ADAMS Transmigration of Souls NONESUCH 7559 79816 2 [JQ]: Classical CD Reviews- October 2004 MusicWeb(UK) (musicweb-international.com)
I was most interested to read the composer's comment, quoted by Jaap, in which John Adams refers to a "cathedral-like feeling". That's a very apposite remark as far as I'm concerned because in 2011 I attended a very successful performance of the work in a cathedral - Worcester Cathedral. On that occasion the physical space and the acoustic contributed very significantly. I reviewed the concert for Seen and Heard
Three Choirs Festival 2011 (2) – A dignified and moving commemoration of 9/11 – Seen and Heard International (seenandheard-international.com)
In his review, John Quinn writes: "The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines the verb transmigrate as: "(Of soul) pass into, become incarnate in, a different body." So, it seems to me that perhaps Adams is suggesting in his title that the victims of 9/11 have truly "moved on". But there’s more to the work than this. In a recent article in Gramophone magazine the composer had this to say: "I wanted a cathedral-like feeling: you’re aware that hundreds of years’ of souls have passed through the building but there isn’t any grief or the horrible stabbing pain of having lost someone. It’s not about the dead. It’s about the survivors. It’s about those who were left behind to struggle with the obscene incongruity of it all"".
Today, I came across an interview with Adams from 2002 in which he says: "I want to avoid words like “requiem” or “memorial” when describing this piece because they too easily suggest conventions that this piece doesn’t share. If pressed, I’d probably call the piece a “memory space”. It’s a place where you can go and be alone with your thoughts and emotions. The link to a particular historical event–in this case to 9/11–is there if you want to contemplate it. But I hope that the piece will summon human experience that goes beyond this particular event. “Transmigration” means “the movement from one place to another” or “the transition from one state of being to another.” It could apply to populations of people, to migrations of species, to changes of chemical compositon, or to the passage of cells through a membrane. But in this case I mean it to imply the movement of the soul from one state to another. And I don’t just mean the transition from living to dead, but also the change that takes place within the souls of those that stay behind, of those who suffer pain and loss and then themselves come away from that experience transformed". You can read the complete text of the interview on https://www.earbox.com/on-the-transmigration-of-souls/ . According to the Earbox website, which is about John Adams, "This interview was originally posted on the New York Philharmonic web site in September of 2002".
Regards, Jaap.
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