This, the Batter My Heart aria, is probably the most moving part of John Adams’ opera Doctor Atomic. This premiered in 2005. That’s right, people still write new operas. You might notice, if you bother to listen, that this sounds nothing like Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven. Contrary to popular belief, classical music comes in many flavors and the well known flavors tend to be very old and out of use.

Adams is a post-minimalist composer. Essentially that means rhythm is very important to his sound as well as lingering on a chord for long periods of time. For anyone who’s into jazz, it’s a similar idea to modal jazz. For anyone who’s into rock, Sigur Ros is a good example of something in the same vein. The “post” part means he’s allowed to travel out of the boundaries of the rules that minimalism created that I’ve mentioned already.

Anyway, this aria is pretty high on energy which is not what one would normally think of when they hear the word “opera”. The words are taken from a poem by John Donne. What’s happening is Oppenheimer is combating the moral issues created in himself while creating the atomic bomb. Take a listen:

Just for fun, I think I’ll post one of John Adams’ early works for piano. This one I just like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3abjsYUkk4 (embedding was disabled for this one)

A great example is Richard Wagner. You know, the opera guy with all the valkyries and whatnot. He was a master at building tension and suspense in his music. One of his operas, Tristan und Isolde, spends the entire opera building up tension and only finally releases it at the very end. Unfortunately this mastery is also why most people can’t bother to listen to his stuff, we’re too impatient. So, I’d like to invite anyone who is willing to listen, and I mean really listen, to Wagner’s Prelude to his last opera Parsifal to give it a shot. It’s very slow to pick up but, if you allow yourself to get caught up in it and see it through to the very end, it’s incredibly rewarding.