0:00:44 > 0:00:49One of the pathologies of modernism
0:00:49 > 0:00:53was the demand to throw away
0:00:53 > 0:00:56tradition, the demand to always make it new.
0:00:58 > 0:01:01Contemporary music that is just very, very,
0:01:01 > 0:01:07very difficult for non-specialists to even get comfortable with
0:01:07 > 0:01:11is that way because it doesn't respond to certain unifying gestures,
0:01:11 > 0:01:16and I think the greatest of all unifying gestures is a pulse.
0:01:17 > 0:01:21And the second greatest is tonality.
0:01:26 > 0:01:31John Adams is the living composer whose work is most often performed today.
0:01:31 > 0:01:33Inspired by the raw emotion of jazz,
0:01:33 > 0:01:36the hypnotic repetition of minimalism
0:01:36 > 0:01:40and the tonal explorations of the 20th century avant-garde,
0:01:40 > 0:01:44Adams draws, as well, from the drama and romanticism of European music.
0:01:44 > 0:01:47From Beethoven to Debussy, and Wagner to Sibelius.
0:01:50 > 0:01:53He has written operas that touch on present-day politics,
0:01:53 > 0:01:56orchestral works of startling beauty, and oratorios that
0:01:56 > 0:01:59reinterpret the central myths of Western spirituality.
0:02:02 > 0:02:04He lives in California,
0:02:04 > 0:02:08the perfect setting for a man whose music transcends history.
0:02:08 > 0:02:11Reaching forwards adventurously into the unknown,
0:02:11 > 0:02:14as well as paying homage to the masterpieces of the past.
0:02:53 > 0:02:57I've given... There are accents missing. Er...
0:02:57 > 0:03:02Scott, you have accents at 1.27 in the second group of notes...
0:03:05 > 0:03:08'The material I took is originally written for a string quartet.
0:03:08 > 0:03:10'I took passages from'
0:03:10 > 0:03:13a couple of Beethoven string quartets
0:03:13 > 0:03:15that have always meant a great deal to me.
0:03:15 > 0:03:20And I put it through what you could call a musical hall of mirrors.
0:03:20 > 0:03:24I stretch it and I transpose it, I turn it upside-down.
0:03:25 > 0:03:30That was Adams, not Beethoven! That's good.
0:03:30 > 0:03:32I'm going to tell you something really funny,
0:03:32 > 0:03:35but it's really the truth, that when you come in and you start,
0:03:35 > 0:03:43this is gorgeous, and the moment that it's not pure Beethoven and it starts to be my deconstruction of it,
0:03:43 > 0:03:45you start playing kind of coarse.
0:03:45 > 0:03:48THEY LAUGH It's like you're going along, and then,
0:03:48 > 0:03:50this isn't the way it goes, it was supposed to go different,
0:03:50 > 0:03:56you start whacking, and it gets, kind of, just a little bit...harsh.
0:04:01 > 0:04:06'I have a very, very strong feeling of kinship with Beethoven,'
0:04:06 > 0:04:09and, of course, it's very uncool. You know,
0:04:09 > 0:04:13if you want to be a leading-edge composer these days, your references
0:04:13 > 0:04:21are Radiohead or Pygmy music, or Metallica, something like that.
0:04:21 > 0:04:24It's not cool to say that Beethoven's your big inspiration,
0:04:24 > 0:04:26but it's the truth.
0:04:27 > 0:04:33But I love Beethoven because of the combination of great tenderness
0:04:33 > 0:04:37and inability. He's the most noble of all composers.
0:04:38 > 0:04:42But I also love it because of the driving energy,
0:04:42 > 0:04:45which fits my American sensibility very well.
0:05:01 > 0:05:04This is the clarinet I played all through my youth.
0:05:04 > 0:05:10I was probably 12, maybe 14 years old when I first got it.
0:05:10 > 0:05:16I played Mozart on it and I played in a concert band with my father,
0:05:16 > 0:05:20I played in orchestras, I played it all the way through college.
0:05:20 > 0:05:24Obviously, it has a lot of deep, psychological
0:05:24 > 0:05:25and emotional connections
0:05:25 > 0:05:29because it is the instrument that my father played
0:05:29 > 0:05:32and it was the instrument that my mother listened to
0:05:32 > 0:05:38when I was growing up, and, you know, it's a melodic instrument.
0:05:38 > 0:05:40It's capable of great emotional utterance,
0:05:40 > 0:05:44and then, of course, it's also capable of being very sexy and...
0:05:47 > 0:05:50..colourful like in Klezmer, like when Benny Goodman played it.
0:06:05 > 0:06:10My parents were both what we would call amateur musicians, although
0:06:10 > 0:06:18my father did play briefly in a professional swing band in the 1930s.
0:06:18 > 0:06:21There was jazz in the house and classical music.
0:06:21 > 0:06:28My mother sang in several church choirs, and she also had starring
0:06:28 > 0:06:34roles in local productions of South Pacific, Carousel, Oklahoma...
