PROPORTION, TEMPORALITY, AND PERFORMANCE ISSUES IN PIANO

WORKS OF JOHN ADAMS

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Kyle Fyr

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Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
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for the degree
Doctor of Philosophy
in the Music Theory Department of the Jacobs School of Music,
Indiana University
July 2011
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 UMI Number: 3482840

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 Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Doctoral Committee ____________________________________

Julian L. Hook, Ph.D., chair

____________________________________

J. Peter Burkholder, Ph.D.

____________________________________

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Gretchen G. Horlacher, Ph.D.
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____________________________________
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Eric J. Isaacson, Ph.D.
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June 27, 2011

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© 2011
Kyle Fyr
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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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 Acknowledgements

I would first like to thank my dissertation chair, Julian Hook. The quality of this

dissertation is due in large part to the timely and perceptive feedback he has provided

throughout every step of the process. He has also been extremely supportive of me in all

of my professional endeavors, for which I am deeply thankful. My thanks as well to

Gretchen Horlacher, Eric Isaacson, and J. Peter Burkholder for their diligence on my

behalf as members of my dissertation committee. I would also like to thank the Music

Theory Department of the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music for providing me

with a fellowship for 2010-11 that was instrumental in completing my dissertation, and

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for giving me the opportunity to teach a course on minimalism in music in the summer of
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2009. Though it is an analytical endeavor, this project actually had its genesis in the

practice room. I am profoundly grateful to Emile Naoumoff, my piano professor at

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Indiana University, whose talent and intellectual curiosity are awe-inspiring and whose

willingness to allow me freedom in my repertoire choices led to my performance of

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China Gates, Phrygian Gates, and Hallelujah Junction in a March 2008 recital. I am also

grateful to fellow pianist/theorist Tim Best for lending his talents to the second piano part

of Hallelujah Junction in this recital. An additional note of thanks goes to Sharon Mann,

my piano professor at the San Francisco Conservatory, who first taught me China Gates,

introduced me to the piece‘s dedicatee Sarah Cahill, and without whose encouragement

and generosity my career as a music theorist would not have been possible. Thank you to

my parents, Jacquelyn and David Fyr, who have always encouraged me to cultivate my

musical talents. Last but not least, my heartfelt thanks go to Wan Techagaisiyavanit for

her unwavering love and support.

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 Kyle Fyr

Proportion, Temporality, and Performance Issues in Piano Works of John Adams

This dissertation is focused on investigating the ways in which John Adams

shapes time in his piano compositions. Underlying their fluid, seemingly improvisatory

musical surfaces, Adams‘s piano works feature a high level of organization. In light of

their unwavering pulsation in constant tempi and the absence of other traditional markers

that influence perception of musical time, proportionality becomes a prime method by

which Adams shapes time in his piano pieces—a feature especially evident in the tightly

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organized networks of temporal proportions that create and demarcate form in China
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Gates (1977) and Phrygian Gates (1977-78). Although Hallelujah Junction (1996) in

some ways epitomizes Adams‘s increasingly intuitive style, his approach to temporality
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in this later composition has consistencies with his earlier piano works. Thus, I explore

the use of proportion and other methods of temporal organization in Hallelujah Junction,
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comparing it to China Gates and Phrygian Gates to see how Adams shapes time across

his piano output. Throughout my analyses, I propose ways in which performers may

effectively convey the temporal proportions in these works. Finally, I investigate further

applications of my approach in non-piano works by Adams and works by Steve Reich.

Chapter 1 provides an introduction to Adams‘s compositional style, examines his

relationship to minimalism and post-minimalism, provides a survey of scholarly literature

on his music, situates his piano works within his compositional output, and provides an

introduction to my analytical approach. Chapter 2 summarizes prominent recent

approaches to temporality by musical scholars, prominent writings on time in physics and

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psychology, noteworthy recent approaches to proportion by musical scholars, and finally

situates my approach among the theories and philosophies discussed (the greatest

influences being John Roeder and Jonathan Kramer). In Chapters 3–5, I analyze

temporal design and proportional organization in China Gates, Phrygian Gates, and

Hallelujah Junction, discussing the implications of these findings not only for analysis

but also for performance of the pieces. Finally, Chapter 6 features analyses of non-piano

works by Adams and Steve Reich that demonstrate the usefulness of temporality and

proportion for analysis of pulse-based minimalist and post-minimalist compositions.

