John Adams on Composing and Creative Freedom

Episode Summary

Executive Summary: Tyler Cowen interviews John Adams about his new opera Antony and Cleopatra, his compositional process, and his artistic philosophy. Adams stresses drama, accessibility, and reinvention over stylistic branding, contrasting his approach with serialism and much contemporary classical music. He also discusses influences ranging from popular music and Christianity to film, conductors, and American musical life.

Main Topics: Antony and Cleopatra and operatic adaptation (Priority: 5/5): Adams explains how he turned Shakespeare’s sprawling, political, and intimate tragedy into a fast-moving musical drama focused on interpersonal relationships and older love. Accessibility versus avant-garde modernism (Priority: 5/5): He rejects serialism/12-tone aesthetics as alienating and argues music should communicate emotionally, drawing more from pop, jazz, and song traditions than academic modernism. Process, craftsmanship, and performance variability (Priority: 4/5): Adams emphasizes that composing is labor-intensive and that scores are recipes that change with each performance, making interpretation central to classical music. Religion, biblical themes, and memory spaces (Priority: 4/5): He describes how Christian imagery and biblical narratives inform works like Christian Zeal and Activity, El Niño, and On the Transmigration of Souls through archetype, ritual, and memorial form. Influences, collaborators, and performers (Priority: 4/5): Adams discusses key interpreters such as Lila Josefowicz, Philip Glass, and Robert Ashley, and how distinctive performers shape the life of his music. American musical identity and cultural context (Priority: 3/5): He reflects on the place of American classical music, San Francisco’s role in his career, and the broader dominance of popular culture in the U.S. Film, media, and listening habits (Priority: 3/5): Adams expresses frustration with film scoring and modern information overload, while noting selective admiration for cinema and particular uses of his music.

Key Arguments: Opera should condense Shakespeare by focusing on the emotional relationships rather than trying to reproduce every plot complication. Classical music is not a fixed object; each performance re-creates the work and can reveal new meanings through different performers and conductors. Adams deliberately avoids branding himself or repeating a single style; each piece should be different from the last. His musical language is shaped more by popular singers and songwriters than by English-language classical vocal traditions. Modernist serialism and 12-tone writing produced a legacy of alienation that still discourages audiences from approaching new music. Religion in his work is less doctrinal than archetypal: biblical stories function as symbols of fundamental human experiences. On the Transmigration of Souls was conceived as a memorial “memory space,” using fragments of text and names to hold grief rather than narrate it. Successful performance depends heavily on the musician; Adams often writes with specific artists in mind and values the rebirth they bring to a score.

Data Points: Years spent on Antony and Cleopatra: about 4 years - Adams says he handled libretto, vocal writing, sketching, instrumentation, and score preparation over roughly four years. Length of Collected Works box set: about 40 compact discs and 1 Blu-ray - Tyler mentions the box set of Nixon in China-related works. Historical setting of Antony and Cleopatra: around 30 BC - Adams dates the opera’s story in the late Roman period. Approximate age of Cleopatra in the opera: early to mid 30s - Adams estimates Cleopatra’s age based on the historical period. Approximate age of Antony in the opera: about 10 years older than Cleopatra - Adams gives a rough age difference between the two leads. Year after 9/11 performance for On the Transmigration of Souls: exactly one year later - The New York Philharmonic commissioned it to be performed one year after September 11. Short Ride in a Fast Machine length: 4 minutes - Adams recommends it as an accessible entry point into his music. Number of major violin works for Lila Josefowicz: 4 major works - He says she has played four major works of his, one written specifically for her. Strings in Dharma at Big Sur: 6 strings - He describes the electric violin used in the piece.

Pivotal Quotes: "we're really mostly focused on the interpersonal relationships" — John Adams: Explaining how Antony and Cleopatra becomes operatic despite its sprawling Shakespearean plot. "What I never want to do is brand myself" — John Adams: Describing his commitment to stylistic variety across his works. "music should be essentially an act of communication" — John Adams: Critiquing the overly complex, laboratory-like tendencies of some modernist composition.

Implications: The conversation frames Adams as a composer of communicative, performance-centered music who resists academic orthodoxy. Listeners get both a guide to his catalog and a larger case for accessibility, interpretation, and human drama in contemporary classical music.