Adams' 9/11 commemorative
piece is released, as a CD single (a
Nonesuch speciality), to coincide with
the third anniversary of the destruction
of New York's twin towers. Its relevance
is enhanced, as if that were necessary,
by the appalling and bloody recent events
in southern Russia. It is, in many ways,
quintessential Adams, evoking again
the artistically benevolent spirits
of Charles Ives, Walt Whitman and other
less local heroes (not for the first
time, both Sibelius and Mahler), all
bound by a common devotion to humanity
and universality. Although John Adams
originally emerged from the minimalist
scene, I would suggest that he has,
particularly in the last decade or so,
transcended it completely. Much as I
admire Glass, Reich and Riley, I cannot
imagine any of them tackling this subject
with the degree of success Adams has
achieved (and with no resort to sensationalism).
Perhaps he can now be forgiven Klinghoffer
by those who (rightly?) found his treatment
of that subject rather too even-handed.
On the Transmigration
of Souls opens with a roll call
of missing persons. If this sounds mawkish,
well it is anything but. The spoken
names, with a subdued musical and choral
backdrop, are truly moving and haunting,
a trumpet clearly based on Ives' Unanswered
Question adding to the poignancy.
This is maintained, as an opening out
into a more sustained choral/vocal section.
Then intermittent percussion relays
a litany of the missing/dead and their
idiosyncratic identifying features (apparently
the vast majority of the text derives
from "missing person posters and memorials
posted in the vicinity of the ruins
of the World Trade Center"). We then
encounter a fairly short-lived but powerful
crescendo, just under half way into
the piece; the haunting litany is soon
resumed. Remarkably, the word ‘sentimental’
is just not one that even needs consideration
here. The second, greater climax around
the sixteenth minute, based on the intense,
fraught, angry(?) repeated refrain "I
know just where he is" leads to one
of Adams' most genuinely Sibelian moments.
This is a primeval but beauteous surge
of brass and strings, before the chorus
reasserts itself, only to battle again
with the timpani. Eventually we are
returned to the uneasy quietism of the
piece's beginnings, with more recited
names reminding us that 9/11 was very
much a multinational tragedy despite
its obvious and indelible association
with NYC and the wider USA.
As I complete this
review, I am listening to a melancholic,
traditional Irish (but US recorded)
slow air - An Buachaillin Ban/The
Little Fair-Haired Boy - hoping,
probably naively, that my young son
Joel, a little fair-haired boy himself,
does not have to grow up surrounded
by repeated 9/11s, Beslans etc. However,
this is not music for children, just
a "still, small" but potent voice, in
mourning for the innocent victims of
a barbaric nihilism. From the first
Shaker Loops/Light Over Water
recording on New Albion, many years
ago, to the present, John Adams, in
his music and his wider worldview (see
his recent comments on Jimmy Carter
and Ronald Reagan) has continued to
display an uncommon integrity. His sense
of proportion is sadly lacking in those
who carry out and attempt to justify
the type of actions that caused this
piece to be written.
An absolutely essential
disc.
Neil Horner
Philip Smith, trumpet 
