Harmonielehre

Harmonielehre is a 1985 orchestral composition by American composer John Adams. The composition's title, German for "study of harmony," is found in the title of several music theory texts, including those written by Arnold Schoenberg (1911), Heinrich Schenker (1906), and Hugo Riemann (1893), with Adams explicitly referring to Schoenberg's.^[1]

Adams has stated that the piece was inspired by a dream he had in which he was driving across the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge and saw an oil tanker on the surface of the water abruptly turn upright and take off like a Saturn V rocket.^[2] This dream and the following composition of the piece ended a writer's block Adams had been experiencing for eighteen months,^[3] and the movements reflect his situation.

The composition is in three movements:

• I. First Movement. It begins with the repetition of chords in E minor in minimalist fashion. These chords form a recurring theme throughout the movement, interspersed with motoric episodes which use Schoenberg's harmonic progressions as chordal "gates" (a name coined by Adams to describe juxtapositions of harmonic areas in his music).^[4]
• II. The Anfortas Wound. The brooding second movement, based on the legend of the Fisher King, 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 Gustav Mahler's unfinished Tenth Symphony.
• III. Meister Eckhardt and Quackie. The third movement, according to Adams, is inspired by a dream that he had about his infant daughter Emily, whom he and his wife had briefly nicknamed "Quackie".^[1]

Harmonielehre appears in the Modern Era soundtrack of the computer game Civilization IV,^[5] along with several other pieces by Adams. It also appears in the I Am Love soundtrack.^[6]

Instrumentation

4 flutes (doubling 3 piccolos), 3 oboes (doubling 1 english horn), 4 clarinets, all in B♭ and A (doubling 2 bass clarinets), 3 bassoons, contrabassoon

4 horns in F, 4 trumpets in C, 3 trombones, 2 tubas

timpani, 4 percussionists handling 2 marimbas, vibraphone (bowed and struck), xylophone, tubular bells, crotales (bowed and struck), glockenspiel, 2 suspended cymbals (high and low), sizzle cymbal, small crash cymbals, bell tree, 2 tamtams (2 actually referred to as "Medium Gong" in the second movement), 2 triangles (different pitches), bass drum,

2 harps, piano, celesta

Strings

Notes and references

John Adams
Operas	Nixon in China The Death of Klinghoffer I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky El Niño Doctor Atomic A Flowering Tree The Gospel According to the Other Mary Girls of the Golden West
Orchestral works	Shaker Loops (orchestral) Harmonielehre The Chairman Dances Tromba Lontana Short Ride in a Fast Machine Slonimsky's Earbox Lollapalooza Naive and Sentimental Music Guide to Strange Places My Father Knew Charles Ives City Noir
Concertante	The Wound-Dresser Violin Concerto Century Rolls The Dharma at Big Sur Absolute Jest Saxophone Concerto Scheherazade.2
Chamber music	Shaker Loops (string septet) Chamber Symphony John's Book of Alleged Dances Road Movies Gnarly Buttons
Other ensemble works	American Standard, including "Christian Zeal and Activity" Grand Pianola Music
Choral music	Harmonium Choruses from The Death of Klinghoffer On the Transmigration of Souls
Piano works	Phrygian Gates China Gates Hallelujah Junction American Berserk
Film score	I Am Love
Related articles	Minimal music
Category:Compositions by John Coolidge Adams