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 Table of Contents

Title page i
Acceptance page ii
Copyright page iii
Acknowledgements iv
Abstract v
Table of contents vii
List of musical examples ix

Introduction 1

Chapter 1—John Adams‘s Compositional Style 6

1.1 Adams‘s Early Musical Background 6
1.2 Adams and Minimalism 9
1.3 Adams and Post-Minimalism 14
1.4 Scholarly Literature on Adams‘s Music 20

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1.5 Introduction to My Analytical Approach 25
1.6 The Role of Piano Works in Adams‘s Compositional Output 30
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Chapter 2—Theories of Time and Proportion
2.1 Analytical Approaches to Temporality in Music
33
34
2.1.1 Time and Motion in Rhythmic/Metric Theory Since 1950 34
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2.1.2 Rhythm and Temporality in Schenkerian Theory 39
2.1.3 Recent Approaches Influenced by Linguistics and Psychology 41
2.1.4 Recent Approaches to Temporality in Post-Tonal Music 45
2.1.5 Broader Perspectives on Musical Time 51
2.2 The Study of Time in Philosophy and Physics 53
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2.2.1 Theories of Time in Philosophy 53

2.2.2 Theories of Time in Physics 60
2.3 Analytical Approaches to Proportion in Music 65
2.4 My Analytical Approach in the Context of the Approaches Summarized 84

Chapter 3—Proportion and Temporality in China Gates 88

3.1 Temporal Proportionality in China Gates, Section I 90
3.2 Temporal Proportionality in China Gates, Sections II and III 96
3.3 Conveying Proportion and Other Performance Issues in China Gates 108

Chapter 4—Proportion and Temporality in Phrygian Gates 117

4.1 Temporal Proportionality in the Opening Module of Phrygian Gates 119
4.2 Interactions Between Pitch and Temporal Relationships in Phrygian
Gates 133
4.3 ―A System of Weights and Measures‖ 138
4.4 China Gates Redux 146
4.5 Global Proportional Design and Adams‘s Proportional ―Mistakes‖ 154
4.6 Proportional Analysis and Performance of Phrygian Gates 161

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Chapter 5—Temporality and Proportion in Hallelujah Junction 167
5.1 Rhythmic Organization in the Opening of Hallelujah Junction 168
5.2 Ambiguity, Segmentation, and Proportion in Hallelujah Junction 174
5.3 Aspects of Organization in Hallelujah Junction, Mvts. II and III 187
5.4 Some Performance Issues in Hallelujah Junction 195

Chapter 6—Temporal Proportionality in Other Post-Minimalist Works 198

6.1 Temporal Proportionality in Some Non-Piano Works of John Adams 199
6.1.1 ―Day Chorus‖ From The Death of Klinghoffer 199
6.1.2 Two Selections From Hoodoo Zephyr 208
6.2 Temporal Proportionality in Works of Steve Reich 215
6.2.1 Electric Counterpoint 215
6.2.2 New York Counterpoint 222
6.2.3 Eight Lines 224
6.3 Conclusions 229

Bibliography 233

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Vita 240

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 List of Musical Examples

2.1 Metric waves from Zuckerkandl, Sound and Symbol, p. 171 35

2.2 Diagram of projection from Hasty, Meter as Rhythm, p. 84 39
2.3a Grouping dissonances from Krebs, Fantasy Pieces, p. 32 40
2.3b Displacement dissonances from Krebs, Fantasy Pieces, p. 34 41
2.4 Metrical grid from Lerdahl and Jackendoff, A Generative Theory of Tonal
Music, p. 23 42
2.5 Metric tree from London, Hearing in Time, p. 44 44
2.6 Metric 8-cycle from London, Hearing in Time, p. 68 44
2.7 Metrical interpretation of R27-28 in Stravinsky‘s Les Noces, from Horlacher,
―Metric Irregularity in ‗Les Noces‘,‖ p. 299 47
2.8 Beat-class analysis of a passage from New York Counterpoint, from Roeder,
―Beat-Class Modulation in Steve Reich‘s Music,‖ p. 291 51
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2.9 Formal proportions in Stravinsky‘s Symphony in C, 1 mvt., from Cone, ―The
Uses of Convention,‖ p. 293 66
2.10 Greater detail of formal proportions in Stravinsky‘s Symphony in C, 1st mvt.,

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from Cone, ―The Uses of Convention,‖ p. 294 66
2.11 Proportions among formal units in Webern‘s Op. 5, Mvt. 4, from Berry,
Structural Functions in Music, p. 405
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2.12 Schematic representation of tempo and durational relations in Webern‘s Op. 5,
Mvt. 4 68
2.13 A proportional structure in Debussy‘s Reflets dans l‟eau, from Howat, Debussy
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in Proportion, p. 25 72
2.14 A second proportional structure in Reflets dans l‟eau, from Howat, Debussy in
Proportion, p. 25 72
2.15 Proportions in tonal structure of Reflets dans l‟eau, from Howat, Debussy in
Proportion, p. 27 73
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2.16 Proportional relationships between moments and moment groups in

