When I listen to John Adams' I hear unbridled joy, and infectious excitement. I'm not sure whether that's what the composer wanted me to hear when he wrote it. The clue is probably in the title, for sure. Even so, my impression of Adams is that he's so cool that if asked on the question, he would say that he'd be happy whatever the reaction is to his music.
It is an exhilerating curtain-raiser. Right from the get-go it gets cracking. It's for everyone, but be sure to hold on tight. This number will be over in a flash of technical mastery. (Note to anyone composing music: conclude seven minutes of high octane multi-layered music with three unexpected chords and I will, I promise you, play it again and again and again - or demand the orchestra on stage does. Oh and be sure there's a pseudo click-track running all the way through, with plenty of syncopation too.) 听
Short Ride In A Fast Machine by John Adams
I once worked on a film for the 成人论坛 Proms website with former Radio 3 presenter Tommy Pearson. We visited my former school where I wanted to try out an experiment. Under the guises of the school's blazer-clad music teacher, I played a selection of extracts of classical music which I had grown to love over the years. I deliberately didn't tell them the title, but asked them once they'd heard the extract what they thoughts and feelings of it were.
My list was a little on the ambitious side. Strauss' Festival Prelude ('it makes me think I'm getting up in the morning'), Benjamin Britten's Old Abram Brown ('spooky' and 'it sounds a bit strange with out any background music'), an extract from Arthur Bliss' Colour Symphony, 'Goodnight' from Britten's Lucretia听 and Danny Elfman's brilliant Simpson's theme tune. Prokofiev's Dance of the Knights (described in glowing terms by the group as 'The Apprentice Theme Tune') also made it to the playlist, so too the Hallelujah chorus (dismissed as 'old people music' and 'a bit repetitive' by some the children in the class).听
I find a little painful to watch now. There are some edits I'd probably remove now and like my mother said repeatedly to me after she鈥檇 seen it, I really wish I had shaved before filming got underway. That said, the shot with the kids processing into the classroom still makes me beam with a reasonable amount of pride because we did it in one take and I'd thought about that for weeks beforehand. I think it just about hangs together five years later. Just.
The overriding memory of that day (one session with two classes) was how completely into the music this special audience was. They may not have liked everything (and in the final analysis it was the loud fast music which pulled in the top votes), but they were totally engaged in proceedings. I got something from that 鈥� a sense of relief perhaps, not just for the end product I was working on with Tommy, but because it seemed to me that contrary to what I was thinking at the time, classical music wasn鈥檛 lost on a younger audience after all.
The room we filmed in was the same room I learnt to play the clarinet in twenty five years before when I was at school there. The room directly above I sat in a similar class with my music teachers and was introduced to Danse Macabre, Camille Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals, and Britten's Young Person's Guide. Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition also made an appearance in its orchestral version and, thanks to the passions of one of my class music teachers Victor Scott, Emerson, Lake and Palmer's prog-rock setting. My preference to this day is still on the latter.听
These evocative works momentarily unified me and my contemporaries. We didn't just listen to the music, but embarked on project work inspired by the music itself. Some wrote stories, others drew pictures. Some even formed their own percussion ensembles to create a present-day take on the music they'd just listened to. Thirty-odd years later, it is this music which helps recall happy memories of participatory music-making from school.
That's partly why Tony Hall's announcement around Ten Pieces has resonated with me. First, it's reminded me of a piece of video I got a chance to produce with someone who was happy to take a chance on a slightly left-field idea and see what happened. But it also reminds me how my ingenious music teachers (thanks Miss Tute and Mssrs Recknell, Bradbury, Scott and Turton) used music as a starting point rather than an endpoint. That experience still lingers. It's what inspired the video twenty-five years later and in part has helped make music what I know will be a life-long companion.听
What I'm also left with is a sense of excitement. In my mind I picture groups of primary school children being introduced to the music in the Ten Pieces list for the very first time, and I wonder what there reaction will be to hearing - perhaps - this music for the first time. I think back to the first time I heard Adams' Short Ride in a Fast Machine: three years ago when I went to see friends in San Francisco on holiday shortly before I took up the role at the 成人论坛 I have now. One hearing - the first - defined a moment in time.听
I had taken a long time to get to Short听搁颈诲别 (Adams wrote the piece in 1986). As it happens, I dismissing Tommy Pearson's suggestion we include it on the playlist for the Proms video to the children we were working with because "the playlist is already quite long and I don't want to have too much editing to do". So that first time hearing it - in the splendour of Sans Francisco Symphony Hall back in September 2011 - with an excited audience, was a powerful experience.
It's only now as I write this I realise that the recording I've been listening to of this brilliant showpiece ever since, was a recording of that very performance.听听 out for the audience at the end. I was there.听
Jon Jacob is Editor, About the 成人论坛 Blog and website.
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