Harmonielehre | Short Ride in a Fast Machine

When musicians see the title Harmonielehre, their minds leap to the daunting treatise written by Arnold Schoenberg in 1910-11 and dedicated to the memory of Gustav Mahler. All composers since then have been Schoenberg’s pupils, in a sense, whether they have embraced or rejected his principles. John Adams was fascinated by Schoenberg as he was coming of age, though in the end he would rebel against Schoenberg’s non-tonal precepts. This ebullient fortyminute symphony, proudly rooted in tonal harmony, meshes the poignant sentiment of Mahler’s sunset Romanticism with the exciting rhythms and timbral vividness of 1970s Minimalism. Wrote Adams: “It was a piece serious in its expressiveness, and the explosive energies and bright colors that inhabit its three movements do not strike me as anything other than the product of that particular time and place. If the work is a parody, it is a parody made lovingly and entirely without irony.” —James M. Keller, excerpt from liner notes