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American composer John Adams is one of the best-known contemporary composers working in the minimalist style. Minimalism in contemporary classical music is characterized by features such as the use of drones and repetitive patterns and the lack of dissonance. Adams has written many different kinds of compositions, but he is famous for his operas dramatizing recent historical events. If you want to learn more than just the minimal amount about John Adams, read on!
By analyzing questions, you can see patterns emerge, patterns that will help you answer questions. Qwiz5 is all about those patterns. In each installment of Qwiz5, we take an answer line and look at its five most common clues. Here we explore five clues that will help you answer a tossup on John Adams.
PHRYGIAN GATES
Adams’ first major composition was his piano piece Phrygian Gates. As the name indicates, the piece is set primarily in the Phrygian mode. (A mode can be seen as a type of scale, but that’s another Qwiz5 entirely!) Over the course of its thirty-minute runtime, Phrygian Gates cycles through the Circle of Fifths. The Circle of Fifths is a system that divides up the twelve possible pitches (and associated keys) by musical intervals of a perfect fifth. Phrygian Gates moves around the Circle of Fifths, alternating between the Phrygian and Lydian modes in each key.
HARMONIUM
Harmonium is an Adams composition for chorus and orchestra, consisting of three movements. Each movement sets a different poem by John Donne or Emily Dickinson. The three poems are Negative Love, Because I Could not Stop for Death, and Wild Nights, respectively.
NIXON IN CHINA
Nixon in China was Adam’s first opera. With a libretto by Alice Goodman, the opera concerns Nixon’s 1972 diplomatic trip to China. Nixon in China begins with the Spirit of ’76 landing in Peking. There is some disconnect between the Americans and the Chinese at first—the Chinese sing Three Rules of Discipline and Eight Points for Attention as they await the president’s disembarkation, and they amplify whatever Chairman Mao says. Things gradually become easier—Pat Nixon tours a Peking Glass Factory and sings the aria “This is prophetic,” imagining a future of peace between China and the United States. The third act ends ambiguously, however, with Chinese Premier Chou En-lai asking if anything they did was good.
THE DEATH OF KLINGHOFFER
In 1991 Adams and Goodman collaborated on another opera, the highly controversial The Death of Klinghoffer. The Death of Klinghoffer concerns the 1985 hijacking of the MS Achille Lauro by members of the Palestinian Liberation Front. The opera explores both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, especially when the hijacker Mamoud and the captain of the Achille Lauro engage in an extended dialogue. The Death of Klinghoffer tries to find the very beginning of Arab-Israeli tensions, going as far back as the biblical tale of Hagar. The presence of two choruses, one of Exiled Palestinians and one of Exiled Jews suggests the deeper commonalities that may exist between the two seemingly implacable enemies.
ON THE TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS
Adams was commissioned to compose a piece shortly after the September 11th attacks. The resulting piece, which won Adams a Pulitzer Prize, is scored for orchestra, chorus, pre-recorded tape, and a children’s choir. The pre-taped voices name different victims of the 9/11 attacks, adding the word “missing” after each name.
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Quizbowl is about learning, not rote memorization, so we encourage you to use this as a springboard for further reading rather than as an endpoint. Here are a few things to check out:
Read more about Adams’ process when composing On the Transmigration of Souls.
Visit this website to learn all about Nixon’s historic visit to China that inspired Adams’ first great opera.
Minimalism has an undeserved reputation for sounding “boring,” but in reality it's anything but! This interview with Steve Reich, another Minimalist, shows some of the underlying complexity of simplicity
For a bite-sized piece of Adams, listen to Short Ride In a Fast Machine.
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