Celebrated Composer Snags Pulitzer for 'Transmigration'

Composer John C. Adams ’69 is notoriously elusive. He splits his time between his home in Berkeley and a log cabin called “Busy Ridge” in a California forest.

But after receiving the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in music this Tuesday, Adams may find it harder to eschew the public eye.

The Pulitzer-winning work, “On the Transmigration of Souls,” was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic to commemorate the victims of Sept. 11. It offers a mix of contemporary commentary and classical musicianship typical of Adams.

A traditional orchestra accompanies voices that read names of victims, fragments of telephone messages, missing-persons ads and newscasts.

The Pulitzer punctuates what has already proven a triumphant year for the composer. April marks a month-long celebration at the Lincoln Center in honor of his works, including his 1991 opera, The Death of Klinghoffer, which will be made into a movie for the BBC this month.

And in September, he will succeed Pierre Boulez as Carnegie Hall’s Richard and Barbara Debs Composer Chair.

Portrait of the Artist as an Undergrad

Adams’ music is influenced by figures as disparate as Duke Ellington and Philip Glass and self-consciously rooted in the American vernacular.

This devotion to the popular—and to the place of “low-art” and pop-culture in the concert hall—was evident thirty years ago, during Adams’ studies at Harvard.

“He was an independent soul, even way back then,” says Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra Director James Yannatos, who worked with Adams during his time at Harvard.

During his college years, reviewers for The Crimson called Adams a musician whose “pyrotechnics…must be the envy of all clarinetists” and “a gifted conductor.”

Adams, who played clarinet, performed as a soloist under Yannatos’ direction at several concerts—including a 1967 performance at Carnegie Hall, where Adams is now composer-in-residence. Adams also conducted the Bach Society Orchestra from 1967-68, as well as a Leverett House Opera production of The Marriage of Figaro.

Though better known in Harvard’s music community as a performer, Adams’ focus in the classroom was on composition. He studied under Leon Kirchner, but rebelled against the academic model of composition that dominated Harvard’s music department—atonality and the twelve-tone method of Schoenberg.

Instead, Adams embraced minimalism and composers like John Cage. His senior thesis, a song-cycle for soprano and chamber ensemble, was based on a series of “psychedelic” texts written by a friend.

“He hasn’t necessarily followed what was de rigueur in the University,” says Yannatos. “He thought twelve-tone music was too academic, too removed from popular tastes and understanding. I think he tried to find a more American base for his music.”

Though Adams adopted minimalism against the popular academic grain, it does not fully define his work, according to Yannatos.

“I think in terms of his musical language, he has investigated quite a bit, and moved out from his minimalism into a much broader music that is both technically expert and emotionally cogent,” Yannatos says.

America the Musical

Adams first rose to fame with his 1987 opera Nixon in China, based on Richard Nixon’s 1972 meeting with Mao Tse Tung. It was created in cooperation with librettist Peter M. Sellars ’80 and choreographer Mark Morris, both recent speakers at Harvard.

The trio collaborated again on the 1991 opera The Death of Klinghoffer, which touches on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some critics, however, called Klinghoffer anti-Semitic.

But politics remains, for Adams, primarily an element of the contemporary American landscape, which has been a constant source of inspiration.

Adams could not be reached for comment, but he told The New Yorker two years ago that he defines culture as “the symbols that we share to understand each other.”

“When we communicate, we point to symbols that we have in common,” he said.

And in an article in The San Francisco Chronicle last year, Adams noted, “I take on important matters in my work, not just classical stories about Oedipus. I feel a great artist should look at the mythology right now. 9/11 is already a human myth.”

With Adams’ devotion to current mythology, Carnegie Hall provides an ideal setting for the composer.

In Carnegie Hall’s upcoming season alone, the gamut of modern music’s luminaries—from Caetano Veloso and Pierre Boulez to Emmylou Harris, John Cage and Johann Sebastian Bach—will be celebrated in the same space as Adams.

“He’s etched out a very positive position in American music,” Yannatos says. “Politically, he’s in a very enviable position. I’m sure there will be a lot of composers that are jealous as hell.”