John Adams on El Niño
by Eddie Silva
On December 13 and 14, David Robertson conducts a work that many critics consider to be John Adams’ masterpiece, the nativity oratorio El Niño, with a stellar roster of vocalists that includes soprano Jessica Rivera, mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor, bass-baritone Jonathan Lemalu, the St. Louis Symphony Chorus, and The St. Louis Children’s Choirs. In addition, the three countertenors who sang at the historic premiere of El Niño—in Paris in 2000—Steven Rickards, Daniel Bubeck, and Brian Cummings are part of the ensemble.
John Adams took time out from his visit to St. Louis in September—Robertson and the SLSO were recording the Opening Weekend live performances of his Guide to Strange Places for a future Nonesuch release—to talk with SLSO publications manager Eddie Silva about his relationship with the SLSO, David Robertson, and El Niño. The following interview is an extended version of what you will find in the December Playbill.
Eddie Silva: Your relationship with the SLSO has been a long one, beginning with Leonard Slatkin and continuing with David Robertson.
John Adams: I remember Leonard was doing a piece for string septet called Shaker Loops on one of the orchestra’s New Music programs [in 1982]. During that same weekend Emanuel Ax was playing the Beethoven Fourth Piano Concerto, so that was also when I met Manny Ax and my first encounter with Leonard. Shortly after that he conducted Harmonium and took it to Carnegie Hall [the New York premiere, in 1984], and did several other works of mine. And now David has done at least one and sometimes two works of mine each season since coming here.
How did your relationship with David Robertson begin?
I first met David when I was invited to conduct the Ensemble InterContemporain in Paris. I believe David was Music Director at that time. He wasn’t conducting but he was in Paris and I spent some time with him. He later did Century Rolls with Manny Ax [and Orli Shaham]; he did Naïve and Sentimental Music; Harmonielehre many times, and he did El Niño in Boston. Whenever I could I’ve gone to those rehearsals and performances.
What does David bring to your work?
He brings an incredible sense of rhythmic integrity, drive, a certain American quality that has both precision and bounce to it. He’s an entire professional in communicating with composers, and communicating with audiences. He gives that sense of excitement and adventure—he conveys that to the listener. A lot of music directors will take on a contemporary piece and you just feel the sense of noblesse oblige sort of oozing from the podium: “Let’s get this out of the way as fast as we can so I can get to my Mahler symphony.”
For David, when he does a piece of mine, or Messiaen, or whomever, it’s the main event very often. Beethoven’s sort of second. Not to say that his Beethoven or his Brahms isn’t equally wonderful. I love to listen to David do standard repertoire. I recently heard a broadcast he did with the New York Philharmonic of the Schubert ‘Unfinished’ Symphony that was an absolute revelation. He thinks like a composer. And, of course, he has this extraordinary chemistry with the St. Louis Symphony, you can just feel it.
The piece we’re doing this week [Opening Weekend, September 26-27, 2008], Guide to Strange Places, is a tough piece. It’s a very disturbing, and sort of aggressive piece on the orchestra. You can tell they don’t know quite what’s going on but they believe in him. They believe the piece must be good because David believes in it. I don’t get that feeling of almost hostility that I get sometimes with orchestras.
You still get that?
Yeah, I do, I’m sad to say. Even orchestras that have known me for years, if they’re in a bad mood on a Monday morning they can be pretty hostile.
Since your memoir, Hallelujah Junction, recently came out, I know that you’ve been spending time thinking about the work you’ve done. How does El Niño look upon reflection?
El Niño is one of my favorite pieces. I have pieces that when I hear them I’m just immediately brought back to the state of excitement and wonder that I was in while composing. Not every piece does that for me. El Niño, Nixon in China are certainly two that do, and A Flowering Tree is one of the more recent pieces: these were pieces written in a state of genuine—for lack of a better term—inspiration.
We always use that term with composing. It’s sort of a cliché. But very often you write a piece in a state of puzzlement. You’re following a trail, like a scent, through a forest, and you’re not quite sure what you’re doing. And sometimes you discover something and write a piece that’s groundbreaking or interesting or maybe even important, but the experience has been a struggle. We know that about Beethoven, for example, that many pieces of Beethoven’s were struggles. And then there are other pieces that just sort of come out. They’ve been waiting to be born. El Niño was that kind of experience. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard work—the orchestration phase of El Niño was horrific. I was very late and had to have it ready for the premiere in Paris.
The other wonderful thing for me about El Niño was the memory of the premiere, because it took place in Paris, in December, right before Christmas, in the year 2000. And so it was possible to walk from the Châtelet Theater, where we were rehearsing it, across a small bridge onto the Île de la Cité and go into Notre Dame Cathedral and see all the statuary of Mary and Jesus—and of course it was all decked out for Christmas. That was the year before 9/11 and it was a period of hope. People talked a lot about—around the millennium—the world coming together in the sense of global awareness. There was a global ecological awareness. El Niño expressed that sense of hope. Although I have to point out that there is this alarmingly prescient chorus, which has the image ‘When the Towers Fall.’ Just that image being there in that piece less than a year before 9/11 is really scary.
If I were a highfalutin critic I might claim that El Niño marked the Death of Irony at the beginning of the 21st century.
That’s a nice thought.
But after your work became recognized and admired, there is a sense of letting go of the ironic stance in much contemporary music.
It’s a very tricky thing. I suppose I set off in a direction that other, younger composers took a cue from, but when I hear a lot of orchestral music that’s written by American composers now I’m appalled by a certain naïve earnestness, a desire to please the audience, a desire to create user-friendly, easily digestible music that can fit on a program and not ruffle any feathers. I see there’s a whole school of this coming out—American composers in their 40s, 30s, even 20s now. I think that’s a bad thing. I’m going through this very strange cognitive dissonance this week because this piece [Guide to Strange Places] is not a cuddly piece at all.
You have said “I love Messiah.” What did it give you and how did you have to depart from it in the making of El Niño?
It is a model in terms of storytelling and in terms of evoking that sense of wonder and simplicity that we see especially in a lot of medieval art, particularly by anonymous artists: pictures of the Mary and Jesus and Joseph all huddled in a manger and these animals, literally, right on top of them. And you think: that’s how life was in the era before modern times. People lived in very close connection with animals, with filth and dirt, garbage…
And babies were born in mangers.
…and so the image of purity, the image of absolute unblemished youth that you find in a baby, or the image of Mary as this young, teenage girl who becomes pregnant—these are images of almost unattainable perfection. But you can imagine the necessity for having those kinds of archetypes when life was so gross, so toxic, and death was so imminent. Our lives are so different now, and as modern Americans we’re so divorced from that kind of thing, that reality. But then all we have to do is look at the news and see scenes from Bangladesh or central Africa and be reminded of that.
Was there a question for you, in the composing of El Niño, of how can this story be of our time, a question of relevance?
In an era of scientific hard facts it becomes harder and harder to become face to face with a true miracle. Birth is, for me, the most manifest miracle. I’ve said many times about El Niño that I was brought back to the birth of my daughter, and then later my son. Here we were in this sterile hospital room and there were four people in the room—and suddenly there were five. There’s no explanation for that. You can do all the biological explanation you want, but the creation of a being, of a consciousness is a miracle. It’s unknowable and inexplicable, and that really is the fundamental theme of El Niño.
I’ve asked a lot of people around the hall, staff and musicians, what they wanted me to ask you. Most of those questions have been on the line of “How does he write the best music ever?” but the violinist Asako Kuboki wanted me to ask you “Where does he get his groove?”
I’m glad to hear that she thinks I have a groove. It’s really part of modern life, particularly modern life as an American—you’re surrounded with jazz and rock music that has a beat. As far as I can tell, at least in Europe and in America before 1920, music basically didn’t have much of a beat. If it did it was buried in small African communities or maybe in countries like Hungary, but basically art music was melody-driven. A pulse, the pulse being the main event, like it is in jazz, is something that is typically a new event in the 20th century. Those of us who are brought up listening to a lot of jazz and rock tend to have the groove. I’m sure I got the groove listening to everything from the Grateful Dead to Charlie Parker to Stevie Wonder.
John Adams’ El Niño will be performed Saturday, December 13 at 8pm; and Sunday, December 14 at 3pm, at Powell Hall. (more info | buy tickets)