How does Nixon in China work? (with Youtube vids links)

[Sean]

Unless tonality can be rediscovered in we're living in music's final days. Minimalism is the foremost hope, though I don't think the endless arguments for harmony and consonance can alone explain what breathes such amazing life into Adam's Nixon in China. Adams is not a great composer and there's a lot of caution and uncertainty in his work, typical of much if not all American music, but in what remains his best compositional effort here he finds some very interesting qualities. I've listed below in colour what I think is going on, but I know there's more to it than this.

Please ignore the last one about harmony and the other claims I make here if you don't agree and just say where you think the magnetism and sense of relevance is coming from: I'm working on a project on musical repetition, and off to a minimalism conference in Bangor Wales at the end of the month.

By the way does anyone know Doctor Atomic?- is it closer to Nixon or, more likely as Adam's style has changed, that very poor effort Klinghoffer? Cheers!

The fact that Nixon's visit to China in 1972 is recent history and we can relate to it closely, even on a personal level.

The libretto's comprised of poetic couplets that reflect the surreal character of the opera's whole conception, also perfectly suiting the repetitious sections- ie people don't normally repeat what they say several times.

The surreal movement of ideas, and for instance the mixtures of watching and being in performances, greatly adds to the regular operatic aesthetic of people singing to each other rather than talking: singing separates the audience from the drama, heightening its intangible meaning.

There's the feeling that the world is being given back to us, in the full sense of this artistic production, especially with the ballet interpolations, being what we have done, offered up to us and to that which is beyond us.

A superb and throughly commited cast in this production and on the CD recording, some really glorious and professional singing; a special mention for Trudy Germaine Craney (I think it is), the soprano with the remarkable icy edge to her portrayal of Mao's wife.

The fact that the opening act's material is in more clearly delineated statements and contained melodic sequences but then in the second and third it's recombined, taking the ideas less seriously, juxtaposing and splicing them, treating them critically and thereby mocking what emerges to have been their overly high tone.

The notion of distinct ideas is then undermined all in alignment with the opera begining with distinct social ideological stances between the US and China, but because they are irreconcilably different the only option is to transcend them to a state of play, without trying to alter either: in the process a confident postmodern nihilism is achieved that we can relate to.

The protagonists slide into personal reminiscences, rather as the postmodern experience is concerned with subjective responses...

The harmony argument- tonal harmony and the necessity of subjectively experienced consonance from accoustic consonance: this necessity is transcendentally rather than logically or dialectically grounded and hence aesthetic, the repetition of material within a simple triadic framework emphazising and drawing attention to the return, which of course is inexhaustible.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=pRKdlc9TEVU&mode=related&search=

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qCSH21XdEms

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYmpzfZKYqU&mode=related&search=

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=14MVTeO8CWs

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=kPebpMGV8h0&mode=related&search=

[PSmith08]

Unless tonality can be rediscovered in we're living in music's final days. Minimalism is the foremost hope, though I don't think the endless arguments for harmony and consonance can alone explain what breathes such amazing life into Adams' Nixon in China.

Yeah, if this is 1975, and you ignore all the other interesting veins of modern music. You're more or less talking about a progression out of post-Webernian serialism into Darmstadt (guys like Boulez, Maderna, [early] Stockhausen, and so on) and, then, into minimalism. There is far more to modern music than that stream. What, then, of Luciano Berio's Sinfonia? His third movement quotes Mahler at length (going so far as to name it "In ruhig fliessender Bewegung"), and - in a clever way - works in a reference to Pierre Boulez (among others). It is as avant-garde as you'd want, but it goes beyond tonality or the lack thereof to make its point. It seems that you're casting the net too close to the boat, so to speak.

Oh, and Adams just seems to know how to write generally interesting and compelling music - especially in his earlier years. I think it has to do with being solidly middlebrow in approach, eschewing the arrogant academy-oriented serialist approach ("Listen to our music, if you can understand it), but avoiding Philip Glass' Music for movies.

[Sean]

Hi PSmith, well the tonality argument is one among several here to explain the opera's success.

Seriously, works like this is where music is at. This is communicative art that needs thinking about, not that endless modernist experiment into varieties of absolute nothing. Yet this thread may draw few responses: I'm familiar with more modernism than most and it's basically a big lie- forget it and think about art and what actually works.

But I'd like to let that rest and think about what else is going on here.

[JoshLilly]

Unless one of those videos is the Chairman cutting up the rug, I'm not interested.

[Sean]

I forgot-

The fact that the score is drenched in nostalgia: how Adams does this again I'm just not sure, but the foxtrot for the Chairman dances scene is one technique.

[BachQ]

I forgot-

The fact that the score is drenched in nostalgia: how Adams does this again I'm just not sure, but the foxtrot for the Chairman dances scene is one technique.

Thank you, Sean .......