Thanks to the hospitality of some close friends, I'm enjoying a breif stay in San Francisco, a place I only wish I had an excuse to live. The scope of my hosts' generosity expanded across vast regions including a ticket to a San Francisco Symphony Orchestra performance of John Adams' El Niño, the composer's interpretation of the nativity. Taken from various perspectives, including the work of several Latina poets and the New Testament Apocrypha (a collection of books/letters in the same vein as the New Testament but have been rejected from Canon by the church), and inspired ultimately by the birth of the composer's daughter in 1984, the piece is an achievement of orchestrational breadth spanning two-hours. Performing forces included full orchestra, chorus, female chorus, and 6 soloists, including soprano Dawn Upshaw. For those interested, you can view the program notes by clicking here.
The piece is undeniably impressive not just because of its length and size, but because of the inventive orchestral colors and textures for which the composer is so well known. There were some parts I absolutely loved, including the choir of three countertenor angels who created stunning harmony and tone. While I can appreciate and respect El Niño from a composer's perspective, even that side of me grew bored by the end of the first act. Mr. Adams' bag of compositional tricks is a small one, as I seemed to have them all figured out within 15 minutes and then had to endure as they were used over and over again. He is, after all, a minimalist.
As the piece chugged along I found myself thinking of the bigger picture: what place does a semi-staged, partially dramatized, 2-hour oratorio have in the modern music arena? As a composer I find myself always erring on the side of brevity. Perhaps it is the film composer in me forced to eliminate ego and retain the need for the hyper concise. Or, perhaps I have had to suffer through one-too-many over-programmed new music concerts consisting of hours upon hours of performers growling into their bass clarinets in displaced 32nd-note septuplets while someone dressed in a red canvas bag lowers a radio into a bathtub full of water. Either way, I think that the attention span of the average concert goer has been streamlined along with the rest of our society. Let's face it, most of us can't bear the thought of sitting through a red light without being able to check our email or take our turn on that game of iphone Scrabble. Part of me even wonders if you the reader will actually get this far into a blog entry...
While I may not have been particularly enthralled in Mr. Adams' music, what matters the most to me is heart. The composer spent years (years!) toiling on this work, took inspiration from the birth of his daughter, and incorporated the Latin American culture native to his Los Angeles residence - who am I to judge such a personal quest?
In truth there is always so much to be taken away from live performances, regardless of how one feels about what one is hearing. For me, just seeing a living composer conducting such incredible forces in a piece that he has written is inspiration in itself. Though I may have drifted off, my mind was filled with the warm, incomparable sound of a live orchestra. Creative juices stirring, I began to imagine my next work...
