978-0393602517 Chapter 59

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CHAPTER 59

Reality Shows: Adams and Contemporary Opera

OVERVIEW

Chapter 59 looks at more recent operatic works that take historical or real-life contemporary

events as subjects. John Adams’s post-minimalist opera Doctor Atomic exemplifies this tendency

among living operatic composers.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1. To understand the interest of more recent opera composers in taking historical or real-life

contemporary events as subjects

2. To understand John Adams’s opera Doctor Atomic as a post-minimalist, neo-Romantic

work that takes as its subject the creation of the atomic bomb

LECTURE SUGGESTIONS

1. Play for your class excerpts from Adams’s Nixon in China and Doctor Atomic that

underscore the personalities and characters of the two main historical figures of these operas

(Richard Nixon and J. Robert Oppenheimer, respectively). Ask the class to consider the

musical cues that characterize the personalities and temperaments of these figures. What

does the music reveal about the humanity of these men? Do you feel that Adams provides

music that emanates from the psychology and character of these figures? Or do you feel

rather that Adams’s music arises from external perceptions about Nixon and Oppenheimer?

2. Instruct the class to note the post-minimalist and neo-Romantic qualities of the chorus “At

the sight of this” from Doctor Atomic. How does the music of this scene compare with

previously studied minimalist and neo-Romantic works (Tavener’s Hymn, Higdon’s blue

cathedral)? Ask the class to consider the meanings of the term post-minimalism. Apart from

its chronological designation, what might a post-minimalist work sound like (a work after

yet aware of minimalism)? What makes Doctor Atomic a post-minimalist work?

ASSIGNMENT SUGGESTIONS

1. In recent times, both opera and film have taken real-life historical and contemporary events

as subjects. After listening to excerpts from Adams’s Doctor Atomic, do you feel that opera

can offer something about the telling or remembering of past events that nonmusical film

cannot? In contrast, what does film tell or remember about a past event that opera cannot? Is

there perhaps a middle ground where both film and opera can tell and remember about a

past event? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each in their ability to affect

meaning and significance in the remembering of past events? What examples can you offer

to illustrate your views?

2. In 2002, to memorialize the victims of 9/11, John Adams wrote a piece for chorus,

children’s chorus, and orchestra called On the Transmigration of Souls, for which he was

awarded a Pulitzer Prize. After listening to this piece, what do you feel the music is asking

us to remember about the victims of 9/11 and the events of that fateful day? Does Adams’s

music reveal a message about the future? What is this future? How does the music suggest

it?

TEACHING CHALLENGES

Like West Side Story (see Chapter 54), Doctor Atomic challenges both instructors and students to

come to terms with violence and art, here under more extreme historical circumstances. A

conversation with your class about Doctor Atomic’s portrayal of Oppenheimer against the

backdrop of Hiroshima and Nagasaki seems unavoidable but necessary for justifying a place for

this opera in the textbook and the canon at large.

SUPPLEMENTAL REPERTOIRE

Adams: Nixon in China

Glass: Einstein on the Beach

SUPPLEMENTAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cooke, Mervyn, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Opera. Cambridge and

New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Arved Ashby’s chapter “Minimalist Opera”

discusses the language of minimalism and post-minimalism in the operas of Glass, Reich,

and Adams.

Kelly, Cynthia C. The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of Its

Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians. New York: Black Dog and Leventhal, 2007. Section 3

contains an excerpt from John Adams’s presentation on Doctor Atomic at the annual Atomic

Heritage Foundation symposium in October 2006.

CHAPTER OUTLINE

Reality Shows: Adams and Contemporary Opera (Chapter 59)

I. History Presented in Opera

A. Historical topics, semi-fictional accounts

1. evoke intensity and complexity of the time

2. convey emotional truths

II. John Adams and Post-Minimalism

A. John Adams (b. 1947)

1. American composer, versatile post-minimalist

2. education: Harvard University, studied serialism

3. professor at San Francisco Conservatory of Music; advocate for contemporary music

4. operas and stage works: contemporary, controversial political subjects

5. Pulitzer Prize: On the Transmigration of Souls (2002)

6. style: elements of neo-Romanticism, minimalism, accessible melodies, expressive

harmonies, wide appeal

7. works: stage works, chamber music, vocal works, tape and electronic works

B. The Opera Doctor Atomic

1. subject: creation of atomic bomb headed by physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer

a. raises complex moral, political questions

2. setting: Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico

3. libretto by Peter Sellars, playwright/director

a. sources: memoirs of scientists, declassified government documents, poetry of

John Donne and Charles Baudelaire, sacred Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita (Song

of God)

4. focus on last days and hours before first atomic test (1945)

a. hopes and fears about the invention

b. morality concerns

c. psychological stresses

d. apprehension and terror

5. rich and dark score

a. complex texturally; multilayered, eclectic

b. human, well-developed characters

6. “At the sight of this”

a. test will go on despite bad weather

b. text: Bhagavad Gita; Krishna reveals himself as the Supreme God

C. Listening Guide 48: Adams, Doctor Atomic, “At the sight of this” (2005)

1. Act II, scene 3, chorus and orchestra

2. verse/refrain structure, repetition of ideas

3. fiery mood; mysterious electronic sounds

4. spine-chilling chorus

a. fearsome text, repeated notes in short phrases

b. syncopated, offbeat brass and percussion accents

5. unsettling refrain: “O Master” dissonant tones

6. “When I see you, Vishnu” sustained chords

7. closing: build up of tension, distorted electronic sounds, vocables

Part 7: Classroom-Ready Activity 1

ACTIVITY DESCRIPTION

Here students consider the various ways in which composers interact with technology to produce

music in the electronic age. By comparing the different pieces explored in Part 7, students will

recognize the diverse effects of technology on composers since the 1950s.

INSTRUCTIONS

Assign groups to particular piece of music from Part 7. Have students fill out the worksheet

below and present their findings to the class as a whole. Students should focus their discussions

on the various ways in which technology informs or influences a particular compositional

approach.

Student Worksheet

Name:

Work title:

Composer:

Date:

Describe the impact of technology on the composer’s approach to writing this piece:

Part 7: Classroom-Ready Activity 2

ACTIVITY DESCRIPTION

This activity gives students the chance to explore the boundaries between modern and

postmodern music, both to understand the characteristic features of these contrasting aesthetic

approaches and to recognize how they overlap in many pieces of twentieth-century music.

INSTRUCTIONS

Have students form small groups, and distribute the worksheet associated with this assignment.

The worksheet lists five pieces discussed in Parts 6 and 7 that neatly fall chronologically into

either the modern or postmodern category but also exhibit features of the other stylistic category.

For example, Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, though clearly a modernist work, also quotes

preexisting folk melodies, a seemingly postmodern assimilation of low culture into the sphere of

high art. Students should identify the main modernist and postmodernist stylistic identity of each

piece while also commenting on the ways in which each piece incorporates aspects of the other

aesthetic.

Student Worksheet

Name:

Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring

Main stylistic identity: (circle one) Modern/Postmodern

Features: