On the Transmigration of Souls

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
This is the first recording of Adams's On the Transmigration of Souls (which won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in music), by the orchestra and conductor that commissioned and premiered it. Adams grips from the start, with a slow buildup of taped mundane city sounds, the obsessively repeated word "missing" superimposed on them. The taped texts are drawn from fragments found on missing person posters, newspaper memorials, and the names of victims of the 9/11 attack. Sometimes the taped voices dominate; at others, the chorus intones the texts; the orchestra an ever-present commentator, its impressionistic harmonies fulfilling Adams’ description of creating a "memory space" where each listener can find a personal response to the events. The orchestra erupts in an overwhelming climax after the words "I wanted to dig him out," managing, in a brief passage, to encompass anger, deep grief, and the enormity of the tragedy. Then it subsides into a long, slow decrescendo overlaid by the quiet recitation of names, as if the souls of the title hover over us. Adams has created music for his time and place that fulfills music's ability to move us. --Dan Davis

On the Transmigration of Souls, Music, John Adams, Lorin Maazel, New York Philharmonic, Choral, Choral Music, Classical, Classical Composers, Classical Crossover, Minimalism, Orchestral & Symphonic

Average customer rating:

John Adams - Talentless, Opportunistic Hack

A New Requiem

A RIP-OFF CD

A very definite miss.....

It finished playing and I couldn't move...

On the Transmigration of Souls
John Adams , Lorin Maazel , and New York Philharmonic
Manufacturer: Nonesuch
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: B0002JNLNM
Release Date: 2004-08-31

Tracks:

On The Transmigration Of Souls

Amazon.com

This is the first recording of Adams's On the Transmigration of Souls (which won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in music), by the orchestra and conductor that commissioned and premiered it. Adams grips from the start, with a slow buildup of taped mundane city sounds, the obsessively repeated word "missing" superimposed on them. The taped texts are drawn from fragments found on missing person posters, newspaper memorials, and the names of victims of the 9/11 attack. Sometimes the taped voices dominate; at others, the chorus intones the texts; the orchestra an ever-present commentator, its impressionistic harmonies fulfilling Adams' description of creating a "memory space" where each listener can find a personal response to the events. The orchestra erupts in an overwhelming climax after the words "I wanted to dig him out," managing, in a brief passage, to encompass anger, deep grief, and the enormity of the tragedy. Then it subsides into a long, slow decrescendo overlaid by the quiet recitation of names, as if the souls of the title hover over us. Adams has created music for his time and place that fulfills music's ability to move us. --Dan Davis

Customer Reviews:

John Adams - Talentless, Opportunistic Hack.......2007-03-25

I attended a performance of Adams' work last night at the Atlanta Symphony. Adam's conducted. I will never again spend a dollar to hear any work composed or conducted by John Adams, "America's most esteemed composer".

My question is why? Why is this man considered so brilliant? His music lacks any sense of musicality, rhythm, timing, melody, and is utterly devoid of emotion.

A more honest and accurate description of his compositions would be "a mishmash of disparate noises".

His Violin concerto was akin to listening to a power drill for 45 minutes, despite a valiant effort by the astonishingly talented Midori Ito.

"On the Transmigration of Souls". The ONLY reason this symphony won the Pulitzer Prize for Music was the subject matter. Adams simply happened to be the ONLY composer who submitted a musical tribute to the fallen. He had no competition because the NSO commissioned him to do the piece. The NSO knew that the guilt people feel over this horrific event would prevent anyone from honestly appraising his work. He knew he had a golden opportunity to elevate his own myth and it worked.

Which is exactly the point ... Adams is an opportunist and he used the tragedy of 9-11 as a context to create a piece of noisy 'musical' garbage that would fall outside the realm of honest criticism.

In other words, it won simply because NOONE had the courage to stand up and say "this really s***s" ... because criticizing "Transmigration" would be akin to criticizing the victims of 9-11.

Transmigration is simply awful. Pandering to the lowest common impulse to evoke emotion ... by having children read the names of people who died, a choir belting out some of the most insipid and uninspiring lyrics that HAPPENED to be phrases taken from signs around the site and topping it off with sound effects of ambulance sirens? Come on. This is not cathartic, it's pandering to people's guilt and emotion.

That said, there was nothing even remotely emotional or stirring about this piece. It was, for me, a man who nearly lost three friends that day, an absolute affront to people I care for.

A final point: If Adams' music is so difficult to play that the composer has to be present to orchestrate the work ... the work isn't very well written.

