Nixon In China Research Articles

From Liszt to Adams (II): ‘The Black Gondola’

The Black Gondola, John Adams's transcription for chamber orchestra of Liszt's La Lugubre Gondola II, composed in 1989 for the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Minnesota, shows how – as in the case of Wiegenlied (discussed in an earlier article, Tempo 175) – the composer has been attracted to those aspects of Liszt's late style which inter–connect with minimalism: regular, and fluid, rhythmic textures; economy of thematic material which undergoes ‘minimal’ transformation; extensive phrase repetition in a ‘sequencing’ structure; harmonic ambiguity and elusiveness. In addition, in this case, a strong programmatic element is evident in the symbolism of the original piece which is heightened considerably within Adams's transcription: an expression of the dramatic style which has influenced his recent stage works, Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer.

‘Nixon in China’: John Adams in conversation with Andrew Porter

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The Literature of Reduction

“I conspired to convince the McGraw-Hill Book Company that I was in communication with Howard Hughes, and in fact I was not.” With that it was over. Looking back, a brief fling for Clifford Irving: the whopping advance for an “autobiography” of Hughes, certain to become the book of the year; then the day-by-day disclosures on front pages and evening newscasts that it was all a hoax; the Time cover story (“Con Man of the Year”) with color portrait by Elmyr de Hory, the art-forger subject of living's prophetic book Fake!; the slide from media sight in favor of Nixon in China and politicians on the primary stump; finally the terse confession in Manhattan District Court. A very brief fling—though at the time, the late winter of 1972, the Hughes-Irving story seemed to run on endlessly, and of course isn't over yet. The legal tangle goes on and rumor is that Irving is coming out with a book about the other book—which, we now guess, might have been the point all along.