On the Transmigration of Souls
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CD Details
Brand: AdamsComposer: John Adams
Conductor: Lorin Maazel
Orchestra: New York Philharmonic
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2004-08-31
Music Label: Nonesuch
Soundtracks:
- On the Transmigration of Souls
Music reviews of On the Transmigration of Souls
Music Review: shallow and manipulative
Rating: 2 Stars
John Adams wrote _On the Transmigration of Souls_ for the NY Phil, to honor the memory of the Sept 11 victims. It's 25 minutes long. The instrumental music comes and goes, leads up to a big crescendo, and fades out. The text consists of spoken words from the missing people signs in lower Manhattan, the obituaries in the NY Times, some recorded words from people on the planes, and names of some of the victims. The course of the instrumental music pretty much tells you what to think, and if you haven't picked up on it, the voices are there to remind you.
To me, hearing the mantra "missing" and the phrases expressing grief suggest the limitations of the outlook that produced this piece. An unthinkable act led to the murder of thousands, and the response in this piece is literally to report what happened: people went missing (the loud crescendo reminds you how, in case you forgot) and the survivors mourned. This is music to memorialize a very large traffic accident.
Contrast with the NY Phil's decision on short notice, in Sept 2001, to perform the Brahms requiem--a perfect choice and a powerful performance. "Lord, teach me to know that my life has a point (Ziel) to it." Indeed. This was the music to memorialize Sept 11. The gap between even Brahms' secularized requiem and _On the Transmigration_ suggests how much we have given up to live without faith. We mourn, but are not comforted.
Description of On the Transmigration of Souls
This is the first recording of Adams's On the Transmigration of Souls (which won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in music), by the orchestra and conductor that commissioned and premiered it. Adams grips from the start, with a slow buildup of taped mundane city sounds, the obsessively repeated word "missing" superimposed on them. The taped texts are drawn from fragments found on missing person posters, newspaper memorials, and the names of victims of the 9/11 attack. Sometimes the taped voices dominate; at others, the chorus intones the texts; the orchestra an ever-present commentator, its impressionistic harmonies fulfilling Adams' description of creating a "memory space" where each listener can find a personal response to the events. The orchestra erupts in an overwhelming climax after the words "I wanted to dig him out," managing, in a brief passage, to encompass anger, deep grief, and the enormity of the tragedy. Then it subsides into a long, slow decrescendo overlaid by the quiet recitation of names, as if the souls of the title hover over us. Adams has created music for his time and place that fulfills music's ability to move us. --Dan DavisGeneral CDs
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