Son of Chamber Symphony (2007)

1. I 8:452. II 7:45

3. III 7:20

International Contemporary EnsembleJohn Adams, conductor

String Quartet (2008)

4. I 21:215. II 8:49

St. Lawrence String Quartet

Son of Chamber Symphony was commissioned for Stanford Lively Arts in honor of the Bonnie J. Addario LungCancer Foundation during Lung Cancer Awareness Month, November 2007, with generous support from Vanand Eddi Van Auken, and by The Carnegie Hall Corporation, and made possible in part by The Swanson Foun-dation in honor of San Francisco Ballet’s 75th Anniversary. Choreographed as Joyride for the San Francisco Bal-let by Mark Morris. World Premiere: November 30, 2007, by Alarm Will Sound (Alan Pierson, Cond.), atDinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford University. Son of Chamber Symphony is dedicated to Ara Guzelimian.

String Quartet was commissioned by The Juilliard School (with the generous support of the Trust of FrancisGoelet), Stanford Lively Arts Stanford University, and The Banff Centre. World Premiere: January 29, 2009, bythe St. Lawrence String Quartet, at The Juilliard School. String Quartet is dedicated to Joseph Polisi.

International Contemporary EnsembleEric Lamb, flute, piccoloNicholas Masterson, oboeJoshua Rubin, clarinetCampbell MacDonald, bass clarinetRebekah Heller, bassoonDavid Byrd-Marrow , hornGareth Flowers, trumpetDavid Nelson, tromboneDavid Bowlin, Jennifer Curtis, violinMaiya Papach, viola Kivie Cahn-Lipman, celloScott Dixon, bassCory Smythe, piano, celestaNathan Davis, Ian Antonio, percussion

St. Lawrence String QuartetGeoff Nuttall, violinScott St. John, violinLesley Robertson, violaChristopher Costanza, cello

SON OF CHAMBER SYMPHONY, composed in 2007, bears an unmis-takable family resemblance to its predecessor, the 1992 Chamber Symphony.Both are written for an ensemble of solo instruments (roughly fifteen instruments);both are cast in a three-movement fast-slow-fast form; and both share a highly ani-mated, in-your-face kind of cheeky buoyancy. This might strike one as surprising,given the lineage of the “chamber symphony” as a musical form, the begetter ofwhich was Arnold Schoenberg, considered by some the most fearsomely seriousparty pooper of all time.

What is a “chamber symphony,” anyway? Judging from the two that Schoenbergcomposed, it is a piece of symphonic scale written for a large group of virtuososoloists. As ensemble in live performance the “chamber symphony” provides allsorts of challenges, not only to the performer, but also to the listener. Balances arealways in danger of going seriously out of whack. Individual string instrumentscan easily be buried by an overly loud clarinet or, in my case, an enthusiasticdrummer. But when acoustical issues have been sorted out, the sound of a dozenor more skilled soloists can afford a musical experience that combines the inti-macy of chamber music with the breadth and scale of a full orchestra.

What drew me to the Austrian composer’s eponymous Op. 9 Chamber Sym-phony of 1906 were its explosive energy and the staggering, acrobatic virtuosity ofits instrumental writing. Schoenberg’s bounding, fast-moving themes weren’t somuch “stated” as they were launched like some daredevil circus performer shotout of a canon. The hyper-lyricism of its melodies sounded as if all of Tristan hadbeen compressed into a tiny plutonium sphere, just one neutron short of goingsuper-critical.

Well, OK, perhaps my metaphors need to be reeled in, but there is no mistakingthe attraction of this format to a composer like me who normally operates on thelarge canvas of orchestral and operatic forms. Where my two chamber sym-phonies differ from Schoenberg’s is in the addition of brass, percussion, and elec-tronic keyboards. The 1992 symphony features a drummer on a trap set and asynthesizer. The “son” includes a celesta, a set of orchestral chimes, and, in thefirst movement, a keyboard sampler playing samples I made of a prepared piano,the “boing” of which sets the tone for the first movement.

I knew that Son of Chamber Symphony would be turned into a ballet by Mark Mor-ris, the genius choreographer who twenty years earlier had created the dance forNixon in China and later for The Death of Klinghoffer. Knowing that Mark is one ofthe few choreographers since Balanchine whose choreography mirrors the formaland metric structure of the music, I thought long and hard about how to designthe musical structure. In truth I didn’t have visual images in my head while com-posing—I rarely do—but I was nonetheless surprised when Joyride, the title of theMorris ballet, turned out to be one of his most severely abstract creations. Marklargely passed over the humor and occasional wackiness of the piece in favor of ageometrically complex, constantly morphing interplay of eight dancers, alldressed in tight, Spandex body suits, each sporting on his or her chest an LEDdigital readout of random numbers.

The first movement begins with a dropping octave “dactyl” rhythm (long-short-short), a musical idea so basic that it ought not to be “owned,” but alas is—by thecomposer of the Ninth Symphony. Other instruments join in, confounding theperception of pulse until the activity reaches a cadential moment that leads intothe first tutti, a boisterous unison melody for high instruments accompanied byjabs and pecks from brass and percussion. From here the music thins out, passing

through a sequence of sudden stops and starts, the unexpected nature of whichwas cleverly incorporated into the choreography of Morris’s Joyride.

