Adams is perhaps the most important and distinguished American composer of our time. Many critics hail him as the clear successor to the mantle of Aaron Copland, and they have ample reason to do so. One respected writer deemed him “ . . . the exemplary American composer,” dismissing the music of Samuel Barber as too “genteel,” that of Charles Ives as too “ornery,” Bernstein’s as too “inconsistent,” and Elliot Carter’s as too “ugly.” No American composer of the last quarter century or so has composed so many significant works, so well received by both critics and the broader audiences, as has he. He was born and raised in Massachusetts, educated at Harvard University, and has spent his time since living, composing, and teaching in and near San Francisco.
Earlier in his career he was pigeonholed as a “minimalist,” along with Terry Riley and Charles Reich, but he has enrichened and broadened his compositional style considerably since those early days in the 1970s in the Bay Area. He eschews the “systems” of composition so rigidly characteristic of academic composers of the post-war period, rather drawing upon an eclectic variety of musical resources. He was raised in a family that valued big band music as well as Mozart, and he played in a marching band as a teenager. He was a substitute clarinet player in the Boston Symphony, and continues to conduct on an occasional basis.
His music is founded thoroughly in a deep respect for the great variety of human experience in our culture, viewed through the prism of a nuanced intellectuality—not unlike Copland. And in the same way, his music is popular. He is perhaps best known for his opera, Nixon in China, given its première by the Houston Grand Opera in 1987. He can be controversial: witness the firestorm surrounding his opera about the hijacking of the cruise ship, Achille Lauro, The Death of Klinghoffer (1990), which many critics found anti-Semitic. His recent opera, Doctor Atomic, is about Robert Oppenheimer and the events leading to the first test of the atomic bomb. He was honored with a commission by the New York Philharmonic to compose The Transmigration of Souls for its first anniversary observance of the events of 9/11 in 2002. That work was universally hailed for its sensitivity to personal loss without the bathos of political and patriotic excess.
Short Ride in a Fast Machine was commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and was given its première in 1986, and subsequently has become one the most performed of recent orchestral compositions. It’s considered a fanfare, and most suitably fulfills that rôle in orchestra programs, but it demonstrably is of a different sort than the usual piece so titled. Rather than the familiar stentorian brass gestures and block harmonies of typical “fanfares,” Adams’ work is an exercise in a driving perpetual motion that almost imperceptibly and gradually changes rhythms and harmonies as it zips along. There are no “big tunes” here, and their absence almost forces one to pay careful attention to the subtleties of the work’s evolving rhythmic and harmonic changes. Stylistically, Short Ride in a Fast Machine is derived from the “minimalism” of well-known advocates of that musical technique, such as Terry Riley and Steve Reich, but Adams uses the technique as a basis for a more varied and dramatic approach.
The work is divided into four discrete sections (the wood block signals the divisions), driven throughout by a rhythmic ostinato. The relentless repetition of the constant pulse carries a long, series of harmonies that gradually—almost imperceptibly evolve. Not just “change” but, like shadings in a watercolor, subtly and smoothly—note by note—evolve into different sets of pitches. It’s a favorite technique of the composer, and is mirrored in the rhythms that carry the insistent texture along. As in the little collections of pitches that make up the motives and harmonies, the rhythms subtly change and evolve, as well—it’s really the whole basis of the work. That is, in a composition that lasts only a few minutes and which initially seems to be a boring sameness of musical elements, the listener soon must listen more closely to the panoply of a fascinating constantly changing texture of complicated subtleties of pitch and rhythm. It’s a whole new way of composing and requires a whole new way of listening for most folks. And Adams is rightly lauded for his mastery and innovations in the style. It’s a striking way to open a concert and an easy introduction to the musical style of one of the luminaries of the new generation of composers.
–Wm. E. Runyan
©2025 William E. Runyan