Stravinsky‘s Agon, from Kramer, The Time of Music, p. 301 77
2.17 Proportional relationships among durations in Du Fay‘s Nuper rosarum flores,
from Craig Wright, ―Dufay‘s ‗Nuper rosarum flores‘,‖ p. 398 81
2.18 Nested proportional structure in John Cage‘s Imaginary Landscape No. IV, from
Charles Hamm, ―Privileging the Moment,‖ p. 284 83
3.1 Adams, China Gates, mm. 1–19 91
3.2 Proportional design in the opening section of China Gates 93
3.3 Left hand pattern changes in China Gates, Module VII 95
3.4 Left hand pattern changes in China Gates, Module VI 95
3.5 Transition into the beginning of Section II of China Gates 97
3.6 Temporal organization in Section II of China Gates 99
3.7 The first two modules of China Gates, Section III 102
3.8 Proportional design in Section III of China Gates 103
3.9a Adams‘s graphic representation of China Gates 104
3.9b Pitch collection information indicated by Adams‘s graph 104
3.10 Global formal design in China Gates 106
3.11 Close overlaps between the hands at the opening of China Gates 110

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3.12 Final module of China Gates 114
4.1 Pulse stream with textural accents in mm. 1–7 of Adams, Phrygian Gates 120
4.2a Temporal proportionality within the opening phrases of Phrygian Gates 123
4.2b Temporal proportionality in the opening 28 bars of Phrygian Gates 123
4.3 Articulation of proportional design by pulse streams in Phrygian Gates,
mm. 46–56 125
4.4 Temporal proportion in mm. 1–56 of Phrygian Gates 127
4.5 Analysis of pulse streams in Phrygian Gates, mm. 101–113 128
4.6 Nested proportional frameworks in Module 1 of Phrygian Gates 131
4.7 Evocation of the Phrygian mode in mm. 114–116 of Phrygian Gates 134
4.8 Pitch organization in Phrygian Gates 135
4.9 Pitch-based segmentation of mm. 1–265 of Phrygian Gates, from Johnson,
―Harmonic Vocabulary in the Music of John Adams,‖ 146. 137
4.10 Bars 638–647 of Phrygian Gates 140
4.11 Voice leading between chords in ―A System of Weights and Measures‖ 141
4.12 Nested proportional frameworks in ―A System of Weights and Measures‖ 144
4.13 Enharmonic alternation in mm. 947–953 of Phrygian Gates 147

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4.14 Pitch patterns in mm. 923–934 of Phrygian Gates 148
4.15 Formal design in the final section of Phrygian Gates 150
4.16 Global formal design in Phrygian Gates
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4.17 Extra sixteenth note at m. 1002 of Phrygian Gates 157
4.18 Doubly indicated tempo change at m. 402 of Phrygian Gates 159
4.19 Global proportional temporal design in Phrygian Gates (adjusted) 160
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4.20 Overlapping pitch patterns in mm. 8–14 of Phrygian Gates 162
4.21 Dynamic alternations between modal pairs in Phrygian Gates 163
5.1 Opening passage of Adams, Hallelujah Junction 169
5.2 Pulse stream shifts in the opening passage of Hallelujah Junction 170
5.3 Layered pulse streams in mm. 194–195 of Hallelujah Junction 175
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5.4 Shifting pulse streams in Piano 1, mm. 178–183 of Hallelujah Junction 176
5.5 Ambiguity of tonal center in opening motive of Hallelujah Junction 178
5.6 Bars 270–276 of Hallelujah Junction 179
5.7 Proportional distribution of pitch centers in Hallelujah Junction, 1st mvt. 180
5.8 Transformations of ―-lle-lu-jah‖ motive in Hallelujah Junction, 1st mvt. 181
5.9 Composite versions of ―-lle-lu-jah‖ motive 182
5.10 Temporal proportionality based on presence of ―-lle-lu-jah‖ motive in
Hallelujah Junction, 1st mvt. 183
5.11 Pitch-class accumulation in the opening of Hallelujah Junction 184
5.12 Temporal proportionality created by statements of ―-lle-lu-jah‖ motive in the
opening 84 bars of Hallelujah Junction 186
5.13 Transformed ―-lle-lu-jah‖ motive in Hallelujah Junction, 2nd mvt. 188
5.14a Piano 2‘s left-hand ostinato in 3/4, Hallelujah Junction, mm. 293–305 189
5.14b Piano 1‘s left-hand ostinato in 4/4, Hallelujah Junction, mm. 346–356 189
5.15 Competing pulse streams in Hallelujah Junction, mm. 277–281 191
5.16 Competing pulse streams in Hallelujah Junction, mm. 362–364 192
5.17 Completion of ―Hallelujah‖ motive, Hallelujah Junction, mm. 591–595 193
5.18 ―Junction‖ of the two pianos in Hallelujah Junction, mm. 630–633 194

