Harmonielehre

Harmonielehre is a 1985 composition by American composer John Adams. The composition's title, German for "study of harmony," also the title of a book by Arnold Schoenberg, hints at the work's combination of Schoenberg's harmonic principles with those of minimalism.

Adams has stated that the piece was inspired by a dream he had in which he was driving across the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge and saw an oil tanker on the surface of the water abruptly turn upright and take off like a Saturn V rocket. This dream and the following composition of the piece ended a writer's block Adams had been experiencing for a year, and the movements reflect his situation, representing, respectively, liberation (I), spiritual sickness (II), and grace (III).

The composition is in three movements:

• I. The first movement, which is unnamed, begins with the rapid repetition of chords in E minor in standard minimalist fashion. However, about halfway through the movement the cellos begin to play an expressive melody that is eventually taken up by the entire orchestra, and it could not be farther from the minimalist aesthetic in its long-breathedness and expressivity.

• II. The Anfortas Wound. The brooding second movement, based on the legend of the Fisher King, also shuns minimalistic processes, favoring bleak Sibelius-like soundscapes, building inexorably slowly to twin climaxes of brutal dissonance, the second of which is drawn from the climactic sonority of the first movement of Gustav Mahler's unfinished Tenth Symphony. Like the unhealed wounds of the legendary Anfortas that provided the inspiration for this movement and reflect Adams' situation before the composition, the music's tensions are never truly resolved.

• III. Meister Eckhardt and Quackie. The third movement, according to Adams, is inspired by a dream that he had about his daughter Emily, whom he and his wife had nicknamed "Quackie." In the dream, young Emily rides through outer space upon the shoulders of 14th-century mystic Meister Eckhart. In this movement, components of minimalism return with the return of repetitive rhythms and short snippets of melody. The work ends with a triumphant affirmation of tonality on the chord of E-flat.

The work first was first premiered by the San Francisco Symphony. A performance of the piece typically takes about 40 minutes.

Instrumentation

4 flutes (2, 3, 4 double piccolos), 3 oboes (3 doubles english horn), 4 clarinets in B flat (all double clarinets in A, while 3 and 4 double bass clarinets), 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns in F, 4 trumpets in C, 3 trombones, 2 tubas, timpani, 4 percussionists handling 2 marimbas, vibraphone (bowed and struck), xylophone, tubular bells, crotales (bowed and struck), glockenspiel, 2 suspended cymbals (high and low), sizzle cymbal, small crash cymbals, bell tree, 2 tamtams (2 actually referred to as "Medium Gong" in the second movement), 2 triangles (different pitches), bass drum, 2 harps, piano, celesta and strings.