Book Review
Jun. 14th, 2014 08:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariHallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life
by John Adams
This is John Adams' autobiography, detailing his life, work, influences, and thoughts on music in general and his own works. I found this book really engaging and enjoyable to read. While Adams doesn't really dwell on the trials and tribulations of his personal life, he is refreshingly frank about his struggles to find his own compositional voice and about both his successes and his failures. He's got a lot of interesting things to say, and it was really refreshing to hear the perspective of a composer who rejected the heavily intellectualized, systematized approaches to music that gained dominance in the middle of the 20th century. Adams also writes in a very genial, bemused style, with a lot less ego and pretentiousness than I'd expect from someone who has become among the most prominent and successful American composers.
by John Adams
This is John Adams' autobiography, detailing his life, work, influences, and thoughts on music in general and his own works. I found this book really engaging and enjoyable to read. While Adams doesn't really dwell on the trials and tribulations of his personal life, he is refreshingly frank about his struggles to find his own compositional voice and about both his successes and his failures. He's got a lot of interesting things to say, and it was really refreshing to hear the perspective of a composer who rejected the heavily intellectualized, systematized approaches to music that gained dominance in the middle of the 20th century. Adams also writes in a very genial, bemused style, with a lot less ego and pretentiousness than I'd expect from someone who has become among the most prominent and successful American composers.
