An early instance of this ‘post-Minimalism’ is his thrilling fanfare for orchestra, Short Ride in a Fast Machine. He found a very different set of cultural symbols at Harvard and sought to reconcile popular and avant-garde musical languages, resulting in a ‘Minimalist’ style of small motivic fragments that shift subtly, sometimes almost imperceptibly, as the music evolves.Īdams’s development of Minimalist techniques has sometimes been called ‘post-Minimalist’ on account of his combination of these devices with popular elements and other techniques. If people want to make a point, they reach for a reference.’ Adams’s own points of reference grew out of a home in which there was no record player until he was 10 and no television but his parents were musicians, and Adams was familiar with big-band swing and Broadway musicals. ‘When we communicate, we point to symbols that we have in common. ‘I like to think of culture as the symbols that we share to understand each other,’ says American composer John Adams.
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