Jagged Edge

A universal experience, John, and not one often expressed publicly. Though I hear it from all of our composers, it seems to be underestimated in The Industry. Often (and perhaps especially) among publicists.

Kudos to your budding beer. You must be unspeakably proud.

Doesn’t Bono squirrel himself away in a hotel for a fortnight's decompression immediately after a tour? Perhaps you should consider enforced sequestration with only the company of rolling news and a minibar. What could possibly go wrong?

(How about a commercial release for the Matter Of Heart score? The woodchopping section sloshing about on the internet is a ride.)

For many academic scholars who also (and often largely) make a living as teachers, this is indeed the jagged-edged season. I'm grateful you took a moment to share your experience with all of us. It's a blessing to me as I wade into a ten-year-old book manuscript with renewed hope and fear.

Congratulations!

The artist I work for seemed to find the answer to this problem in leading a life of frantic back and forth, never ceasing in a daily in-and-out of composing and performing. He composes every day, and he is almost constantly on tour. He's also an insomniac so he's sort of always in a dream world of frenetic creativity and interaction. I think the composing is a respite and all the rest is just fun. It's a way of not having to deal with that dichotomy of creative solitude and passionate engagement with the outside world. It also informs his music in that way. He's constantly testing his music on his audience.
That in itself could in theory be an overly dangerous thing to do lest one become too "in touch" with one's public. But the way he talks about it, it's always different and interesting. People are in touch with his older music, and he's almost entirely interested in their reactions to the new music, which varies.
The point here is that every creative personality is different. A lot of composers I know enjoy some sort of social interaction with others and their new creations. In this way film composers have a very nice environment to work in. The act of composition is lonely. Getting to the conducting podium or the recording booth is a chance to live with the music. This is all to state the obvious: music is a social enterprise on most levels (even the creative level.) I ask you John, even though you are creating "something out of nothing," are you ever alone even when your composing?

Your description of 'a shared way of being in the world' is similar to an earlier encountered statement in another place to the effect that one musical function is that it allows the synchronization of emotions between those encountering the music, both players and listeners.
I wonder about 'creating something out of nothing', though. It is possible in almost all musics to intuit influences, antecedents. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.
I wonder how you feel about that skill which is all but lost in the Classical genre, improvisation. (such loss definitely a bad thing.) Is it the meeting place between plumbing one's interior and being 'intensely engaged with others'?
At the least, it is a much more demanding skill than that which classical artists (term used deliberately) usually engage in, interpretation.
BTW, many thanks for your time here in DC. It is of vital importance that we hear musical writers of our time.
P.S. Any idea when 'City Noir' is to be released on a commercial recording?

It's small consolation via this Internet comment, well outside any sort of real conversation, but: Please know at least that the fruits of your time in Washington should make the "jagged edge" seem worthwhile.

1. You led the National Symphony Orchestra through a reading of the Enigma Variations, of which there is no shortage for audiences, but it sounded fresh and well-tempered. This is the sort of work that earns well the tears it wells up (unless the audience gets soaked in melodrama, which didn't let happen).

2. You led some very young all-stars, called the Conservatory Project Chamber Ensemble, through your masterful Chamber Symphony in a whiz-bang performance that left me speechless. (Probably for you, too.) If I'm ever anxious about "the future of classical music," I'll remember that performance in the Terrace Theatre - and will chill out.

3. Without any pretension of my own in saying so (and presuming none from you in that moment), I did sense the weight of the world on your shoulders during those final minutes of your Doctor Atomic Symphony. This was the most emotional moment during your visit. In response to future acts of terrorism, warfare and genocide, our society will lug out mournful elegies as we always do (and you conducted one of them, Barber's Adagio for Strings) - but, ownership of the monsters we create is the truest sorrow of all.

Treasure these memories, rather like we treasured your concerts in Washington. And, know that your every move was noted, admired, printed and blogged, from the major sources like the Washington Post, to smaller sources like mine:

http://www.dcartsbeat.com/2010/05/john-adams-free-concert-in-terrace.html

http://www.dcartsbeat.com/2010/05/composer-john-adams-conducts-national.html

Please come back soon! (Perhaps the Washington National Opera finally will muster the courage to mount The Death of Klinghoffer or Doctor Atomic in this wildly P.C. town.)

I suppose this will be my 'poke-him-to-see-if-he-bleeds' moment, but I must say Mr. Adams, your orchestral music has had an incredibly profound influence on my undergraduate composition career and what I believe modern music can be.

This post particularly hit home with me because I have just flown out to Berkeley to take classes at the UC campus for the next six weeks. I have never been this far away from home before and I must say that right now, the last thing I think I could do is sit down at a piano, summon up the mental acumen necessary, and compose anything!

Touched by the post from H Paul Moon here that so celebrates you and what you gave out to the world in Washington.
Sometimes, like with your music - words fail me - and on reading Mr Moon's comment I am left stirred and quiet....
I don't agree with some of the other comments that you never really start with 'nothing' (because there are always influences ringing everywhere...) I think for many true creatives there IS a process of being with the nothingness - for a while.
Even if it's just for a flash... and that requires a deep returning to you, deep down - and finding what's alive now. It's a stopping point. And that is incredibly hard when everything about the public domain is about flow and engagement.
Maybe it's easier to stay in the public domain? You could never write another note and still lead a fulfilling life as a conductor...? But you're not that kind of animal.
The jagged edge is the nettle you grasp to keep your souls journey balanced, I venture to suggest. It has to jar - because that ache is the echo of human suffering which keeps your heart beating with care, and passion for life! Like your music.