0:06:35 > 0:06:39I grew up with what I consider to be a very rich American musical
0:06:39 > 0:06:43pedigree, part European, part indigenous.
0:06:44 > 0:06:48I remember listening to the 1812 Overture,
0:06:48 > 0:06:55and probably some Mozart, because Mozart was always key in my childhood.
0:06:55 > 0:06:57Also circus band marches,
0:06:57 > 0:07:02and very early on, I was obsessed with the idea of conducting.
0:07:02 > 0:07:05I took one of my mother's knitting needles
0:07:05 > 0:07:09and started conducting the record player!
0:07:10 > 0:07:16I don't think there's a single piece of music that launched my career,
0:07:16 > 0:07:18launched my interest in music.
0:07:22 > 0:07:25It was an atmosphere, not only of my home
0:07:25 > 0:07:30but of the small-town communities that I grew up in.
0:07:30 > 0:07:31In my case,
0:07:31 > 0:07:35it was this wonderful orchestra that I joined
0:07:35 > 0:07:44when I was about 13 or 14 years old that was sponsored by the state mental hospital.
0:07:44 > 0:07:46The orchestra rehearsed once a week
0:07:46 > 0:07:50and played what we call light classics,
0:07:50 > 0:07:55meaning anything from Peer Gynt Suite to the Unfinished Symphony to
0:07:55 > 0:07:59selections from The Sound Of Music.
0:07:59 > 0:08:03And we performed for these severely disturbed mental patients.
0:08:03 > 0:08:05And it was quite wonderful.
0:08:05 > 0:08:06Sometimes it scared me,
0:08:06 > 0:08:10but more often, they would react with intense emotionality.
0:08:10 > 0:08:14They would cry, they would laugh, and since I was the only
0:08:14 > 0:08:19kid in the orchestra, they would all come after me.
0:08:27 > 0:08:31I often tell the story of how my grandfather ran a dance hall
0:08:31 > 0:08:34in central New Hampshire,
0:08:34 > 0:08:37and all the big bands came to his dance hall.
0:08:37 > 0:08:40And when I was in high school,
0:08:40 > 0:08:45I several times heard the great Duke Ellington band, and I can't
0:08:45 > 0:08:50even begin to describe the depth of the influence it had on me.
0:08:50 > 0:08:51First of all, it's the beat.
0:08:51 > 0:08:55JAZZ MUSIC PLAYS
0:09:04 > 0:09:06I think that was, again,
0:09:06 > 0:09:10a very primal experience, being with the mental patients,
0:09:10 > 0:09:16in terms of the power of the sound, the sensuality of it...
0:09:16 > 0:09:19JAZZ MUSIC PLAYS
0:09:28 > 0:09:35It's so emotionally extrovert, and that is really the essence,
0:09:35 > 0:09:37I think, of American music,
0:09:37 > 0:09:40and I also think it's certainly the essence of my music.
0:09:40 > 0:09:45People who know me think of me as a somewhat introverted,
0:09:45 > 0:09:48retiring person who is...
0:09:48 > 0:09:50I'm willing to be social when I have to
0:09:50 > 0:09:53and I can turn it on and talk to a large group of people,
0:09:53 > 0:09:58but basically I'm happier if I spend all day only talking to my wife,
0:09:58 > 0:10:04or maybe write an e-mail to a friend, but I enjoy being alone.
0:10:04 > 0:10:08On the other hand, when I write music, I go to the other
0:10:08 > 0:10:13pole of my personality and I write music that is very extroverted.
0:10:21 > 0:10:27I was in university during a very,
0:10:27 > 0:10:31very turbulent time in American cultural history.
0:10:34 > 0:10:35I'm very glad I was.
0:10:35 > 0:10:40It was a traumatic time because of the Vietnam War.
0:10:40 > 0:10:44It was also an ecstatic time because it was a period of rebellion.
0:10:46 > 0:10:50I was in college from 1965 to 1971.
0:10:50 > 0:10:54COMMOTION
0:11:09 > 0:11:15There was LSD, there was rock, there was Jimi Hendrix, The Supremes,
0:11:15 > 0:11:19the Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane, Bob Dylan,
0:11:19 > 0:11:23the Band... It was an amazing time.
0:11:24 > 0:11:28My roommates were creating bands and, you know,
0:11:28 > 0:11:34buying electric guitars and recording songs...
0:11:34 > 0:11:40I always knew that I was going to be a classical composer.
0:11:40 > 0:11:44At that time, the models were pretty far out.
0:11:44 > 0:11:48Someone like John Cage, whom I was very serious about...
0:11:48 > 0:11:51Boulez was hugely influential.
0:11:51 > 0:11:55He was kind of at his first blossoming,
0:11:55 > 0:11:58and of course, all the graduate students ran out
0:11:58 > 0:12:03and bought a copy of Marteau Sans Maitre, and I did too,
0:12:03 > 0:12:06because we were told that this was the future.
0:12:06 > 0:12:08But I realised it was not something...
0:12:08 > 0:12:10It wasn't a place I wanted to go.
