcel bratedandsuc es

In a valuable paper from 2004 concerning Ades's opera The Tempest

Plural Styles: Dowland, Couperin, Mozart, Janacek, Stravinsky,

certo which includes Rosner's video-art displayed on six screens

Perhaps the most obvious example of a specific pop song influencing

term coined by another polystylist, George Rochberg, who saw t

The composer sees no distinction between past and present, ab

Personal Style: Emerging Patterns and the Adesian '5+2'

In a radio interview in October 2010,14 Ades explained that his

It is worth noting this reference to The Queen of the Night from

bow change ad lib.

Taken in isolation, such a relationship between the first and f

In tempo severo (J = 50-52)

While in the majority of cases the Adesian 'signature' comprises a

SOLO 1 (or 3 SOU)

While it is impossible to demonstrate musically /visually all instances

Five days after he turned 40, Ades was interviewed by a jou

No two works sound much alike, and his music typically in

The material presented in this paper proves otherwise.

Music examples © copyright Faber Music Ltd.

18 Erikson, Matthew, The Los Angeles Times, 6 March 2011: <http://articles.latimes.com/

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