John Luther Adams - Become Ocean

 

John Luther Adams recalls his first encounters with music as shaped by playing in a garage band, covering songs by the Beatles, the Byrds, and the Beach Boys. Being a fan of Frank Zappa, Adams would eventually stumble over a quote of Edgar Varèse, who Zappa recurringly mentioned as a great influence and frequently name-checked on his early records.  An increasing curiosity and interest in the work of Varèse prompted further research, which would eventually introduce Adams to spheres of sound previously unknown to him. Drawing on influences like John Cage or Pauline Oliveros, Adams got engaged with electronic music and started to write phrases for a prepared piano. In comparison, the well-known patterns and conventions found in popular music gave a rather stale impression.

To this day Adams music investigates in textures of sound that lie beyond rhythm and harmony. Aiming to pull music directly from the elements of the world themselves, Adams does not try to omit culture, but rather investigates in the ways place, culture, humans, and the environment interact with and influence one another.

Although he acknowledges the fact that everything nowadays is somewhat a product of human culture, Adams strongly emphasizes the importance of nature within and all around us. Similarly, to Rothenberg’s work, Adams´ pieces call for close and attentive listening that is sensitive for the potentially transcendental substance of the sounds recorded.

Ultimately, Adams describes himself as a composer and environmentalist, an essentialist and formalist. This self-conception and the notions associated are probably most visible in his 2014 composition Become Ocean. The composition (which comprises around 42 minutes) gives the impression of one gigantic wall of sound, something that Adams refers to as “one living and breathing organism”. Within that manifold soundscape, different everchanging and perpetually moving layers of different speed may be detected. The reliable rise and fall of the levels of sounds, their timbre, pitch, and dynamics instantaneously provoke images of wave like motions, water ebbing and flowing, as well as tidal waves. The passing and interference of layers seemingly culminates about three times within the course of the piece in what Adams calls “huge tsunamis of sound”. These moments are contrasted by two instances, in which all layers go down and almost no perceivable sounds remain.  At these points the previously roaring soundscape becomes merely a whisper. In addition, the entire piece is notably structured as a palindrome, so that the second half of the piece in fact constitutes the first half backwards. Therefore, the whole piece resembles a huge wave, a formal structure that genuinely corresponds with the piece content wise.

Adam’s piece works without rhythms, harmonies, or explicit melodic structures and in doing so favors a more general focus on texture and atmosphere. What comes into being is an overwhelmingly elegant orchestral piece that gives the impression it has always been there, simply waiting to be discovered and recognized for what it is.

 

[direct quotes are taken from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNyMNdnYZ5s]