0:12:30 > 0:12:32I don't promise that we can eradicate poverty
0:12:32 > 0:12:35and end discrimination and eliminate all danger of war in the space
0:12:35 > 0:12:39of four or even eight years, but I do promise action.
0:13:02 > 0:13:05The Vietnam years at Harvard fuelled John Adams'
0:13:05 > 0:13:10passion for politics, a passion that has stayed with him to this day.
0:13:10 > 0:13:13His three major operas, the most recent Doctor Atomic,
0:13:13 > 0:13:15the controversial Death Of Klinghoffer,
0:13:15 > 0:13:19and his first operatic masterpiece, Nixon In China,
0:13:19 > 0:13:22tackle major political themes of our times.
0:13:22 > 0:13:25All Adams' operas have been the fruit of a long-standing creative
0:13:25 > 0:13:28collaboration with director Peter Sellars.
0:13:29 > 0:13:30Up to that point,
0:13:30 > 0:13:35all the contemporary music Peter heard was of the surrealist school,
0:13:35 > 0:13:41very dissonant with no beat and very cold, emotionally.
0:13:41 > 0:13:42Suddenly, someone gave him
0:13:42 > 0:13:46a recording of this composer named John Adams which had music
0:13:46 > 0:13:51that was, to him, very emotional and very powerful.
0:13:51 > 0:13:55And he proposed the idea of an opera called Nixon In China.
0:13:55 > 0:13:56He already had the title in mind.
0:13:57 > 0:14:02And Nixon, of course, was a major event in my life, because Nixon
0:14:02 > 0:14:07was president when I received my notice to report to be a soldier.
0:14:10 > 0:14:13And so I had very negative feelings about Nixon.
0:14:13 > 0:14:18It seemed that an opera which had these really very colourful
0:14:18 > 0:14:23characters like Mao and Nixon and Mao's wife, and Kissinger,
0:14:23 > 0:14:26could be a really interesting,
0:14:26 > 0:14:32entertaining, but also very meaningful theatrical work.
0:14:32 > 0:14:38# How your most rigid theorist revises as he goes along
0:14:38 > 0:14:47# Now you're referring to Wang Ming, Chaiang, Chang Kuo-tao and Li Li-san
0:14:47 > 0:14:49# I spoke generally
0:14:49 > 0:14:52# The line we take now is a paradox
0:14:57 > 0:15:00# Among the followers of Marx
0:15:00 > 0:15:02# The extreme left
0:15:02 > 0:15:04# The doctrinaire
0:15:04 > 0:15:08- # Tend to be fascist - And the far right?
0:15:08 > 0:15:13# True Marxism is called that by the extreme left
0:15:14 > 0:15:19# Occasionally the true left calls a spade a spade
0:15:19 > 0:15:21# And tells the left it's right... #
0:15:31 > 0:15:33Although there's a great deal of humour,
0:15:33 > 0:15:40and I make fun of the pomposity of both Nixon and Mao,
0:15:40 > 0:15:44the essence of Nixon In China goes much deeper than satire,
0:15:44 > 0:15:47and there are moments of great poignancy.
0:15:47 > 0:15:52I think I can say, without any qualification, that this
0:15:52 > 0:15:55opera has the best libretto written in the 20th century.
0:16:01 > 0:16:04# We have at times been enemies
0:16:04 > 0:16:06# We still have differences
0:16:06 > 0:16:08# God knows
0:16:11 > 0:16:16# But let us in these next five days
0:16:17 > 0:16:20# Start a long march
0:16:20 > 0:16:23# On new highways
0:16:23 > 0:16:27# In different lanes but parallel
0:16:28 > 0:16:33# And heading for a single goal
0:16:36 > 0:16:40# The world watches and listens
0:16:40 > 0:16:43# We must seize the hour
0:16:44 > 0:16:47# We must seize the hour
0:16:47 > 0:16:50# We must seize the hour
0:16:50 > 0:16:54# We must seize the hour
0:16:54 > 0:16:57# And seize the day. #
0:17:03 > 0:17:05I think if you're going to be an opera composer,
0:17:05 > 0:17:07you can't be a purist.
0:17:07 > 0:17:13You have to be willing to draw in any number of influences to make
0:17:13 > 0:17:19the operatic experience as fluid and as varied as life is.
0:17:19 > 0:17:23I think that's certainly what made Mozart such a great composer,
0:17:23 > 0:17:30and Verdi, so if Nixon In China is a success,
0:17:30 > 0:17:35it's partly because it reflects what American life is like.
0:17:35 > 0:17:43It reflects the combination of the demotic musical objects
0:17:43 > 0:17:46that are very corny and vulgar,
0:17:46 > 0:17:48and then the opposite.
0:17:48 > 0:17:57It also reflects very noble and...deeply imagined...
0:17:59 > 0:18:01..expressions of the human soul.
0:18:41 > 0:18:45I'd grown up in New England and I'd spent my entire life there.
0:18:45 > 0:18:47I'd never even been to Europe.
