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Programme note

John Adams (b. 1947)
The Wound-Dresser (1988)

Walt Whitman spent the better part of the Civil War years in Washington, DC, living in a series of small, unfurnished rooms, all the time supported by the meagre salary of a federal clerkship. His sole, consuming passion was his self-appointed task of ministering to the tens of thousands of sick and maimed soldiers who crowded the hospitals in the surrounding area, many of them little more than unheated and unventilated canvas tents hurriedly constructed by the unprepared Army of the Potomac. Virtually every day, barring his own illness or ever-increasing exhaustion, Whitman rose early and went to the hospitals, going from ward to ward to visit with the sick and wounded young men. For those who were unable to do so, he wrote letters home. For others he provided small gifts of fruit, candy or tobacco. He dressed the wounds of the maimed and the amputees and often sat up throughout the night with the most agonising cases, almost all of whom he knew on a first-name basis. It was surely no poetic exaggeration when he later said that during these years many a young soldier had died in his, Walt Whitman’s, arms.

Because the scope of his work is so grand and inclusive, and because he yearned throughout his life to embrace the entire universe in his poems, it has been tempting for succeeding generations to appropriate Whitman for any number of causes or points of view. For instance, one would easily assume the poet’s sentiments to be fervently anti-war. In face this was not the case, as the poems in Drum-Taps reveal. This slim volume, the only literary work he allowed himself to compose during the war years, is remarkable honest in that it expresses not just the horror and degradation of war, but also the thrill of battle and the almost manic exhilaration of one caught up in a righteous cause. Whitman hated war – this particular war and all wars – but he was no pacifist. Like his ideal, Lincoln, he never ceased to believe in the Union’s cause and in the dreadful necessity of victory.

The Wound-Dresser is a setting for baritone voice and orchestra of a fragment from the poem of the same name. As always with Whitman, it is in the first person, and it is the most intimate, most graphic and most profoundly affecting evocation of the act of nursing the sick and the dying that I know of. It is also astonishingly free of any kind of hyperbole or amplified emotion, yet the detail of the imagery is of a precision that could only be attained by one who had been there.

The Wound-Dresser is not just about the Civil War; nor is it just about young men dying (although it is locally about both). It strikes me as a statement about human compassion of the kind that is acted out on a daily basis, quietly and unobtrusively and unselfishly and unfailingly. Another poem in the same volume states its theme in other words: “Those who love each other shall become invincible…”.

John Adams
22 December 1988

Programme note

John Adams (b. 1947)
Son of Chamber Symphony (2008)

Scored for mixed ensemble, Son of Chamber Symphony was commissioned by Stanford Lively Arts Stanford University, Carnegie Hall, and the San Francisco Ballet. Premiered by Alarm Will Sound under the baton of Alan Pierson on November 30, 2007 at Stanford University, Son of Chamber Symphony has also been choreographed (under the title Joyride) by Mark Morris, and was first performed by the San Francisco Ballet on April 23, 2008. Since its premiere, Son of Chamber Symphony has enjoyed several performances worldwide by ensembles such as AXIOM, Tapiola Sinfonetta, Voices of Change, the ASKO and Schoenberg ensembles and members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

“I composed it for a similar ensemble as the first chamber symphony. It shares certain qualities with its predecessor, although it doesn’t quite go to the extremes of aerobic virtuosity or contrapuntal density that the 1992 work does. The first movement features a sampled prepared piano sound, the ‘boing’, that sets the tone for the movement. At roughly the same time I was composing this movement I was also preparing Beethoven Symphony No 7 for performances in Baltimore, so Beethoven’s preoccupation with exceptionally compact rhythmic and intervallic motifs seem to have leaked into my own compositional processes. The final movement beings as a trope on the “news’ aria from Nixon in China but eventually runs off that path into new territory.” - John Adams

Facts:
-        Written for Alarm Will Sound and intended for choreographic premiere by Mark Morris
-        Follow-up to Adams’s Chamber Symphony (1992)

Quotes:

“[Son of Chamber Symphony] …definitely revisits the world of the first Chamber Symphony… It’s a little funkier, maybe, but it’s still quite soloistically driven.”

— Alan Pierson

“Son is as difficult as his original chamber symphony, if not more so. The first movement sets out to the accompaniment of a rhythmic motif lifted from the Scherzo of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, then nervously yet confidently scurries all over the place, changing meters all the time. Absorbing its interesting details will require many listenings. The last movement is one of those Adams bucking-bronco blastoffs, riveting and full of surprises. …

“Son of Chamber Symphony has an assured future. Co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall and the San Francisco Ballet, it will receive its New York premiere in February. Choreography to it by Mark Morris will be unveiled in the spring. But even without such insurance, a kid with these goods should have no problem making his way in the world.”

— Los Angeles Times

“The scrappy, punkish processes of the Chamber Symphony have given way to a more unified vision. In Son of Chamber Symphony, all the instruments pull together to create a single overarching narrative - one with multiple strands, to be sure, but without the anarchic energy that can come from the clash of truly independent voices. The music, in other words, has become more symphonic than chamber. That produces a more orderly and comprehensible kind of rhetoric, and in the new work, ideas unfold with a compelling kind of logic.”

— San Francisco Chronicle

“…driven by spiky rhythms, chasing its own tail down trails that diverge, crisscross, vanish and re-emerge with a yelp… The second movement is different: those strumming, thrumming strings, quietly glowing, with chirruping winds and ravishing melody for first violin and cello. There are plumes of colour, hints of tango, maybe even boogie-woogie - and then the third movement with its telegraph rhythms and pulsing arpeggios (Nixon dancing?).”

— Mercury News

Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes.

John Adams: www.earbox.com