Adams on Doctor Atomic and stuff

A terrific piece in the New Statesman, an interview with John Adams about his latest opera Doctor Atomic (2005).  Adams is as usual extremely perceptive and articulate.  He discusses his latest works and a new project, and comments more generally on the state of culture in the United States as he sees it:

I ask him what he feels about becoming a sort of American national treasure - their composer laureate, as it were, perhaps occupying the space that Aaron Copland filled a generation ago. "I would say you have to understand that in America classical music, and in particular, contemporary classical music, means nothing to 99.9 per cent of the population.

"This country treats popular culture as something hallowed. Even intellectuals in the universities believe that popular culture is perhaps the greatest achievement in American life, so to be trying to create works of art that are part of the canon of classical music requires an almost foolish sense of idealism. So when I'm asked what it's like to be famous I can only say that I'm very well known in this zip code here between Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Centre.

"The mass of American cultural life, most easily sampled by watching our horrible television, is profoundly middlebrow. One reason the Obama inauguration was so exciting for me was that the last thing a billion people saw before the oath was a violin, a cello, a piano and a clarinet [playing Air and Simple Gifts, by the film composer John Williams]. That would have been unthinkable even in Bill Clinton's time, because there is great value given to anti-intellectualism here. If you run for office you dumb yourself down. We're a country that produces great composers, great novelists and great painters and in many ways still leads the world in culture and achievement (computer science, for instance), but being an American is really an exercise in cognitive dissonance.

I agree with some of that, especially his assessment of the shockingly anti-intellectual stance of many Americans (Susan Jacoby wrote a great book about this).  But the dismissal of an entire medium like television smacks of an unsavory elitism too, because there actually is great television.  Yes, most television is terrible, sometimes embarrassing even (Wife Swap? really?), but most of everything in any medium is terrible.  That's why the good stuff is so special, why we remember the Beethovens and not the Cherubinis, and why one is considered to have discernment when you can tell the difference.  

What I suspect Adams is really decrying is a tremendous lack of discernment in American culture, such that we simply wish to be amused, regardless of how.  Considering the source of that would, in my estimation, be more fruitful than blanket condemnation of an entire medium or culture.  I also think it's worth considering the shift in American culture to a much more affective stance, where feelings and passions hold sway in discourse and decisions rather than reasons and deliberation.  Just watch the "news" or listen to talk radio, our whole culture is feelings, feelings, feelings, all the time (especially fear, we can't seem to get enough of that).

I also think that most Americans don't much care about classical music because for so long classical musicians in America have simply refused to engage with the culture in any meaningful way--Adams himself has been the subject of harsh treatment from a judgmental classical music establishment.  Too much judgment both ways, in my opinion, I think we should all chill and enjoy whatever is good in whatever form it takes.  Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to watch some Futurama right after I finish listening to this Golijov opera.

Anyway, it's a good read featuring a truly great composer.