Maria Alighourchi
7489718
The Future of American Music
Listening Report 11
John Luther Addams
Become Ocean
The orchestral composition
“Become Ocean” (2014) by John Luther Adams is an extraordinary experience to
listen to. I am utterly mesmerized by the hypnotic waves of sound that clash
together to create a thunderstorm of emotions while becoming ocean.
The orchestra is divided
into three groups that play simultaneously but separately. These three groups
represent to me three fairly enormous waves, which float in the vast ocean. The
clash or climax of these three groups happens three times throughout the
composition. While they reach a climax, I imagine how these three sound waves
are purely water waves finding each other, clashing and becoming one, then
drifting apart and turning into completely new waves reminiscent of their old
self. However, the piano and the harp are not included as part of the water, in
my opinion, they are the light reflected on the surface of the ocean, dancing
in the never-ending washing waves, never tired, always staying afloat and
alive.
Water always changes as
well as this composition does, never the same chord, but similar. Generally,
water can be used as a metaphor for change, that change is inevitable and
happens naturally. This composition, too, sounds like a natural phenomenon
since the string instruments caress your body like small currents.
I am getting carried away
while the chords of the piano and harp help me stay afloat, I feel how the
sunshine tickles my face in the afternoon light. I lay in the vast ocean, not
knowing where I will end up but being sure it will be the right place, wherever
it might be. The ocean might be a scary thought or even a fear to some, but
letting the waves decide your way is taking a weight off my shoulder, turning
my lighter. I have no sorrows while listening to the waves carrying me away,
even if they crescent, it only becomes more exciting.
The inner peace I sense
while listening to Becoming Ocean, transcends me to a high
meditational level, where I am compatible with myself, with the world. It even
transcends me to a state where I believe to become the ocean, the waves, the
sunlight’s dancing. How can these 42 minutes perfectly encapsulate the process
of becoming something natural? How can instruments, or the harmony of many
instruments convey such totality of one element alone?
All of my being wants to
write poems about becoming ocean now – that is what this constellation of
harmonic instruments has done to me. I never want to write about something else
now. The waves have become a small obsession that I dread to let loose. Right
now, all I can see, smell, hear and experience are waves. Waves that carry me,
waves that determine my way in life, waves that hug and smother me until the end.
Does the ocean really end?
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