0:18:48 > 0:18:53I was 22 years old, I was married to my first wife at the time
0:18:53 > 0:18:55and she had never been anywhere, either.
0:18:56 > 0:18:59And so we took a trip across the country.
0:19:01 > 0:19:05The trip was a kind of symbol of liberation, you know,
0:19:05 > 0:19:07it was a road trip
0:19:07 > 0:19:12and that's a classic American archetype...
0:19:12 > 0:19:20You know, whether it's Jack Kerouac or many of the great...folk singers
0:19:20 > 0:19:23like Woody Guthrie or whatever,
0:19:23 > 0:19:26the idea of the road trip, the American movement
0:19:26 > 0:19:34across the landscape, was some unknown...destiny.
0:19:34 > 0:19:38In retrospect, it seems like it was a great moment in my life,
0:19:38 > 0:19:41and I did not intend to stay in California.
0:19:41 > 0:19:47I thought I would go back to school and have a nice dreary,
0:19:47 > 0:19:50pedestrian life as a college professor,
0:19:50 > 0:19:55but I got out here and I really found myself.
0:20:10 > 0:20:14And it was the first time I'd experienced the Pacific Ocean,
0:20:14 > 0:20:18which is, it's a palpably different feel
0:20:18 > 0:20:21than you get on the Atlantic coast.
0:20:21 > 0:20:23On the Pacific, the land is very jagged.
0:20:23 > 0:20:28There are huge cliffs that drop down and down the Big Sur,
0:20:28 > 0:20:34you can stand and just watch the immense forest of the Pacific Ocean
0:20:34 > 0:20:39pound against this continental shelf, and it's very awe-inspiring.
0:20:41 > 0:20:45It's hard to look at that, it's hard to experience it, without feeling
0:20:45 > 0:20:52a certain sense of the divine, of the power of other worldly beings.
0:21:10 > 0:21:17The Dharma At Big Sur brings together the notion of the Dharma,
0:21:17 > 0:21:22of the search for the essence of our being, and Big Sur,
0:21:22 > 0:21:27which is one of the most memorable, beautiful
0:21:27 > 0:21:34and provocatively transcendental locations in the United States.
0:21:35 > 0:21:41So the work is this kind of long, flowing first movement that is
0:21:41 > 0:21:47a rhapsody in which I let the violinist float above the orchestra.
0:21:47 > 0:21:49There's no improvising in the piece.
0:21:49 > 0:21:54And then the second half is this gradual, kind of very slow
0:21:54 > 0:21:59picking up of speed and waves of sound that culminates in a big,
0:21:59 > 0:22:02kind of ecstatic climax at the end.
0:22:02 > 0:22:07I think I borrowed the form from the raga, in other words,
0:22:07 > 0:22:15a slow introduction and then a fast, ecstatic...dance at the end.
0:22:15 > 0:22:19MUSIC: "The Dharma At Big Sur"
0:23:32 > 0:23:36Spiritual matters have always meant a great deal to me,
0:23:36 > 0:23:42and I've always experienced music as this strange
0:23:42 > 0:23:47combination of the spiritual and the erotic.
0:23:47 > 0:23:53I think many of my pieces confront that,
0:23:53 > 0:23:58whether it's early pieces like Shaker Loops or Harmonium,
0:23:58 > 0:24:02or even the most recent ones like The Dharma At Big Sur,
0:24:02 > 0:24:05and, for sure, The Gospel According To The Other Mary.
0:24:05 > 0:24:09There's this potent collusion
0:24:09 > 0:24:13of sexuality and eroticism,
0:24:13 > 0:24:20and then the desire for spiritual transcendence.
0:24:40 > 0:24:44John Adams arrived in San Francisco in 1972.
0:24:44 > 0:24:47He started out in Berkeley,
0:24:47 > 0:24:49the cradle of West Coast student radicalism.
0:24:50 > 0:24:53He took a series of relatively menial jobs,
0:24:53 > 0:24:55including work in the open docks.
0:24:56 > 0:24:59In the spirit of the times, he wanted to be a working-class
0:24:59 > 0:25:03composer, earning his living the hard way and composing at night.
0:25:05 > 0:25:08Things weren't that easy, and he was fortunate to land a job
0:25:08 > 0:25:12teaching at the San Francisco Conservatory Of Music,
0:25:12 > 0:25:14where he stayed for nine years.
0:25:14 > 0:25:15I suspect I was a terrible teacher
0:25:15 > 0:25:19because I didn't really know what I was doing.
0:25:19 > 0:25:23I talked about whatever was on my mind, you know.
0:25:23 > 0:25:27I was supposed to be teaching harmony and I talked about Tolstoy,
0:25:27 > 0:25:31because I had discovered Tolstoy that year, or Dante.
0:25:36 > 0:25:40And I also did a lot of electronic music, making crazy pieces.
0:25:40 > 0:25:43I even built my own synthesiser.
0:25:44 > 0:25:49It was a wonderful time because I was young, I was in my 20s,
0:25:49 > 0:25:51I taught analysis,
0:25:51 > 0:25:54I spent a lot of time teaching Beethoven string quartets
0:25:54 > 0:25:59and Wagner operas, and usually I was only one week ahead of the students.
