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John Adams Talks Beethoven with NPR’s Deceptive Cadence

Matthew Sedlar on November 27, 2015
John Adams (Photo by Deborah O' Grady)
John Adams | Deborah O' Grady

In an interview with NPR Classical’s deceptive cadence, composer John Adams discussed his obsession with Beethoven and how it inspired Grand Pianola Music and the more-recent Absolute Jest. The two works, both recorded and recently released by the San Francisco Symphony under its in-house label SFS Media, contain what Adams called “little harmonic fragments, like fractals, from Beethoven” reinterpreted with his own musical personality.

He told NPR that the experiment was actually inspired by Stravinsky:

I heard a performance of the wonderful ballet by Stravinsky called Pulcinella, and in Pulcinella, Stravinsky's manager, Diaghilev, suggested that he take very old Baroque music and put it through the machine of Stravinsky's musical personality and I was inspired by that idea. So, I took very, very small melodic fragments from some of my favorite Beethoven.

Listen to the entire interview here.