It's not easy.

Changing gear from the public to the private is well described by Jason as a process of decompression. A two week zero-out zone might be a good idea! Let them wait for you - whoever they are.
I would suggest - not so much rolling news and a mini bar - but (probably a girl thing) pampering - massage, swimming -
movies, hiking.. with close friends and family...things for you to reinvigorate you.
You gave soul out to the world just now... it needs time, not so much to decompress maybe, - but to grow strong again, as it always does...

Your 'intensely engaged with others' photo made me laugh and laugh. I mean Maestro that was your most serious moment. Hilarious in this context :-))

Suck it up, JA, and get to work. There's music to compose.

My " jagged Edge " comes not from when I've stopped living the " Public " life but rather when I enter it .

More than once I've bemoaned that fact that Lighthouse Keeper is no longer a viable profession . Is that strange for one who is a composer/performer/teacher ? Probably .

So its the " entering" into the " Public "life . The transition from Introvert to Extrovert where my problem lies . And I've yet to find a less painful way around it .

Ah but I suppose we all have our hills to climb . And that "Jagged Edge " is bound to hit us all in one form or another . I guess its a testament to mans adaptability that in spite of it all we do tend to carry on .

I visited Jung's house in Bollingen in '73. Well, actually I climbed over the fence and took some pictures. No one was there. I never got inside.

http://www.rchrd.com/photo/archives/2006/01/cg_jungs_house.html

It was a very peaceful place, then.

I think we all need a place to retreat to. Civilization doesn't provide that easily.

Often I think I'm ready to retreat into a cave. Only to be pulled back by the thought of a good meal, or the company of friends. That's the tragic quandary.

Give our best to Sam!

I never thought of this kind of rift between the public and private lives. I've been given much more than my fair share of food for thought and I thank you for that, Mr. Adams.

From one who will begin college in a few months, my biggest congratulations go to Sam!

Some may have no choice but to adapt to the jagged edges in order to create. So they develop the habit of moving from public to private existence.

Circumstances, obligations and lack of funds force some to create in noisy, public spaces. Physical seclusion is a challenge. They rely on mental seclusion just like the Dalai Lama does.

Jazz artists jam. Is that a public existence or private one? Or have they merged into one? Charismatic Duke Ellington's muse was the public, Harlem, the A Train, etc. He seemed to always be in the creative mode.

I agree with Richard G, every "creative personality is different." People learn, choose or are forced to adapt if their passion is to create.

Congratulations to your son!

I'm having trouble figuring out how to get in contact with you, so I thought I would try this. I am currently writing a book about Betty Freeman and her impact on 20th century music. Would you mind contacting me at some point when you have a moment? PS..I love this blog!

Suture the crack between a repeated trope and contextual language: invent, yes; forget, never—our history is a plague but also our vocabulary. Let us speak, but let the utterance be of the eternal familiar new. Who does this better than you? No one.

The grass is always greener....if you're happy with what you come up with then returning to being "sociable" can seem just um really dull...(oh cripes, i have to mingle harmoniously) and then when you're having a brilliant time "out there" returning to the certainity of graft can seem daunting. It's a D H Lawrence one - the birds are not self conscious when they sing....whether alone or in the crowd. I'm "attempting" to aaargh "compose" and am equally thrilled and horrified by the attempts to make music i come up with - oh dear, I need a complete set of musical gardening tools to cope with what seems to be sprouting...and trust that your intuition will make the right decision as you prune and adjust and grope and howl.
It's a cliche but still a good one - i used to play lego as a child and make spaceship after spaceship in a kind of happy production line without even thinkng about it. I'd see other kids' spaceships and go, hmm, too many wings there. (I can't believe I used to think things like that as a seven year old) And I absolutely had to have ALL the pieces of lego in their shape categories spread out on the floor in order so I could make rapid constructional decisions. So if people don't like my musical spaceships.....just make another one! What I'm slowly learning to do (with the help of my computer) is look at music scores and use the same principles to construct them. So I find that quite exciting, and try not to get to jittery about it - well I can always do another one. What amazes me being self taught is how composers of the past could fully imagine a symphony with only a piano to help them - no midi mock ups for them! I look at the score of Harmonium and go - how did he imagine it in that detail without a detailed mock up - how could you fully imagine how the celesta and the strings and the woodwinds interlock like that? Kind of amazing to me. (I am working on my inner metronome) And proves the importance of a score if you want to make big musical spaceships! I suppose shaping the emotional arc of a genuine musical experence is a little more involved than playing lego, but there you go!(drifting off the topic here, probably into a spiral galaxy) It's also great now that there are so many inspirational performances on You Tube - if you're feeling low, check 'em out! In the absence of college seminars, I study (for example) the interplay of the musicians in Beethoven Quartets to find out what physical exertions are required to pull off what Beethoven had written, which is more exciting than just reading the score while listening (And that can be exciting enough as it is.) It's all pretty amazing to me.
In the absense of all that, having nothing else to do can be quite useful.
(Apologies for this long email)
In t

When I think of the "move back and forth between a public and private life, between other-oriented, highly social interaction on the one hand, and the intense, almost hermetic solitude of creative activity on the other", I almost instantly think of Lenny Bernstein. I often wonder how much more music he could have written had he not had to deal with that "decompression" stage after being in the public eye for so long... and like you said, he did "opt for staying out there in the public realm longer and longer" as he got older...

where you can buy the best watch at lowest price?

some friends tell me the watches from the web http://www.rolexclassic.com/ have good quality and their service is the best

What do you think? Have you ever gone to the web?what do you think of it?