John Adams: String Quartet (2008), second movement

The second movement of John Adams' two movement string quartet, played by the St. Lawrence String Quartet

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Adams
• John
• composer
• string
• quartet
• St
• Lawrence
• minimalism

[flammesombres]

god, the piece really is relentlessly annoying, though.

[arvidtom]

@flammesombres Funny that you say that, most listeners (including yours truly) would say the academic old-fashioned modernist music you love so much (Ferneyhough, Babbitt, Carter) is among the most relentlessly annoying and most boring music ever written.

[RandomTask3000]

Whatever. Long live tonality. Adams, thank you for rebelling against the humorless clinical wasteland of the 20th century.

[MuseDuCafe]

Oh come on, boys and girls! It far less annoying or irritating than Puccini, and a lot of other popular rot I can think of. In the words of Charles Ives, "Don't be such a musical sissy."

... Flame war ... Film at Eleven!

[tfeng94]

this really is actually quite annoying...it's tonal in the sense that it "sounds tonal" but there really is no gravitation or harmonic direction, just a chain of notes loosely related to each other in an attractively "driving" rhythm. not to mention it doesn't seem to have any classical gravitas at all.

[violinhunter2]

This thing is really quite relentlessly annoying. Mathematics and engineering is what it is. Do I want to hear it a second time? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no - never - no. no. no. no. no. no. no. no, no, no - nope - no. no. no. no. no.....

[smharb1]

this is far from a masterpiece

[RandomTask3000]

@AfroDeezeeYak Aha.

[RandomTask3000]

@AfroDeezeeYak Like I said, you caught me in a generalization. It's really quite simple. I was wrong, I forgot myself.

[AfroDeezeeYak]

@RandomTask3000

What made you change your mind about 20th century music? First you claimed it all to comprise a "humorless clinical wasteland". Now you are saying "oh Stockhausen, Scelsi, ect are alright".

[RandomTask3000]

@AfroDeezeeYak Ha. Haha. HA! Funny. You caught me making a generalization. And so the point goes to you old chum. Truth be told, I am inspired by composers like scelsi, stockhausen and many of those you mentioned.

But perhaps I am best left listening to the mindless music of the unwashed masses. It seems my mind has hit a great big wall called "The New Viennese School" and I have no choice but to, as you kindly suggested, crawl back to the strophic pentatonic ooze I came out of.