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"Ives and Adams" posted May 26, 2004 at 11:38 AM

Last night Bill, Mark, Elizabeth, and I went to the Philharmonic to hear John Adams conduct a program in the Charles Ives festival they're having. The program was half Ives and half Adams, whose work is a direct descendant of Ives'. A few short orchestral pieces began the program. Ives has a wonderful knack for riffing on popular music forms--marches, church hymns, and popular songs all populate his work, and these pieces were no exception. There are terrific juxtapositions of high- and low-brow music (though I doubt Ives would have called it that). The Scherzo they played was great--very contemporary sounding, though it dates from 1910.

Next came Audra McDonald, a Broadway and jazz singer, to sing seven songs arranged for orchestra--three by Ives and the other four by his contemporaries, including Gershwin and Irving Berlin. The songs were all terrific, though I couldn't quite make out the words--McDonald's voice is not really powerful enough to overcome a whole orchestra. Plus, we were sitting way up at the top of the hall, where the sound is great, but where it's much easier for the voice to be lost in the mix.

After intermission we moved down to the orchestra section. This half of the concert featured two of Adams' works: a world premiere of Easter Eve 1945, and Harmonium, which dates from 1980. East Eve was again sung by McDonald, who's annunciation was, in fact, helped by our moving down to the orchestra level. The piece is a scene from Adams' upcoming opera about Oppenheimer, and the voice of this scene is his wife's. The text is an excerpt from Muriel Rukeyser's poem of the same name. The music was dark and complex, and featured two absolutely gorgeous brass solos--one french horn and one trumpet.

The concert ended with Harmonium, Adams' big choral setting of poems by Emily Dickinson and John Donne. It's from the end of his Minimalist period, and shows the very strong influence of Philip Glass. There's a thrillingly loud, fast section where the trombones go absolutely wild. The Philharmonic played it brilliantly, and the audience was completely charged up.

Muriel Rukeyser gets the last word of this entry. Text from Adam's Easter Eve 1945:

_______________________________________________
Wary of time O it seizes the soul tonight
I wait for the great morning of the west
confessing with every breath mortality.
Moon of this wild sky struggles to stay whole
and on the water silvers the ships of war.
I go alone in the black-yellow light
all night waiting for day, while everywhere the sure
death of light, the leaf’s sure return to the root
is repeated in million, death of all man to share.
Whatever world I know shines ritual death,
wide under this moon they stand gathering fire,
fighting with flame, stand fighting in their graves.
All shining with life as the leaf, as the wing shines,
the stone deep in the mountain, the drop in the green wave.
Lit by their energies, secretly, all things shine.
Nothing can black that glow of life; although
  each part go crumbling down
  itself shall rise up whole.

Now I say there are new meanings; now I name
death our black honor and feast of possibility
to celebrate casting of life on life. This earth-long day
between blood and resurrection where we wait
remembering sun, seed, fire; remembering
that fierce Judean Innocent who risked
every immortal meaning on one life.
Given to our year as sun and spirit are,
as seed we are blessed only in needing freedom.
Now I say that the peace the spirit needs is peace,
not lack of war, but fierce continual flame.
For all men: effort is freedom, effort’s peace,
it fights. And along these truths the soul goes home,
  flies in its blazing to a place
  more safe and round than Paradise.

Night of the soul, our dreams in the arms of dreams
dissolving into eyes that look upon us.
Dreams the sources of action, the meeting and the end,
a resting-place among the flight of things.

--excerpted from the poem Easter Eve 1945 by Muriel Rukeyser


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