John Adams on Finding His Voice

[Music] I had a crisis when I was in my late 20s early 30s where I had written a few pieces that were good and I'd seen some success and some attention and then I just freaked out I came along at a time when music had become so fragmented and so splintered in all aspects of the musical discourse were being deconstructed rhythm you know pitch form and it was being done in a very kind of purposeful way when I was a student in 1970 the prestigious ideals of of contemporary music were very severe the correct way to compose was in this very intellectual and sort of dry procedural methodology and at the same time you know I was listening to Jimi Hendrix and Miles Davis and Aretha Franklin and realizing you know this is what I really liked uh and so I you know I was having a schizophrenic existence as as a student my breakthrough in part was from Reading Carl Jung's studies on on psychology and what was interesting he has a theory of types where where he made these polarities uh thinking and feeling sensation and intuition um and I realized that you know as a personality I was I was much more a feeling type and Jung like to say that if you're strongly given over to one polarity your negative polarity tends to be undeveloped so for me thinking was this this was the area that that was weak so part of my breakthrough was was learning to appreciate and I suppose one could say and touchy-feely West Coast language to celebrate uh you know that feeling function fortunately I I think my thinking function is is strong enough that I'm able to you know put things together coherently when Beethoven's Young when Mozart was young when Mendelson was young they were acceptable templates uh you know whether it was the Rondo or the minuet or uh you know the Capo Aria they were they were very conventional templates and you worked within those so but we don't have those templates anymore we have them in pop music but we don't have them in in this world that I inhabit that means that every composer has to find his or her own very personal language and that is a huge Mountain climb the idea that really important breakthrough idea that you find in classical American minimalist Works whether they're by Terry Riley or or Steve Reich or Philip Glass you know it was a very liberating thing for me and what I I like about minimalism was that it it reinvented the wheel it found a way to take these essential tools of the musical experience pulsation tonality and repetition and and turn it into something new you know all of my music has has been informed by these principles but I could never really consider myself except maybe in my earliest pieces as a minimalist but but my music is informed by minimalism just as it's informed by Jazz and Justice it's informed by you know Beethoven and sibelius and strabinsky [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: John Adams

Views: 4,759

Keywords: john adams, adams, composer, adams composer, nixon in china, death of klinghoffer, doctor atomic, opera composer, contemporary classical music, terry riley, arvo part, steve reich, philip glass, phillip glass, living composer, verdi, opera, einstein on the beach, minimalism, neoclassical, film music, classical music, classical composer

Id: hgrI7dCG8RY

Length: 4min 34sec (274 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 15 2023