Composer John Adams to Receive Arts Medal
One day in 1969, after hours spent studying the works of composer Arnold Schoenberg, a Harvard senior concentrating in musical composition had an epiphany. His ears infused with Schoenberg’s atonal European modernism, the student was confronted with the sound of a Jimi Hendrix record blasting from a window in the Yard.
The musical enlightenment of John Adams, ’69, MA ’72, ultimately reshaped the cosmos of American composition. In his own words, “The real meaning of the music is in between the notes. The slide, the portamento, the “blue note”; all are essential to the emotional expression, whether it’s a great Indian master improvising on a raga or whether it’s Jimi Hendrix or Johnny Hodges bending a blue note right down to the floor.” Throughout his career, Adams has composed and performed works that bridge theoretical modernism and contemporary music.
On Saturday, May 5, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer will be presented with the 2007 Harvard Arts Medal as part of the ARTS FIRST weekend festivities. Adams will be the 15th distinguished Harvard or Radcliffe alum or faculty member to receive this accolade “for excellence in the arts and contributions to education and the public good through the arts.”
A clarinetist from his youth, Adams continued to focus on composition during his graduate studies at Harvard. Since then he has created works in a variety of genres, which have been performed across the world. Though his works have often been classified as minimalist, Adams has said, “Whenever serious art loses track of its roots in the vernacular, then it begins to atrophy.” Consequently, he also considers himself “the first composer to grow up in the LP era,” and has cited influences as disparate as Bach, Duke Ellington, John Cage, Allen Ginsberg, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Gustav Mahler, and the Beatles.
Many of Adams’s best known pieces have been operatic examinations of historical events: Nixon in China (1987), The Death of Klinghoffer (1991), and Dr. Atomic (2005)—which were all created in collaboration with director and previous Harvard Arts Medal recipient Peter Sellars ’80. Though these works deal with landmark incidents and characters, Adams believes that “what’s fundamentally important is that composers write the music that means something to themselves, and that they don’t try to tell other people what’s right and what’s wrong.”
In 2002, John Adams was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic to commemorate the victims of September 11. He expressed his goal to “create a musical space for reflection and remembrance, of meditation on an unanswerable question.” Utilizing what he called the “plain homely language of shock and grief,” he composed the operatic piece On the Transmigration of Souls, which debuted on the tragedy’s one-year anniversary. This work received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for music, and has become a musical monument performed each year by orchestras across the United States.
While at Harvard for ARTS FIRST, Adams will take part in a variety of forums that will showcase his artistic accomplishments. As part of its Louis C. Elson Lecture series, the Music Department will present a lecture by John Adams in Paine Hall on Thursday, May 3, at 7 pm. On Friday, May 4, the Office for the Arts’ Learning from Performers Program will host a talk and Q & A with Adams moderated by actor John Lithgow ‘67.
For more information on the Harvard Arts Medal, ARTS FIRST, and related events, visit the Office for the Arts website at www.fas.harvard.edu/ofa or call 617.495.8676.
