The Fredösphere

Why do we read a composer's biography? I know I'm supposed to appreciate each composer's body of work as an artifact utterly divorced from its context, but close readers of the Fredösphere (hi Mom!) already know I take a dim view of that Absolute Music mentality. The fact is, each composer's bio I've ever read has helped me enormously in understanding music. Intent is revealed, and a sympathy is built that gives me the motivation I need for close listening.

Fine. But that leads to another question: what about composer autobiography? John Adams has written his, called Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life, and I feel a strange curiosity: if you can write music really, really well, why turn to prose?

It all turns on the composer's abilities as a self-observer, and a prose stylist. It's likely most of my readers (hi, Aunt Virginia!) understand music composition, self-awareness, and writing prose are three nearly-orthogonal vectors. Granted that John Adams' life is worth studying, it does not follow that John Adams is necessarily the best guide to John Adams' life and work.

Well, I can say at the least the prose is no problem. Adams expresses himself very well, negotiating the shoals of a family with more than its fair share of, uh, colorful characters. (The Adams family produces bohemians, most of whom have little talent for making a living.) I admire the delicacy with which Adams describes his formative years, and the environment his parents created for him to develop as an artist and a man.

Someone—was it C. S. Lewis?—has opined that the first chapters of any biography are always the most interesting. Certainly they are there to answer the question, where did this strange, remarkable, miraculous personality come from? Yet, I don't think we get that question answered here. At some point John Adams begins playing a clarinet (his father's instrument) and very soon, he's the concertmaster of the local wind ensemble, outplaying his fellows 4 or more times his age. Modesty, or something else, prevents him from digging deeper into this mystery: why do some kids take to an instrument like a dog to a bone and worry wonderful music out of it?

Labels: Composer