Harmonielehre (John Adams)

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Harmonielehre is a 1985 composition written by John Adams. The name of the composition, German for 'study of harmony', is named after a book written by Arnold Schoenberg, and the work is famous for combining Schonbergian harmonic principles with minimalism.

Adams has stated that the piece was inspired by a dream he had in which he was driving across the San Francisco Bay Bridge and saw an oil tanker on the surface of the water abruptly turn upright and take off like a Saturn V rocket.

The composition is in three movements. The first movement is unnamed. The second movement, 'The Anfortas Wound', is based on the legend of the Fisher King. The third movement is titled 'Meister Eckhardt and Quackie.'

The first movement begins with the rapid repetition of E-minor chords 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.

The brooding second movement 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 Mahler's Unfinished 10th symphony. Like the unhealed wounds of the legendary Anfortas, which provided the inspiration for this movement, the music's tensions are never truly resolved.

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 the 15th century mystic Meister Eckhardt.[1] 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.

The various movements of Harmonielehre are included in the computer game Civilization IV as background music during the modern era.