John Adams's Blog

The Mills students clustered around him reverentially, and all spoke in the same manner, carefully aping his hushed, ironically bemused tone. It was impossible not be drawn in, as Bob was both gentle and agreeable, and he maintained an enviable lightness of touch in all his social dealings, making you want more than anything to be part of his circle.

He understands why Gustav Mahler, who made his living conducting in musical capitals, retreated to a tiny cottage in the Austrian mountains when he wanted to compose. Adams has a little studio - about 15-by-20 feet - a quarter-mile from the main house on property he owns in Northern California. But Adams doesn't overplay the similarity with Mahler.
"The difference," Adams says, "is that he didn't have marijuana growers for neighbors."

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And much to my astonishment I found myself driving down Route 280 in my dilapidated turquoise blue VW bug with its clattering engine and moldy upholstery with the idolized composer of my youth sitting, slightly nervously, in the passenger seat. I don’t recall the conversation. The car was so noisy it may have been difficult to talk much.

“Marcel—you’re such a demanding listener!” I razz him. “Oh well, what can I expect from someone who lost his virginity while listening to the Sessions Violin Concerto on his car radio!”

When Carter died in November at the age of 104, we were reminded that this composer, still writing music in the year 2012, had accompanied Charles Ives to concerts in the New York of the 1930’s when the Rite of Spring was still a shocker.

Camille Paglia, who knows her Emily Dickinson and her Kafka (both artists with zero “fan base” in their lifetimes), has journeyed to the wrong continent, and what she has found glittering there is fool’s gold.

Is opening with a bald quote from the Ninth Symphony not unlike Duchamp painting a goatee on the Mona Lisa?

Howling and shrieks of pain of a woman in withdrawal from a drug addiction in the jail cell next to Mary’s rend the night. The woman beats her head on the metal bars, now lashing out, then weeping. Mary cannot blot out the sound of human suffering. The chorus sings the words of the prophet Isaiah. “Howl ye; for the day of the Lord is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty…

You have to be careful not to think too much about Beethoven's mastery. Otherwise it's like staring into the sun.

Like many Hollywood stories, this one is encrusted with the usual legendary bons mots and self-serving anecdotes, but Louis B. Mayer, who had seen "Ecstasy," would be quoted as saying, "You're lovely, but . . . I don't like what people would think about a girl who flits bare-assed around the screen."