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5.19 ―-lle-lu-jah‖ motive in A-flat Major, Hallelujah Junction, mm. 642ff. 194
6.1 Adams, The Death of Klinghoffer, ―Day Chorus,‖ mm. 1–3 203
6.2 Adams, The Death of Klinghoffer, ―Day Chorus,‖ mm. 141–143 203
6.3 Alice Goodman‘s text for the ―Day Chorus‖ 204
6.4 Harmonic sectional divisions in the ―Day Chorus‖ 205
6.5 Proportional distribution of vocal groupings in the ―Day Chorus‖ 207
6.6 My transcription of the opening of Adams, Coast 209
6.7 Formal outline of Coast 211
6.8a My transcription of the opening of Adams, Hoodoo Zephyr 212
6.8b Opening of Adams, Grand Pianola Music 212
6.9 Gradual completion of an E Phrygian scale in the opening section of Hoodoo
Zephyr 213
6.10 Formal outline of Hoodoo Zephyr 214
6.11 Opening chord cycle of Reich, Electric Counterpoint, 1st mvt. 217
6.12 Formal outline of Electric Counterpoint, 1st mvt. 218
6.13 Formal outline of Electric Counterpoint, 2nd mvt. 220
6.14 Temporal proportions in Electric Counterpoint, 3rd mvt., mm. 66–113 221

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6.15 Formal outlines of Electric Counterpoint and New York Counterpoint 222
6.16 Internal subdivisions in the first section of Reich, Eight Lines 227
6.17 Formal outline of Eight Lines, Sections 1–3
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6.18 Formal comparison of Eight Lines, Sections 2 and 4 228
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 Introduction

Piano works hold a significant place in the compositional output of John Adams.

Though he has gained greatest renown for his symphonic and operatic works, his first

two published pieces were written for solo piano and played an important role in shaping

his compositional style. The stylistic characteristics of these piano pieces present

interesting challenges for analysis. When many of the vehicles used to articulate form in

much of Western music history (such as extended melodic lines, tonal and harmonic

motion, cadences, and rhetorical beginning and ending gestures) are either absent or

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subjugated, as they so frequently are throughout Adams‘s piano compositions, traditional
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modes of listening and analysis may lead one to conclude that these pieces lack formal

coherence. Yet one aspect of music that these compositions do not do away with and in
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fact bring to the fore is time. Beneath their fluid, seemingly improvisatory musical

surfaces, Adams‘s piano works feature a great degree of organization in the temporal
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realm. One of the most prominent ways in which Adams creates temporal organization

in his piano pieces is through the use of proportional frameworks. Therefore, a promising

analytical avenue into a deeper understanding of Adams‘s piano music—one that is yet to

appear in scholarly literature—lies in the exploration of temporality and proportion.

It is somewhat surprising that the popularity, critical acclaim, and frequency of

performance of John Adams‘s music have not translated into more scholarly literature on

his music than is currently available. One likely source of this lack of scholarly output is

the fact that his music seems to resist classification. In Chapter 1, I examine Adams‘s

compositional style in the context of two labels most often applied to it: minimalism and
post-minimalism. I also situate the role of piano works in Adams‘s entire output and

survey some notable scholarly literature on his music, using the approaches surveyed as a

backdrop to introducing my own approach.

One of the greatest challenges involved with an analytical approach that focuses

on temporality is the fact that the term temporality—much like the term tonality—is

susceptible to a wide variety of definitions. In Chapter 2, I therefore survey a great

number of prominent recent scholarly writings on the subject of time, beginning in

Section 2.1 with analytical approaches to temporality by musical scholars. Some of the

scholars surveyed invoke the concept of motion in their approaches, others focus their

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attention on the interaction of rhythmic levels or layers (a ―Schenkerian‖ approach), some
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find their bases in principles of linguistics and psychology, and still others adopt

techniques and approaches to address the stylistic changes in music written after the
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common practice period. Though many scholarly approaches to musical time (such as

those outlined here) have often fallen under the umbrella of rhythm and meter, this need
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not always be the case, and some recent scholars have accordingly cast a wider net.

