John Luther Adams: Become Ocean

As a composer, Adams seemed really interesting for me due to his approach to focus on our environment and compose music with this focus. This is why I was looking forward to listening to one of his pieces. In his piece “Become Ocean” this combination between our environment and music is portrayed. The music is performed by an orchestra in a special composition which I really liked.

The beginning of the piece sounded quite powerful. I immediately imagined the ocean with heavy swell; probably due to the introduction by the conductor I had listened to before. The beginning also sounded quite mysterious to me since I did not know into which direction the piece would develop. I had a feeling of being in the ocean and, at the same time, being overwhelmed by it. I think, the music presented the ocean as a very powerful force which could easily overcome me as a human being. I also felt like being underwater which was created by certain instrument recreating the sound of small bubbles. Furthermore, the piece gave me underwater movie soundtrack vibes.

When I noticed the music building up, I was curious about what was going to happen next. However, the crescendo was followed by a decrescendo around 15:00 where I expected something vast to happen. Directly after this, there was another crescendo and the music was getting rather hectic which is why I felt like something was going on underwater. The overall atmosphere became peaceful again, but this feeling did not last long as the hectic feeling took over as the next crescendo followed. This mixture of crescendo and decrescendo had me in constant alert as I felt like I had to be prepared for anything that could happen. Constantly, I found it quite exhausting to listen to the piece and become part of the story it tells.

I was also constantly trying to figure out if the ocean liked me or not. At some points I felt like I was part of the ocean in a pleasant and calming way but at other points I felt like the ocean was just pushing me around trying to get rid of me with a feeling of being lost in it. However, the ocean, portrayed by the orchestra, always felt way more powerful to me than me as a human being. 

All in all, I found it nice to listen to the piece as I like how it generally sounds. I was really impressed how the orchestra conveys the ocean’s power, and I think that this really depicts the different facets of the ocean. Throughout the piece, I felt like the relevance of the ocean for us as human beings is presented really well which also suits the message Adams conveys. Due to climate change, we will all become ocean if we do not change and care more about our environment. I think, the piece definitely raises awareness if one knows what it is about, and I really like this way of expressing the message.