{"title":"The Glossary","authors":"Drew Massey","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780199374960.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199374960.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter considers Adès’s compositional priorities by exploring his works which respond to complete, pre-existing musical pieces. I refer to these efforts collectively as Adès’s glossary. These glosses refract an existing piece through the lens of his own aesthetic, and also constitute a kind of commentary on practices through which composers have historically recruited music of the past into their work. Moreover, Adès’s engagements with composers ranging from Dowland to Nancarrow can be grouped according to a few overarching goals. Some of his glosses seek to comment or clarify on the harmonic or structural features of a piece; others focus on questions of performativity. In the case of his reconfiguration of his own music, Adès engages in a process of intensification of the source material, resulting in self-borrowings which distill the sometimes uncanny—or even disturbing—qualities present in the originals.","PeriodicalId":259691,"journal":{"name":"Thomas Adès in Five Essays","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128643229","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Great Beyond","authors":"Drew Massey","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780199374960.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199374960.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"In the decade ending in 2016, Adès has gravitated toward larger-scale works including Tevot (2007), Totentanz (2013), and The Exterminating Angel (2016). The increasingly cosmic ambition of these works reflects a more “philosophical” footing for Adès’s largest works. Despite the heterogeneity of these pieces, each of these works carefully balances its subjective and objective dimensions. Each of them features a different primary means of musical signification: Tevot operates largely through the use and development of autonomous musical material, Totentanz relies heavily on stylistic allusion and the pre-existing musical technique of limited aleatory, and The Exterminating Angel is a combination of both strategies. Taken as a whole, what emerges from these pieces when viewed in this light is the way in which Adès increasingly uses musical styles and materials to engender subjective experiences which point to truths outside of the objectively observable—his own kind of great beyond.","PeriodicalId":259691,"journal":{"name":"Thomas Adès in Five Essays","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129057795","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}