What becomes evident in examining the wide array of approaches to temporality

by musical scholars is that there are competing notions of temporal philosophy that

underlie their discussions. In Section 2.2, I therefore also explore the notion of time as

expressed by prominent philosophers. One conception of time—as strongly espoused by

Henri Bergson—is the idea of becoming, in which time is assumed to flow and in which

human perception is equated with temporal reality. The opposing conception of time—

favored by Bertrand Russell—is the notion of being, in which time is composed of

discrete moments and the ideas of motion or flow are abstractions imposed on time by

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humanity. The fact that these two opposing viewpoints seem to be irreconcilable caused

the philosopher John Ellis McTaggart to conclude that time is in fact unreal. Other

philosophers have proposed compromises between the two polar opposites, but lack

specific definitions of what constitutes motion and passage—debates about which can be

traced all the way back to the ―arrow paradox‖ of Zeno of Elea (who lived in the fifth

century BCE). Not surprisingly, however, philosophers arrive at different conclusions

regarding Zeno‘s paradox depending on which temporal viewpoint they advocate, which

illustrates that the opposing positions philosophers advocate as to the ―reality‖ of time are

thus largely predicated on their respective assumptions about whether time is discrete or

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continuous. To help alleviate the apparent impasse between competing views of time in
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philosophy, I therefore turn to discoveries on the subject of time by physicists. Physics,

as we know it today, provides some intriguing insights into the nature of time that inform
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and sometimes contradict the conclusions of philosophers. Although cosmology

indicates that the extraordinarily ordered nature of the universe at the big bang and its
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subsequent evolution into a less ordered state has provided time with an arrow, physical

laws articulated from Isaac Newton to Albert Einstein to the present provide no

indication that time flows and actually treat past, present, and future equally (more in line

with the notion of temporal being). What becomes clear from all of the foregoing

discussions is that perhaps no issue divides scholars across a wide variety of disciplines

more greatly than time and the conception thereof. For this reason, it is my contention

that an analytical approach focusing on temporality benefits from a broadly based

definition of the term, one that accommodates both the notions of being and becoming.

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 Because Adams uses proportional frameworks as a prominent means of creating

formal organization in his piano works, proportion is another concept central to my

analytical approach. The viability of proportional analysis rests firmly on two aspects of

methodology: what to measure, and how to measure it. My approach to analyzing

temporal proportion in music is strongly influenced by Jonathan Kramer. Kramer

advocates describing temporal proportion in Stravinsky‘s music through the use of

objectively measured time-spans because Stravinsky‘s sections are ―static‖ relative to

context—meaning that they lack the attributes of tonal motion that can often distort

listeners‘ sense of absolute time. I assert that John Adams‘s piano music warrants a

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similar analytical approach because all of his piano works discussed in this dissertation
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have important attributes in common: (1) each piece features unwavering, consistently

articulated pulsation throughout its entirety; (2) tempi remain constant throughout entire
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sections (or in some cases, entire pieces) with no variations whatsoever; and (3) each

piece features very little in the way of traditional temporal markers such as tonal motion
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or harmonic progression. When pulsation is constantly articulated in a consistent tempo

and is coupled with a limited range of harmonic and tonal motion, it becomes possible to

use these pulses to objectively measure the temporal spans of a musical work. My

analyses of how such pulses help to demarcate form and proportion in Adams‘s piano

music also rely strongly on John Roeder‘s method of pulse stream analysis. As in

Roeder‘s analyses, the literal presence of pulsation in the music is crucial to my

analytical strategy.

I begin my analyses of Adams‘s piano music in Chapter 3 with his first published

composition: China Gates (1977). I use quantitative analysis to explore the intricate

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network of temporal proportions by which Adams creates form in this work. The piece‘s

temporal proportionality has implications not only for analysis but for performance as

well. Therefore, I also examine the ways in which my analyses of temporal proportion

may interact with and inform performance decisions in China Gates. Adams took many

of the processes and techniques from China Gates and expanded them dramatically in

Phrygian Gates (1977-78). In Chapter 4, I apply a similar analytical strategy to Phrygian

Gates, exploring how a consistent proportional framework manifests itself in the piece‘s

local and global formal designs, and again examining the implications of these findings

for performance. While the proportional designs of China Gates and Phrygian Gates are