0:25:59 > 0:26:03You know, I didn't know Tristan And Isolde - I taught
0:26:03 > 0:26:07Act One even though I'd never even experienced Act Three.
0:26:18 > 0:26:22I was a bachelor at that point. I had broken up with my first wife,
0:26:22 > 0:26:29so I read biographies of composers, I read social history,
0:26:29 > 0:26:35I read Karl Marx, Sartre, Dickens... I got deeply involved in Buddhism
0:26:35 > 0:26:40for a period, and I also got very interested in electronics.
0:26:42 > 0:26:49In the '70s, most of the music that I took seriously
0:26:49 > 0:26:52was...
0:26:52 > 0:26:56the very radical avant-garde style.
0:26:56 > 0:27:03Either European high modernism, or, in this country,
0:27:03 > 0:27:08probably John Cage and all of his epigones.
0:27:08 > 0:27:13And there was something strangely unsatisfying about it.
0:27:13 > 0:27:16I was often really bored by it.
0:27:16 > 0:27:18If you listen to a piece,
0:27:18 > 0:27:22you know, by any of those avant-garde composers, there's no beat,
0:27:22 > 0:27:27there's no pulse, there's no melody, there's no identifiable harmony...
0:27:30 > 0:27:37It's pretty bleak landscape, and the music of Steve Reich...
0:27:37 > 0:27:41..and Terry Riley, and then later, I heard some
0:27:41 > 0:27:45excerpts from Einstein On The Beach when Philip Glass came through...
0:27:47 > 0:27:51It was very radical, because it did have a beat,
0:27:51 > 0:27:55and it was tonal and it was also very insistent.
0:27:55 > 0:27:57Particularly Glass's music.
0:28:01 > 0:28:05MUSIC: "Phrygian Gates"
0:28:29 > 0:28:34I began experimenting with minimalism at about the age of 30.
0:28:34 > 0:28:40The first piece I wrote was a large canvas,
0:28:40 > 0:28:4424-minute virtuoso piece for piano called Phrygian Gates.
0:28:44 > 0:28:48MUSIC: "Phrygian Gates"
0:28:57 > 0:29:01It was clearly a minimalist piece, in the sense of repetition
0:29:01 > 0:29:04and kind of wave-like structures in music.
0:29:18 > 0:29:23It's a very satisfying piece for me, and I still continue to enjoy it,
0:29:23 > 0:29:27although compared to what I write now, I think it's somewhat rigid.
0:29:27 > 0:29:31You know, I was still in the grip of the modernist demand that
0:29:31 > 0:29:35everything be completely unified on an architectonic level.
0:30:02 > 0:30:05With being a young Turk
0:30:05 > 0:30:10and wanting to be on the vanguard of experimental music,
0:30:10 > 0:30:12I thought I'd be an electronic composer
0:30:12 > 0:30:16or write pieces for instruments,
0:30:16 > 0:30:21maybe I invented out of spare car parts, or something like that.
0:30:21 > 0:30:24I had absolutely no intentions of writing
0:30:24 > 0:30:26a big piece for chorus and orchestra.
0:30:29 > 0:30:33I was given a commission to write for the San Francisco Symphony
0:30:33 > 0:30:37by this young Dutch conductor, Edo de Waart.
0:30:37 > 0:30:43Now, in 1980, getting a commission from the San Francisco Symphony
0:30:43 > 0:30:46would be like, I don't know, it would be like...
0:30:47 > 0:30:50..Jean-Paul Sartre...
0:30:50 > 0:30:54becoming a...a conservative,
0:30:54 > 0:30:57er, politician or something, you know?
0:30:57 > 0:31:00It was like a complete sell-out.
0:31:02 > 0:31:04As far as my avant-garde friends,
0:31:04 > 0:31:08they thought I had just become guilty of apostasy.
0:31:10 > 0:31:15CHORAL PIECE CONTINUES
0:31:15 > 0:31:19I really put away all my avant-garde obsessions
0:31:19 > 0:31:24and made this piece that was very rich and very overtly emotional
0:31:24 > 0:31:29but at the same time, compositionally it was informed by minimalism.
0:31:31 > 0:31:35But my minimalism was very different from Reich's or Glass's,
0:31:35 > 0:31:39much more informed by the European canon of great music.
0:31:40 > 0:31:45I didn't try, consciously, to make a music that didn't refer to
0:31:45 > 0:31:48Debussy or Beethoven or Wagner.
0:31:48 > 0:31:55I invited them all in and I think the other way in which my music was different
0:31:55 > 0:31:58than the classical minimalist gesture
0:31:58 > 0:32:04was that I wanted to have music that had violent changes of emotion.
0:32:04 > 0:32:07MUSIC CONTINUES
0:32:13 > 0:32:15CHOIR SINGS
0:32:59 > 0:33:03You know, one great thing about the Berlin Philharmonic,
0:33:03 > 0:33:06when you see them, apropos...
