Wayfinding in John Luther Adams's "For Lou Harrison"

Wayfinding in John Luther Adams's For Lou Harrison SEVERAL YEARS AGO MY WIFE HAD A VISITING PROFESSORSHIP in Central Pennsylvania. As a break, we went to a Country Fair to see its amusement park rides, livestock and large vegetables. I have never been a fan of amusement park rides; while I have ridden a roller coaster here and there, to put itmildly, I've never found it to be a very pleasant experience. At this carnival, I climbed aboard one of those pendulum pirate ships. Perhaps you've been on one; the ship rocks back and forth, higher and higher with each swing before reaching the top. At that point it either flips over, giving a moment of weighdessness, or else slowly starts tomake smaller and smaller arcs before setding again at its bottom. My experience of the ride began pleasandy enough, but as it continued and itsprocess became clear I became more and more disori ented; I'm told I turned white and clutched my hands tighdy. After the highpoint of the arc, I could relax slighdy knowing that the ridewould Todd Tarantino John Luther Adams's for Lou Harrison 197 soon be over. Eventually the process ended (none too soon) and I told myself Iwould never ride a pirate ship again. On board, my strategywas clear: I had to grin and bear the process until it reached its conclusion: my discomfort level rising and falling in relation to the process. Nonetheless, because the process was predictable, therewas no sense of guessing the ship's next move, as one might do on a roller coaster, or next environment, as might happen in Disney's far less traumaticMister Toad's Wild Ride. On the pirate ship, I endured. It strikesme that a lot of process music takes its listeners for a pirate ship ride, and sometimes it is as hard to leave a concert hall as it is a pirate ship. In music such as Ligeti's Poeme Symphonique, Reich's Piano Phase or Pendulum Music, or Boulez's Structures, Book One, the sonority at any given moment is as much a function of an overriding system as any other musical parameter. Process and algorithm are especially conspicuous in the work of John Luther Adams, from early compositions such as his "Sonic Geography of the Arctic" from Earth and theGreat Weather (1990-1993) to his recent memorial tributefor Lou Harrison (2003). These are compositions that present a texture or several alternating textures with little or no harmonic activity, whose moment-to-moment sonorities are guided by number and algorithm. Their mechanics are not too difficult to discern, but to move beyond their surface, there are fewmodels for the listener or analyst. EXAMPLE 1: ADAMS IN THE BROOKS RANGE OF ALASKA. ABOVE HIS HEAD IS AN AEOLIAN HARP. 198 PerspectivesofNew Music In this paper, I will begin by peering under the hood of John Luther Adams's for Lou Harrison to demonstrate itsmechanics. Having done so, I will propose amodel for perception and analysis based on Adams's conception of "Music as Place," and finish by exploring thismetaphor in the context of Adams's work as a whole and for Lou Harrison in particular. John Luther Adams, not to be confused with his contemporary John Coolidge Adams, the composer of Nixon in China, was born in 1953. His standard biography tends tomention his experience as a drummer in various 1960s eraNew Jersey rock bands before he became interested in the music of Varese, Feldman and others based on their being mentioned on the back of a Frank Zappa LP. After studying with Jim Tenney for a few years at California Institute for the Arts and then taking a string of odd jobs?a librarian and organic farmer in Georgia for instance?he moved toAlaska, where he currently lives in the boreal forest outside of Fairbanks.1 Adams has steadfastly clung to his adopted home, seeking inmany instances to create amusic that reflects the place inwhich itwas made. In so doing, Adams doesn't aim to illustrate or narrativize Alaska, though one can certainly hear "Alaska" in thework, but rather tries to transform Alaska into music, using the alchemical notion of...