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the result of pre-compositional processes, Adams insists that his compositions have since
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evolved to a more intuitive style. Although Hallelujah Junction (1996) in some ways

epitomizes Adams‘s increasingly intuitive style, his approach to temporality in this later
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composition has some consistencies with his earlier piano works. In Chapter 5, I explore

the use of proportion and other methods of temporal organization in Hallelujah Junction,
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comparing it to China Gates and Phrygian Gates to see how Adams shapes time across

his piano output. The stylistic characteristics of Adams‘s piano works described in the

previous paragraph are also features of some of his non-piano compositions, and of many

minimalist and post-minimalist pieces in general. In Chapter 6, I therefore examine three

of Adams‘s non-piano works as well as three pieces by Steve Reich in order to further

illustrate the applicability of temporal proportional analysis for pulse-based minimalist

and post-minimalist compositions.

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 Chapter 1—John Adams’s Compositional Style

Over the past thirty years, John Adams has cemented his legacy as one of the

world‘s most successful living composers. As the critic Alex Ross notes, ―Adams is one

of the very few American composers who receive a comfortable income from

commissions and royalties. … Some of [his] records have sold upward of fifty thousand

copies, which is exceptional for a classical release and altogether freakish for new

music.‖1 Adams has been able to strike a rare balance between critical acclaim and

popular success, a fact further reflected in the frequency with which his compositions are

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performed. His compositional style is notable among his contemporaries for the way it
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has constantly evolved, but certain characteristics persist throughout his output, helping

to make Adams‘s music almost instantly recognizable. In order to investigate his musical
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style, one must first consider the influences that shaped Adams‘s musical development.
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1.1—Adams’s Early Musical Background

John Adams was born in 1947 in Worcester, Massachusetts, and his earliest

musical experiences involved playing the clarinet. Adams was born into a musical

family—his father was a clarinetist and his mother was a jazz singer—and he showed

exceptional ability as a performer from a young age. (So good were his clarinet-playing

skills that he was sometimes called as a substitute with the Boston Symphony during his

undergraduate years.) Interestingly, however, Adams seems to have also been

predisposed toward composition at an early age. He recalls, ―I entered my adolescence

1
Alex Ross, ―The Harmonist,‖ in The John Adams Reader, ed. Thomas May (Pompton Plains, NJ:
Amadeus Press, 2006), 40.

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already determined to become a composer, a strange thing, it seems to me, for a boy of

thirteen.‖2 He eventually went on to study composition at Harvard University with Leon

Kirchner, while also developing his interest in conducting (a pursuit Adams maintains to

this day when he is not composing). Although he notes that he ―always felt comfortable

on the podium,‖ Adams made the decision during his senior year of college to turn down

an invitation to attend the conducting program at Tanglewood and instead focus on a

compositional career.3 He recalls his decision-making process:

I suspected that a high-energy summer of being around superstar classical

musicians at Tanglewood might prove a fatal distraction to my embryonic
creative life. … It was a difficult offer to turn down … but I already had a

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negative intuition from examining both Bernstein‘s and Boulez‘s careers.
More than likely, a full-blown life as a conductor was seriously
threatening to one‘s private muse. Something about the extrovert, political
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behavior required of a conductor ran against the grain of the more
meditative, imaginative existence of a composer.4
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Adams‘s experiences as a composition major at Harvard were indicative of some the

directions his mature compositional style would eventually take. He initially tried to

embrace serialism, but always suspected it was the wrong way to make art.
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I felt caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand was the
hair shirt and bed of nails of the serialists, and on the other the gushy
emotionalism of Bernstein‘s ‗Kaddish‘ Symphony or Samuel Barber‘s
Violin Concerto. … Imagine me, if you will, an aspiring composer, sitting
in a classroom diligently counting backward from twelve, tracing down
combinatorial transformations, and trying to get a rush from a three-
minute setting of a poem by Georg Trakl or Stefan George. Then imagine
this same student emerging from his somber seminar, walking across the
campus, and hearing from some dorm window the screaming, slashing,
bending, soaring, lawless guitar of Jimi Hendrix.5

2
John Adams, Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux,
2008), 20.
3
Ibid., 49.
4
Ibid., 48.
5
Ibid., 33.

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As was the case for many composers of his generation, the alternative approach to

serialism was that of John Cage, and for a time, Adams became a devotee of Cage‘s ideas

and compositional processes, although he notes that he ―had to suffer extensive cognitive

dissonance over the fact that I continued to get my emotional highs from Coltrane,