Adams music will never stand the test of time and our greatest living American composer will be regarded as the untalented hack he is. "New Music" isn't new or musical, but rather an excuse for people to praise a genre for not living up to the excellence of symphonic predecessors.

Let me be the first to say that simply because a symphony was written to honor the dead of 9-11 does not make it worthy of the souls who died, nor does using a fancy title to describe what he should have simply named "9-11".

A New Requiem.......2007-03-25

A few days after 9/11...the first day I was able to watch images on TV ...I sat down with the set on, the sound turned down and Mozart's "Requiem" on the stereo. While I cannot compare Adams to Mozart, listening to "On the Transmigration of Souls" also gave me a sense of permission to grieve, as well as a sense of hope, as that great "Requiem" can. I do love Adams' work, and the sound layering here is quite effective when applied to the reading of names and posters, the reduntant word "Missing", and the music. When I listen to this CD, I feel like I'm in the city in 2001, reading flyer after flyer stacked one upon another, seeing the shrines made up of flowers and photographs.

Once again, however, the piece is not meant to imply despair, but a grief that gives way to hope, as the title implies--souls migrating, perhaps from this earth to a better place.

A RIP-OFF CD.......2007-02-24

I LIKE JOHN ADAMS' MUSIC VERY MUCH, BUT HAD NOTICED THAT SOME OF HIS RECORDINGS WERE HEFTY IN PRICE AND QUITE SHORT ON THE AMOUNT OF MUSIC ONE GETS FOR THE MONEY. THIS RECORD IS A PERFECT EXAMPLE. WHAT YOU GET IS A PIECE OF MUSIC THAT SEEMS TO BE OVER BEFORE IT HAS REALLY STARTED. MOREOVER, FRANKLY, IT IS NOT HIS BEST. IT SOUNDS CONTRIVED AND, WELL, COMMISSIONED. I'D SAY SKIP THIS ONE AND BUY THE DEATH OF KLINGHOFFER!

A very definite miss............2006-12-27

First and foremost, any CD offered at a list price of $13.99 and containing 24 minutes of music is a poor value, no matter what the contents. The opening of On The....is intriguing and might have worked if Adams had stuck with the pleasing simplicity. But instead, he attempts to reach for the moon, and misses handily. Everything is thrown in but the kitchen sink, including incredibly dissonant writing which has nothing to do compositionally with what came earlier, and sticks out as merely being a "stunt". As a matter of fact the work as a whole is extremely self-conscious. The Wound Dresser portrays the same emotions with a minimum of notes and is a true Masterpiece. This is definitely lesser Adams, the same tired "tricks" which have now become wearisome. I'm glad none of my friends names are mentioned because this piece is really an embarrassment to music, and to those who perished in 911. A smarmy, disjointed mess, one can't help but wonder what the people who awarded the Pulitzer Prize were thinking...but then, what work that has won the Pulitzer Prize in the last 25 years has lasted? Hmmm.....

It finished playing and I couldn't move..........2006-11-16

There have been many who have slashed this recording in the reviews on this page. People claim that it's 25 minutes of unmusical noise from the orchestra behind a bunch of reading of names. People claim it's too soon to write pieces about the 9/11 tragedy. If all of this is true, then I would like to ask why it recieved a Pulitzer Prize. Either the Pulitzer Prize committe members have lost their marbles, or the negative reviewers are missing the point. I believe the latter to be true. In response to people who think it's too soon to write pieces about the 9/11 tragedy, I would just like to say that the piece was commissioned by the NYSO. So, they obviously didn't believe it was too early. The whole point of art is to respond to things that are happening around us, and with a tragic event like 9/11, we use art to cope with those tragedies. So no, it's never too early to respond to current events with art. September 10th, 2001 was too early.

I have a feeling that those who complain about the actual music in the piece do not regularly listen to contemporary classical music and simply don't know how to appreciate it. John Adams primarily composes with the intent on creating rich colorful musical atmospheres, not melodies. I find the sonorities and soundscapes in this piece to be incredibly beautiful and they fit well with the conceptual ideas put forth by John Adams as the pieces premise. This is music for the new millenium. It's about depicting emotion and ideas through the abstract medium as music. There isn't a way to concretely depict ideas through music. Music is not a concrete artform. I find this piece to be incredibly moving and don't understand how people can't appreciate this. People talk about how this work is offending, but I don't believe the members of the NYSO who commissioned the work were very offended. They wanted it to be written and I salute John Adams for taking on such a daunting task as writing a tribute to the victims of 9/11.

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