With its driving pulse, bouncing motives, and spiky, bright-edged surfaces, theopening movement bears the closest resemblance to the earlier 1992 ChamberSymphony. The second movement contrasts this hectic virtuosity with a long, lyri-cal cantilena for flute and clarinet sung over a quietly strumming continuum in ce-lesta and pizzicato strings. This long “endless” melody is followed by a differentbut equally lyrical one played by the solo violin and cello, voiced three octavesapart, accompanied by a gently modulated tapestry of trills and shakes in thewinds and percussion. The opening cantilena melody returns, but this time it ap-pears in a parody version, with staccato barbs interrupting and mocking it. Thisinterrupting material finally takes center stage, highlighted by an absurd dottedfigure (in prosody a “trochee”) that manically hops and skips while the openingmelody struggles to make do, as if coping with a rude, uninvited dancing partner.

I toyed with calling the finale “Can-can” (French pronunciation: kãkã), but at thelast moment my better judgment took hold. Wikipedia, the unimpeachable sourceof all my higher learning, describes the can-can as a “high-energy and physicallydemanding music hall dance, traditionally performed by a chorus line of femaledancers” featuring “high kicking and suggestive, provocative body movements.”But I decided against using the title because I could not accurately distinguish thisfrom the description of a “gallop,” to which, so suggests Wikipedia, the can-can isrelated but in a degraded, decidedly downscale version.

Those listeners familiar with Nixon in China will remark another family resem-blance here—this time with the “News” aria sung by the president at the beginningof Act I. For a brief time the third movement is a kind of snarky gloss on that aria,

but it soon departs from the script, taking along only the driving, quarter-note pat-ter of the bass line as it ventures into new terrain with passages that include ashort parody of the opening of Harmonielehre (is nothing sacred?) and a final ride-out that features a delicately pulsing trash can lid.

THE STRING QUARTET of 2008 was composed for the St. Lawrence StringQuartet, whose performance of my only other work for quartet, John’s Book of Al-leged Dances, stimulated my imagination to write something tailored to their excep-tional blend of rhythmic drive and high-drama lyricism. The quartet—violinistsGeoff Nuttall and Scott St. John, violist Lesley Robertson, and cellist ChristopherCostanza—possess a style of playing, perfectly balanced between the instinctualand the intellectual, that greatly appealed to me. Their performances of Haydnand late Beethoven convinced me that they would be ideal performers of mymusic (and indeed they were, to the point where, several years later, I composed afurther piece for them, a concerto for quartet and orchestra, Absolute Jest, based onfragments from Beethoven).

Normally impatient with traditional titles, I uncharacteristically defaulted to“String Quartet” for this one. The only other time I’d employed such a generictitle was with the 1993 Violin Concerto. It may be that the choice of such an un-adorned name for both works reflected a certain awe that I felt in approaching themedium. Historically speaking, both the violin concerto and the string quartetrepresent for me the epitome of the union of musical form and content. The mod-els from the past, be they from the classical period of Haydn, Mozart, andBeethoven, from the Romantic period of Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms, orfrom the twentieth century—from Schoenberg, Berg, and Bartók all the way up to

Produced by Judith Sherman

Son of Chamber SymphonyRecorded September 14–15, 2010, at Sear Sound, New York, NYEngineered by John KilgoreAssistant Engineers: Chris Allen & Tom GloadyKeyboard Technician: Brian Mohr

String QuartetRecorded October 4–6, 2009, Rolston Recital Hall, The Banff Centre, Alberta, CanadaEngineered by John D. S. AdamsAssistant Engineer: Nathan ChandlerProduced and recorded using the facilities of the Music & Sound Program

Mastered by Robert C. Ludwig at Gateway Mastering Studios, Portland, ME

Design by John GallPhotography by Deborah O’Grady

Executive Director for the International Contemporary Ensemble: Claire Chase

Son of Chamber Symphony and String Quartet are published by Boosey & Hawkes.

Executive Producer: Robert Hurwitz

www.earbox.com www.iceorg.org www.slsq.com www.nonesuch.com

Nonesuch Records Inc., a Warner Music Group Company, 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY10104. π & © 2011 Nonesuch Records Inc. for the United States and WEA International Inc. for the worldoutside of the United States. Warning: Unauthorized reproduction of this recording is prohibited by Federallaw and subject to criminal prosecution.

Ligeti and Carter—constitute a compendium of those composers’ most eloquentand Apollonian statements.

My quartet is cast in a uniquely asymmetrical form: a single long first part and amuch shorter second. The first part is itself divided into four distinct sections that,taken together, create a fully formed musical structure. Opening with a ripplingsixteenth-note figuration punctuated by the offbeat plucking of the cello, themusic rapidly evolves into a sequence of intensely lyrical episodes that ride theengine of a regular pulsation, an easily identifiable vestige of my minimalist past.

A passage of becalmed stasis provides a relief from the restlessness of the open-ing; and this is followed by the eruption of a jaunty scherzo section, characterizedby fractured dance steps and high-wire melodies for the violins. The energy windsdown, and Part One concludes with a slower, muted music, similar to the openingin its restless inner movement. Only in its very last minute does the energy, nowsounding as if blanketed by a layer of heavy cloth or snow, finally settle down to ashort-lived slumber.

Part Two begins with bouncing octaves (not unlike the opening of Son of ChamberSymphony), a high-strung, nervous staccato that charges the entire remainingmovement with a driven energy that will only occasionally break for pockets ofespressivo that recall the earlier movement. The frequent appearance of the open-ing bars’ Morse code figuration at critical structural points anchors the music’sgrowth. Its use might even suggest to some listeners a vestigial version of rondoform. A final coda pushes tempi and activity to the extreme. I make the kind ofensemble and emotional demands on the players that are only possible in that ex-hilarating and utopian world of virtuoso chamber music.

—John Adams, March 2011