Beethoven, Bartók, and Joplin (Janis, not Scott).‖6

Upon graduation from Harvard, it became clear to Adams that in order to find his

creative voice he needed to acquire new perspectives, which he sought by moving to

California. His initial experiences in California were not exactly what he had foreseen

for himself, however, as he had to make ends meet by working in a warehouse in

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Oakland.
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I had imagined that I could live a double life as proletarian worker during
the day and avant-garde composer at night. But that was a pipe dream. …
I profoundly didn‘t want to go the route of being a university composer.
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Something in me rallied against the notion. But I felt stuck in my
situation, the romance of a proletarian existence having quickly
evaporated in the harsh reality of a forty-six-hour workweek.7

An inviting job prospect then suddenly fell in Adams‘s lap in 1972. Two faculty
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members had abruptly resigned at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the

school was quickly looking to fill a position for someone to teach composition and to

direct the school‘s New Music Ensemble. Adams recalls that during his tenure at SFCM

(he taught there from 1972 to 1982), he slowly found his voice as a composer.8 It was at

this time that he began to move away from Cage as an influence.

I began to get restless with my concerts of experimental music. Most

events in which I took part were played to tiny audiences consisting
largely of other composers. Boredom was a major element in many of
these events. … I didn‘t see that much difference between a work created

6
Ibid., 59.
7
Ibid., 68.
8
Ibid., 69-70.

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 American-style by tossing coins and one created Euro-style by transposing
serial sets of pitches. … But I was ripe for a discovery, and just at the right
moment intuitions and revelations came together to form the composer
that I would become.9

1.2—Adams and Minimalism

The discovery to which Adams refers is the particular style of music that he

finally discovered could accommodate his creative energies: minimalism. Throughout

the search for his compositional voice, Adams noted that he was ―striving for a language

that had these three critical elements without which I couldn‘t live: (a) pulsation, (b)

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tonality and/or modality, and (c) repetition.‖10 It was as though Adams knew what

characteristics he wanted his style to entail but hadn‘t found the proper outlet, and
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minimalism provided the key to establishing his mature style. Although he had heard a
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recording of Terry Riley‘s In C while still at Harvard, the minimalist scene was much

more vibrant in the San Francisco Bay Area (where Adams now lived), granting him

exposure to much more of the music that would shape his style.
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Riley, Reich, and Glass … all influenced me positively and pointed to a

way out of the cul-de-sac in which I seemed to be stuck. … What appealed
to me about these early works of Minimalism was that they did not
deconstruct or obliterate the fundamental elements of musical discourse
such as regular pulsation, tonal harmony, or motivic repetition. Indeed
they did the opposite: they embraced pulsation and repetition with an
almost childlike glee. To me, it felt like the pleasure principle had been
invited back into the listening experience.11

Adams is very open about the influence of minimalist composers on his own music, and

although he acknowledges Terry Riley and Philip Glass, the minimalist composer who

9
Ibid., 83-84, 86-87.
10
Quoted in Thomas May, ―John Adams Reflects on His Career,‖ in The John Adams Reader, ed. Thomas
May (Pompton Plains, NJ: Amadeus Press, 2006), 23.
11
Adams, Hallelujah Junction, 89-90.

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seems to have affected him most is Steve Reich; Adams notes that certain pieces of

Reich‘s, including Music for 18 Musicians, Tehillim, Drumming, and Music for Mallet

Instruments, Voices, and Organ were crucial to the development of his own style.12 It

was Reich‘s elegant, organized version of the minimalist aesthetic that attracted Adams.13

What also impressed me about Reich‘s music-making was that it was done
at a high level of expertise and preparation. In contrast to the free,
anarchic avant-garde ―happenings‖ I‘d been involved with, Reich‘s music
used precision and balanced counterpoint to create a sound world that was
carefully organized, musically engaging, and sensually appealing. 14

Although Adams certainly did not set out to copy Reich‘s style per se, the tightness and

professionalism of Reich‘s ensemble performances contributed to the sound world that

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resonated so deeply with him. Adams recalls that the first time he heard Music for 18
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Musicians, he felt that ―the experience of pure aural pleasure, so long absent in

contemporary classical music, had reemerged from a long, dark night of the soul.‖15 He
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became an advocate of Reich‘s music as a conductor as well, conducting some of the first

performances of Tehillim and Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices, and Organ outside of
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Reich‘s own ensemble.

