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Summary Of John Adams 'Short Ride In A Fast Machine'

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John Adams is an American composer, best known for his operas, the symphonic fanfare Short Ride in a Fast Machine, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning work, On the Transmigration of Souls. He was born in Massachusetts, graduated with a BA and a MA from Harvard, and taught at the San Francisco Conservatory. In addition to directing the New Music Ensemble at the conservatory, he also worked in the electronic music studio. His work has become quite popular, especially Short Ride in a Fast Machine. His operas Nixon and China and Doctor Atomic are frequently performed nationally and internationally.

His style is minimalist, but rather than born out of personal exploration, it occurs as a reaction to the serialism that was prominent during Adams college …show more content…

(Recorded sounds and the names of the victims will reappear throughout the work.) The texts sung by the chorus and children’s chorus are drawn from the heartbreaking “missing person” notices that sprang up around the World Trade Center site after the attacks. One of Adams’s inspirations for this kind of layering of various quotations is the early 20th-century composer Charles Ives, and he makes this especially clear by including a long reference to the trumpet solo from Ives’s The Unanswered Question. A long opening section ends with a sudden thinning of the texture, and the sounds of digging. The music grows threatening and there is quick burst of anger from the orchestra, which just as quickly subsides into a long choral passage. This reaches an emotional peak with the words “I know just where he is,” followed by a ferocious orchestral interlude. The chorus responds with the words “light” and “love”—failing at first to stop the orchestra’s fury, but the music eventually subsides, and the work ends with long, quiet, and deeply touching epilogue. The last words we hear—“I love you.”—are the best response of all to tragedy and

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