0:33:06 > 0:33:10Er, is that somehow American, particularly American orchestra musicians,
0:33:10 > 0:33:13no matter whether they're having a good time or not,
0:33:13 > 0:33:16they always have this poker-face, like they're baseball players.
0:33:16 > 0:33:18You're not supposed to show you're enjoying yourself.
0:33:18 > 0:33:19But the Berlin Phil,
0:33:19 > 0:33:22they always look like they're really having a good time.
0:33:22 > 0:33:26Maybe it's because they're the Berlin Phil and they know it.
0:33:26 > 0:33:29It's good that you never lose that sense of enjoyment and excitement,
0:33:29 > 0:33:37because there's something about a certain mode of behaviour in American orchestras
0:33:37 > 0:33:43that gives the impression of it's just labour and it's not joy.
0:33:43 > 0:33:47And that's why we're so lucky as musicians, you know, we can do something that we really love.
0:33:47 > 0:33:50We don't have to do something that we don't like to earn a living.
0:33:50 > 0:33:52OK, 248.
0:34:03 > 0:34:07I'd been commissioned to write a string quartet for Kronos,
0:34:07 > 0:34:11which is, of course, a very well-known avant-garde string quartet.
0:34:11 > 0:34:14It was a really important summer for me
0:34:14 > 0:34:16because I'd discovered Marcel Proust.
0:34:16 > 0:34:20And I was so taken with the mood
0:34:20 > 0:34:24of Proust's prose, of his writing,
0:34:24 > 0:34:30this wonderful kind of dreamlike atmosphere, and the sensuality of it
0:34:33 > 0:34:37and the poignancy of it, the sentiment.
0:34:37 > 0:34:45And I tried to bring this into the string quartet at the same time that I was trying to
0:34:45 > 0:34:48develop my interest in minimalism.
0:34:48 > 0:34:50And it was a failure, it didn't work.
0:34:50 > 0:34:54Look, on certain levels, this is not a very difficult piece.
0:34:54 > 0:34:56But on other levels,
0:34:56 > 0:35:03it presents challenges to extreme rhythmic precision.
0:35:03 > 0:35:05So that when you start to play louder...
0:35:07 > 0:35:10..your bow is going to change because you have to dig in more.
0:35:10 > 0:35:15And it's OK, I mean, you can have a good performance,
0:35:15 > 0:35:17but to get a really good performance,
0:35:17 > 0:35:19you just really have to lock that in.
0:35:19 > 0:35:23And where the trouble starts is around 60 or so.
0:35:23 > 0:35:27When you start getting louder, and people start introducing accents.
0:35:28 > 0:35:31I hear just these little moment of blur
0:35:31 > 0:35:34and I want it to just be...taka-taka, taka-taka, taka-taka, taka-taka...
0:35:36 > 0:35:39STRINGS PLAY PRIMARY RHYTHM
0:36:35 > 0:36:38I did something really good.
0:36:38 > 0:36:41I made a wise decision which is that I looked at this quartet
0:36:41 > 0:36:44and I identified some things in it that were good
0:36:44 > 0:36:47and I threw out everything else.
0:36:47 > 0:36:54And I took just the rhythmic core of the piece
0:36:54 > 0:36:56and I somehow understood
0:36:56 > 0:37:01that this musical material wanted to do something else.
0:37:03 > 0:37:07I was trying to force it to behave in another way that
0:37:07 > 0:37:10I intellectually thought it should go.
0:37:10 > 0:37:12And it was that point in my life
0:37:12 > 0:37:17where I realised that musical material is like it's own being, it's like a plant.
0:37:17 > 0:37:21And as a composer, you have to be a good gardener,
0:37:21 > 0:37:26and you have to know what the potential of this material is,
0:37:26 > 0:37:30you can't force it into some preconceived intellectual mode.
0:37:30 > 0:37:34You can, but the chances are it'll be stillborn.
0:37:34 > 0:37:40And I turned it into a piece called Shaker Loops, which got it right
0:37:40 > 0:37:44because in Shaker Loops, the music is doing what it wants to do.
0:40:16 > 0:40:21My father was unaffiliated, he had no interest in religion.
0:40:21 > 0:40:25My mother on the other hand had grown up in an Irish Catholic family.
0:40:25 > 0:40:28Going to church was a very meaningful experience.
0:40:28 > 0:40:30We didn't go to the Catholic Church,
0:40:30 > 0:40:32but she sang in the Episcopal choir,
0:40:32 > 0:40:36and then when I was about 13 or 14,
0:40:36 > 0:40:42she changed to the Unitarian Church and I went with her.
0:40:45 > 0:40:49I was drawn to spiritual matters at that age.
0:40:49 > 0:40:54Of course, Unitarianism is a classic New England...
0:40:54 > 0:40:59far more philosophical practice than it is a logical one.
0:40:59 > 0:41:04It's a mixture of very enlightened Protestant Christianity
0:41:04 > 0:41:10and the best of philosophical transcendentalism.
0:41:10 > 0:41:15We think of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau.
