Page 63 - GTMF 2024 Season Program

July 5 & 6
PROGRAM NOTES

John Adams

Slonimsky’s Earbox

AT A GLANCE

Born: 1947
Date of Composition: 1995
Instrumentation: Slonimsky’s
Earbox is scored for piccolo,
2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn,
3 clarinets, bass clarinet,
3 bassoons, 4 horns, 4 trumpets,
3 trombones, tuba, timpani,
percussion, harp, piano,
2 samplers and strings.

How do we describe Nicolas
Slonimsky? A polymath and
Renaissance man, he was a
magnificent musical gadfly who
did almost everything. He helped
conductors learn difficult modern
music. He played the piano. He
composed. He conducted. He
taught. He was a witty and
welcome guest on The Tonight
Show with Johnny Carson. He
and Frank Zappa were pals.
Above all, he was an entertaining
and informative writer on
music, his topics as diverse as
elementary children’s lessons
to his exhaustive Thesaurus of
Scales and Melodic Patterns, one John Adams
of the landmark music theory
texts of the 20 century.
th
Almost all music commentators Hall, home of the Hallé Orchestra, minimalism of his early career into
(including this one) keep
Slonimsky’s delectable Lexicon Slonimsky’s Earbox is John Adams’ the more complex language of his
tribute not only to Slonimsky but
music to the present. Slonimsky’s
of Musical Invective on hand, that
inexhaustible treasure chest of also to Igor Stravinsky’s early Earbox is joyous, wonderful fun—
much like its namesake, who
ballet Le chant du rossignol,
ill-tempered, irresponsible and
mean-spirited takedowns of the which explores modal harmonies could bring down the house by
in an explosion of colors, shapes
playing the Chopin “Black Key”
great composers and their works.
and sounds. It can be described Étude via an orange rolled up and
Written for the 1996 opening of as a transitional work for down the keyboard.
Manchester’s superb Bridgewater Adams, as he began fusing the
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