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REPETITION TROPES AND LEVELS OF OBLITERATION IN JOHN ADAMS'S SAXOPHONE CONCERTO AND AMERICAN BERSERK
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2016
Abstract
The music of John Adams has grown far away from its roots in Minimalism, but even in complex works like American Berserk (2001) and the Saxophone Concerto (2013) one can detect the working of a compositional mind conditioned by procedures relating back to earlier periods of the composer's output. A feature of Adams recent work is a continuing concern with various repetition strategies but in a far more veiled and multilayered manner. Another feature of both works is the deployment of ‘pushing up’ and ‘pushing down’ material manipulated rhythmically and raised to a structural level. Two strategies are adopted and adapted to investigate these features. The first, is from Rebecca Leydon's ‘Towards a Typology of Minimalist Tropes’, which considers the qualities of repetition in Minimal music, and the second is an idea borrowed from David Osmond Smith's monograph on Berio's Sinfonia, Playing on Words, where he considers ‘levels of obliteration’ of an underlying text (Mahler 2 Scherzo ‘In Ruhig Fliessender Bewegung’) in the third movement of the Sinfonia.
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References
1 Leydon, Rebecca, ‘Towards a Typology of Minimalist Tropes’, Music Theory Online 8/4 (2002)Google Scholar.
2 I am indebted to Tristian Evans for this idea. Evans uses Leydon to look at works by Philip Glass and others. See Tristian Evans, ‘Analysing Minimalist and Postminimalist Music: an Overview of Methodologies’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to Minimalist and Postminimalist Music (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 241–58.
3 Richard Middleton, Studying Popular Music (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1990).
4 I keep an open mind here since, while not using Leydon, Maarten Beirens considers Karel Goeyvaerts Litanie IV within a ‘repetitive’ context in The Ashgate Research Companion to Minimalist and Postminimalist Music even though it contains little regular pulsation.
5 Parsons, Michael, ‘Systems in Art and Music’, The Musical Times, vol. 117, no. 1604 (October 1976), pp. 815–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 816.
6 John Adams, Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life (London: Faber, 2008)
7 John Adams, ‘Crossing Borders’, Sound on Sound, February 1997, http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1997_articles/feb97/johnadams.html.
8 John Adams on www.earbox.com/violin-concerto/ (accessed 4 September 2015).
9 Adams, John, Jemian, Rebecca, de Zeeuw, Marie, ‘An interview with John Adams’, Perspectives of New Music 34 No 2 (1996) pp. 98–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 Nicholas Slonimsky, Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns (New York: Macmillan, 1986; originally published 1947).
11 Another article could be written on the various jazz saxophone playing styles that Adams seeks to reflect in the role for the commissioning soloist (Tim McAllister) and more can be found on this at: http://www.mercurynews.com/music/ci_26293571/timothy-mcallister-deconstructs-john-adams-saxophone-concerto (accessed 18 March 2016).
12 Saxophone Concerto by John Adams Copyright © 2013 by Hendon Music Inc, a Boosey and Hawkes Company. International rights secured. Used by permission.
13 David Osmond-Smith, Playing on Words: a Guide to Luciano Berio's Sinfonia (London: RMA Monographs, 1985).
14 Louis Andriessen and Elmer Schönberger, The Apollonian Clockwork: On Stravinsky (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 229
15 Jeff Lhankov ‘The solo Piano Compositions of John Adams: Style, Analysis, and Performance’ (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University 2014).
16 All excerpts from American Berserk by John Adams copyright © 2002,2007 by Hendon Music Inc, a Boosey and Hawkes Company. International Copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
17 The manipulation of the bass descending motifs is considered in detail in Lhankov, ‘The solo Piano Compositions of John Adams’.