0:41:15 > 0:41:17INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC PLAYS
0:41:41 > 0:41:47I think there's quite a landscape quality to...
0:41:47 > 0:41:48a lot of his...
0:41:48 > 0:41:52It's spacious orchestral writing.
0:41:53 > 0:41:58I used to do a lot of road trips when the kids were young
0:41:58 > 0:42:02and I would just go out to do some photographs and I would take,
0:42:02 > 0:42:07you know, a lot of CDs or back then it was, I think, cassette tapes of John's music,
0:42:07 > 0:42:09and turn it up really loud and put the windows down, you know,
0:42:09 > 0:42:15and just drive. And it was just like the most exhilarating feeling to do that.
0:42:15 > 0:42:20I think we both feel that we kind of mutually inform each other.
0:42:20 > 0:42:25I mean there are times when he's seen photographs that I've made and then said
0:42:25 > 0:42:28that inspired some passage or, you know, piece that he did.
0:42:28 > 0:42:32PIANO PLAYS
0:42:32 > 0:42:35It's sort of an unspoken kind of collaboration,
0:42:35 > 0:42:39it's that thing that we share a love of and we each approach it in our own way.
0:42:40 > 0:42:42I think that's the best way to say it.
0:42:44 > 0:42:48When he wrote a piece called Hallelujah Junction,
0:42:48 > 0:42:50and then he called his book Hallelujah Junction,
0:42:50 > 0:42:53which is a place out in the middle of Sierra Valley, which is a place
0:42:53 > 0:42:57that we've been going since before we were married, actually.
0:42:57 > 0:43:02Just at that part, it's the Eastern Sierra slopes down in toward Reno,
0:43:02 > 0:43:05and that's where Hallelujah Junction is.
0:43:05 > 0:43:08MUSIC CONTINUES
0:43:16 > 0:43:19My companion Debbie, my wife,
0:43:19 > 0:43:23for the last 28 years or more,
0:43:23 > 0:43:28has played a tremendously important role in both my artistic
0:43:28 > 0:43:31as well as my spiritual life.
0:43:32 > 0:43:35We talk about these matters all the time and we've, you know,
0:43:35 > 0:43:40we've gone through our adult lives and are approaching, you know,
0:43:40 > 0:43:42our old age together.
0:43:42 > 0:43:48And she is a very, very profoundly deep thinker
0:43:48 > 0:43:52and has long been involved in the study of philosophy,
0:43:52 > 0:43:55and particularly the work of Carl Jung.
0:43:56 > 0:43:59And so she's not only my mate and my wife,
0:43:59 > 0:44:05but also my soul buddy, which is something I am deeply grateful for.
0:44:06 > 0:44:08OPERATIC PIECE PLAYS
0:45:10 > 0:45:13Like most of his fellow countrymen, John Adams is
0:45:13 > 0:45:16rooted in a profound sense of what it is to be an American.
0:45:16 > 0:45:18Throughout its history,
0:45:18 > 0:45:21America has reflected the values of its Founding Fathers,
0:45:21 > 0:45:24driven as they were by a sense of creating heaven on earth.
0:45:26 > 0:45:30The spirituality that illuminates so much of Adams's music is
0:45:30 > 0:45:33connected to a deeply felt engagement with the world
0:45:33 > 0:45:35in which the humanity of the individual,
0:45:35 > 0:45:39caught up in the often tragic web of history, is paramount,
0:45:39 > 0:45:41whether it be President Nixon or Chou En-lai,
0:45:41 > 0:45:46the Palestinians who murdered the American cruise ship passenger, Leon Klinghoffer,
0:45:46 > 0:45:50or Robert Oppenheimer, the inventor of the atomic bomb.
0:45:50 > 0:45:55# Batter my heart
0:45:55 > 0:46:02# Three-personed God
0:46:02 > 0:46:04# For you
0:46:04 > 0:46:06# As yet
0:46:06 > 0:46:10# But knock
0:46:10 > 0:46:12# Breathe
0:46:12 > 0:46:15# Knock
0:46:15 > 0:46:17# Breathe
0:46:17 > 0:46:18# Knock
0:46:18 > 0:46:19# Breathe
0:46:19 > 0:46:29# Shine and seek to mend
0:46:29 > 0:46:33# Batter my heart
0:46:33 > 0:46:38# Three-personed God
0:46:38 > 0:46:45# That I may rise and stand
0:46:45 > 0:46:55# O'er throw me and bend your force
0:46:55 > 0:46:58# To break
0:46:58 > 0:47:00# Blow
0:47:00 > 0:47:03# Break
0:47:03 > 0:47:05# Blow
0:47:05 > 0:47:07# Break, blow
0:47:07 > 0:47:16# Burn and make me new. #
0:47:47 > 0:47:51I get a phone call from the New York Philharmonic saying that, um,
0:47:51 > 0:47:54the orchestra wanted me to write a piece to commemorate
0:47:54 > 0:47:58the first anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks.