With works such as China Gates, Phrygian Gates, Shaker Loops, and Harmonium

(all written between 1977 and 1981), Adams began to integrate minimalist ideas into his

musical style and began to receive popular recognition as an up-and-coming minimalist

composer. One of the first published articles to bring minimalism to the masses was

written by Tim Page for Musical America in 1981. Page‘s article indicated that

12
Timothy Johnson, ―Minimalism: Aesthetic, Style, or Technique?,‖ The Musical Quarterly 78 (Winter
1994): 752.
13
Adams has noted that Reich‘s music means more to him than that of other minimalist composers because
he finds it to be the most sophisticated. See Edward Strickland, ―John Adams,‖ in American Composers:
Dialogues on Contemporary Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 179.
14
Adams, Hallelujah Junction, 89.
15
Ibid., 95.

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minimalism had become a continuing tradition by including the work of Adams,16 who

was born about a decade after minimalism‘s ―founding fathers.‖17 Shortly thereafter,

Time magazine critic Michael Walsh published an article that brought even greater

national attention to minimalist music in which Adams was cited as one of the younger

adherents of the movement.18 In fact, Adams was cited in this article as ―the fastest-

rising minimalist composer—and potentially the most influential of all,‖ highlighting his

meteoric rise from a largely unknown composer to a nationally acclaimed one.19

Interestingly, Adams‘s relationship to the minimalist style has always been more

tenuous than one might infer from reading the preceding paragraphs, however. Applying

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the label ―minimalist‖ to Adams‘s music proves to be less apt than it does for the music
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of Reich or Glass, for instance. This is due in part to the fact that Adams came of age

about a generation after minimalism‘s inception, but it also reflects characteristics of his
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musical personality and nature. While Adams certainly found minimalism to be a source

of inspiration and absorbed many minimalist elements into his own particular style, he
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never felt as closely bound as his predecessors to the processes and strictures of

minimalism. Adams discusses some of the ambivalence he experienced with regard to

minimalism:

Minimalist procedures pointed to a way. I felt that the classics of the style
were groundbreakers for sure, but I also recognized that Minimalism as a
governing aesthetic could and would rapidly exhaust itself. Like Cubism
in painting, it was a radically new idea, but its reductive world-view would
soon leave its practitioners in an expressive cul-de-sac.20

16
Edward Strickland, Minimalism: Origins (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 245.
17
The four ―founding fathers‖ I am referring to are LaMonte Young (b. 1935), Terry Riley (b. 1936), Steve
Reich (b. 1936), and Philip Glass (b. 1937).
18
Thomas May, Introduction to The John Adams Reader, ed. Thomas May (Pompton Plains, NJ: Amadeus
Press, 2006), xiv.
19
Susan Key and Larry Rothe, eds. American Mavericks (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001),
97.
20
Adams, Hallelujah Junction, 93.

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It is interesting that Adams pointed to minimalism as a way out of the ―cul-de-sac‖ in

which his own compositional style was stuck, but then also used the same term to

describe what he felt were the dangers of minimalist orthodoxy. Philip Glass‘s music

seems to have been a particular source of consternation for Adams during this time in his

career. He recalls hearing Glass‘s ensemble perform excerpts from Einstein on the Beach

in San Francisco in the mid-1970s:

I remember driving home alone in the car, feeling very violent emotions
about it. On one level I didn‘t like it because I found some of it just
mindlessly repetitive—the structures were so obvious. Yet I think that the
reason I was upset was that there must have been something else about it
that I found extremely appealing, and I couldn‘t quite rectify the two

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conflicting emotions in my head.21

Adams‘s reservations did not cause him to reject musical minimalism, but instead he
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sought ways to incorporate minimalist elements into a more expressive style, one that
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would fit his own personal aesthetic.

I needed to find a musical language that could contain my expressive

needs, a language that was formally and emotionally much more
malleable, much more capable of a sudden change of mood, one that could
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be both blissfully serene and then violently explosive within the same
minute. This was something that ‗classical‘ minimalism, with its chaste
purity and monochromatic emotional worlds, couldn‘t handle.22

The quote above is taken from a 2005 interview, but Adams apparently expressed his

feelings on the subject even more caustically when he was younger. In an oft-cited

interview with the critic Michael Steinberg in 1980 (conducted while the composition of

Harmonium was in progress), he was quoted as describing himself as ―a minimalist bored

with minimalism.‖23 Adams has now backtracked a bit from this quote, saying that it was

21
Quoted in May, ―John Adams Reflects on His Career,‖ 14.
22
Quoted in Ibid., 22.
23
Michael Steinberg, ―Harmonium for Large Orchestra and Chorus,‖ in The John Adams Reader, ed.
Thomas May (Pompton Plains, NJ: Amadeus Press, 2006), 82.

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