{"product_id":"john-luther-adams-in-the-white-silence","title":"John Luther Adams: In the White Silence","description":"Product Description\n\nSince 1978, Alaska has been John Luther Adams s (b. 1953) home and a major inspirational source for most of his compositions. Almost all of his compositions evoke natural phenomena, in particular the wintry Northern landscapes, light, and colors as well as elements of indigenous Alaskan cultures. Adams s music thus shares aesthetic features with nature-inspired works of such composers as Debussy, Ives, Sibelius, and Hovhaness. Due to the use of certain \"minimalist\" strategies Adams s music is often classified as \"minimalist\" or \"post minimalist.\" He avoids expressive musical rhetoric, prefers reduced and elementally simple musical material, and frequently uses sustained tones and static textures. Adams s compositions embrace just intonation, consonance, and modal harmony, and they often feature a meditative quality and extended length reminiscent of Feldmanesque dimensions. Like many of Adams s previous works, In the White Silence (1998) is an example of his concept of \"sonic geography,\" through which he attempts to realize the notion of music as place and place as music and reveals his obsession with the \"treeless, windswept expanses of the Arctic.\" The title of the work thus points to Alaskan landscapes in a general sense. And like Dream in White on White, it specifically refers to Adams s fascination with the color of white, a dominant feature of Arctic landscapes. As Adams explains in his preface to the score: \"White is not the absence of color. It is the fullness of light. As the Inuit have known for centuries, and as painters from Malevich to Ryman have shown us more recently, whiteness embraces many hues, textures, and nuances.\" In the White Silence slowly unfolds over the course of about seventy-five minutes. The work s extended length and non-dramatic structure suggest the idea of music as an \"immeasurable space\" and reflect the desire to transcend the conventional boundaries of musical composition. In the White Silence, a large-scale work of structural refinement, balance and arresting beauty, gently envelops the listener and thus becomes a \"musical presence equivalent to that of a vast tundra landscape.\"\n\nReview\n\n...In the White Silence, where Morton Feldman rubs shoulders with Alan Hovhaness, should win the composer many friends, for it's a gorgeous 75 minutes of meditative stillness. The form of the work, such as it is, is simple. A string orchestra plays soft tone clusters (the composer calls them \"clouds\") out of which emerge a series of lovely, modal episodes for string quartet, harp, celesta, and tuned percussion (vibraphone and bells). And that's basically it; the two types of music alternate quietly over the length of the piece, each recurrence subtly varied but never dramatically so. It's more like a slowly revolving sculpture or mobile than a linear progression in time with a beginning, middle, and end. For that reason you can \"visit\" the music for as long as you like; there's no reason to sit through the whole thing if you don't feel like it. But taken on its own terms the piece perfectly evokes the meaning(s) inherent in its title, and the feeling of time suspended actually does make listening to the whole disc surprisingly easy. In short, the music delivers the goods. The performance, by the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, presents the music with complete idiomatic confidence--in other words, the players simply let the thing unfold without drawing unnecessary attention to themselves or to the mechanics of performing it. New World's sonics capture the work beautifully, but like much of Feldman's music, you should play it quietly--not at the threshold of audibility, mind you, but at a less aggressive level than usual. You're looking for atmosphere, an aural landscape, and not in-your-face immediacy. Anyone coming to Adams' music for the first time should start with this disc, for it really does make the best possible case for his personal artistic vision. --David Hurwitz --classicstoday.com\u003cbr\u003eASIN: B00008Z452\u003cbr\u003eVSKU: DBV.B00008Z452.G\u003cbr\u003eCondition: Good\u003cbr\u003eAuthor\/Artist:Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble|John Luther Adams\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Audio cd\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNote:\u003c\/b\u003e Any images shown are stock photographs and product may differ from what is shown.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition Notes\u003c\/b\u003e: Individually inspected: Guaranteed to play perfectly or your money back. Case may show wear and may be in library packaging. Ships Fast!  \u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Dream Books Co.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41537849589818,"sku":"DBV.B00008Z452.G","price":11.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0555\/6011\/0138\/files\/B00008Z452-0.jpg?v=1784346463","url":"https:\/\/shop.dreambooksco.com\/products\/john-luther-adams-in-the-white-silence","provider":"Dream Books Co.","version":"1.0","type":"link"}