0:47:58 > 0:48:00It was a very difficult situation for me,
0:48:00 > 0:48:04because I didn't see how one could write a piece
0:48:04 > 0:48:10that would be in any kind of good taste or have a really deep meaning about something
0:48:10 > 0:48:15that was so recent and had caused terrible scars
0:48:15 > 0:48:20on the collective consciousness of the country.
0:48:26 > 0:48:29I ended up by writing a piece that was very private.
0:48:30 > 0:48:35It uses huge forces, probably 200 people on a stage,
0:48:35 > 0:48:39a children's chorus, an adult chorus and a very large orchestra.
0:48:39 > 0:48:42But it's a work that is largely pianissimo
0:48:42 > 0:48:47and I thought of it as a work that, um...
0:48:48 > 0:48:55in which the souls of the people who died
0:48:55 > 0:48:59were kind of hovering in the performance space in a very, very quiet way.
0:49:00 > 0:49:01VOICES DESCRIBE VICTIMS
0:49:16 > 0:49:18# We will miss you
0:49:24 > 0:49:28# We all love you
0:49:28 > 0:49:31# We miss you
0:49:31 > 0:49:34# We love you
0:49:34 > 0:49:37# Miss you
0:49:37 > 0:49:41# Love you... #
0:50:05 > 0:50:09John Adams's politics have been more subtle than dogmatic.
0:50:09 > 0:50:12Not least in his work with Peter Sellars.
0:50:12 > 0:50:15Their latest collaboration revisits Christ's Passion
0:50:15 > 0:50:18in a thoroughly contemporary and fiercely political way,
0:50:18 > 0:50:21giving voice to the usually silent women who
0:50:21 > 0:50:23stand on the periphery of the Gospel story.
0:51:26 > 0:51:31I should probably get them, if I have a copy, just to show you.
0:51:36 > 0:51:43Here's the first draft that has what Peter gave me.
0:51:43 > 0:51:45You can see how Peter works,
0:51:45 > 0:51:48he doesn't write an original work himself.
0:51:48 > 0:51:53What he does is he assembles texts he's Xeroxed straight from the Bible.
0:51:53 > 0:51:58This is Peter's handwriting and there's more Xerox from a different author.
0:51:58 > 0:52:04Then there is a poem by the Mexican poet, woman poet,
0:52:04 > 0:52:08Rosario Castellanos, in the original Spanish.
0:52:09 > 0:52:15Then I have my, my modes, my scales, my material.
0:52:17 > 0:52:24Which I use largely to prod myself to move out of my comfort zone.
0:52:24 > 0:52:29I assign myself certain musical challenges
0:52:29 > 0:52:35to find within a certain scale or mode, an expressive potential.
0:53:04 > 0:53:09You know, I am 65 years old, I've been composing for 45 years
0:53:09 > 0:53:15and I still don't know if something's going to work or not.
0:53:15 > 0:53:18And maybe that's a good thing because it means
0:53:18 > 0:53:23I'm not falling back on familiar solutions that I know will work.
0:53:23 > 0:53:25I took a lot of risks in this piece
0:53:25 > 0:53:31and I think it actually in the end, it worked.
0:53:31 > 0:53:34I was very satisfied with it, which I didn't expect I would be.
0:55:23 > 0:55:27POIGNANT VIOLIN PLAYS
0:55:47 > 0:55:52I arrived here in 1971, so 41 years ago.
0:55:54 > 0:55:58And California has changed a lot since then.
0:55:58 > 0:56:06It's still possible to be in very, very remote places here in the West.
0:56:15 > 0:56:20We have a little cabin high up in the Sierras where our children
0:56:20 > 0:56:21spent their summers.
0:56:22 > 0:56:28'And I've had some of my really wonderful musical ideas
0:56:28 > 0:56:31'when I've been out in that landscape.
0:56:31 > 0:56:34'Sometimes in an automobile, sometimes hiking.'
0:56:42 > 0:56:48'It's become harder and harder for Americans to feel that freedom'
0:56:48 > 0:56:56because our lives are so intertwined with technology now.
0:56:56 > 0:57:01I don't think people have even had the ability to stand back and to see
0:57:01 > 0:57:09how...damaging the digital experience has been
0:57:09 > 0:57:12on human consciousness.
0:57:12 > 0:57:16I'm just beginning to understand that about myself,
0:57:16 > 0:57:20that when you stare into a computer screen,
0:57:20 > 0:57:24you're going into the virtual environment and it's not real.
0:57:24 > 0:57:29I think that being in a lonely place,
0:57:29 > 0:57:34in a place where you are away from that constant chatter,
0:57:34 > 0:57:39that constant vibration with the sort of collective psyche,
0:57:39 > 0:57:45then you're alone with yourself and you're experiencing true solitude,
0:57:45 > 0:57:51is a profoundly necessary thing for one's psyche
0:57:51 > 0:57:53and, um...
0:57:53 > 0:57:58the older I get, the more I realise that I need that.
0:57:58 > 0:58:03That it feeds... It feeds, you know, the deepest part of myself.
0:58:47 > 0:58:50Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd