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18-496: The work, in a single movement , was inspired by the oceans of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest . The composer took his title from a phrase of John Cage in honour of Lou Harrison, and further explained his title with this note placed in his score: Become Ocean is scored for a large orchestra divided into 3 spatially-separated groups: Each group is given slowly moving sequences of sound, often in

36-718: A technical analysis. Following the world premiere in Seattle, Morlot and the Seattle Symphony performed the work at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland, Oregon, on March 30, 2014. It was repeated in Seattle at a free concert on May 2, 2014. The New York premiere of Become Ocean occurred on May 6, 2014 at Carnegie Hall, with the Seattle Symphony and Morlot performing in the now-defunct 'Spring for Music' series at Carnegie Hall. This

54-737: The Pulitzer Prize for Music -winning Become Ocean (2014). Become Desert is written in one continuous movement and last approximately 40 minutes. Become Desert was composed following Adams's move from his longtime residence in Alaska to the Sonoran Desert in Mexico . In the score program note, Adams wrote, "I used to say that if I ever left the tundra it would be for the desert. Now, some forty years after first coming to Alaska, I've finally made that move. As I've begun to learn

72-771: The American composer John Luther Adams . The work was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and the Seattle Symphony with co-commissions from the San Diego Symphony and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra . Its world premiere was given by the Seattle Symphony conducted by Ludovic Morlot on March 29, 2018. Become Desert is the third part of a musical trilogy, following Adams's Become River (2010) and

90-726: The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. The work was performed by the MDR Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kristjan Järvi in Leipzig on 13 January 2017, and was broadcast on the MDR Klassik radio station on 14 January 2017. On 13 December 2019, the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra performed Become Ocean, with Seattle Symphony 's (former) Creative Director Ludovic Morlot again conducting

108-618: The activity of the orchestral groups, but after the first two performances these were not used. The initial review, by Melinda Bargreen in The Seattle Times , was lukewarm, finding the work "pleasant", but: By contrast, Alex Ross, writing in The New Yorker and on his blog, gave a strongly positive review, saying he "went away reeling" and that "[i]t may be the loveliest apocalypse in musical history." He compared Become Ocean with The Rite of Spring and also provided

126-508: The audience. Become Desert has been highly praised by music critics. Reviewing the world premiere performance, Thomas May of The Seattle Times described the work as "a profoundly original creation that puts the listener right inside the music as it unfolds. It's an experience that simply can't be replicated outside live performance, its uniqueness an antidote to the noisy stream of infinitely repeatable data in 21st-century digital culture." Seth Colter Walls of The New York Times said it

144-410: The first place." Movement (music) A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form . While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately as stand-alone pieces, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession. A movement is a section , "a major structural unit perceived as

162-415: The form of arpeggios for the strings, and each block has its own rise and fall. Thus the groups overlap in an ever-changing pattern. Harmonies are fundamentally tonal; simple diatonic intervals form the basis of the wind instruments' staggered chords. The phrase lengths are constructed so that there are three moments when all the groups reach a climax together; the first is early on, and the second represents

180-536: The greatest surge of sound. From that point, the music is played in reverse: the entire piece is a palindrome . Music critic Alex Ross has hand-drawn a diagram of the work and digitised it. Underlying this pattern, a rippling effect is provided by a centrally placed piano (which plays continually throughout), four harps , celesta , one percussionist on bass drums , timpani , tamtam and cymbals , and two percussionists, placed on each side, on mallet instruments . The composer specifies colored lighting to match

198-526: The haze of desert heat. The closer one listens to this 40-minute mirage, more is revealed, perhaps even something close to enlightenment." Andrew Clements of The Guardian further remarked: Where its predecessor evokes the unstoppable energy of the ocean, creating a slowly accumulating arc of sound that's sometimes joyous, sometimes apocalyptic, Become Desert is more static and seamless, not so elemental. It's woven from luminous textures that seem to be illuminated and transformed from within but which, despite

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216-484: The landforms, the light, the weather, the plants and the birds, I've dreamed of music that echoes this extraordinary landscape." Having witnessed firsthand the effects of anthropogenic climate change in the Arctic Alaska , the composer found himself ruminating a quote from François-René de Chateaubriand that became a motivation for the piece: "Forests precede civilizations, and deserts follow." He thus described

234-407: The piece as "a celebration of the deserts we are given, and a lamentation of the deserts we create." The work is scored for SATB chorus and a large orchestra consisting of four flutes , four oboes , four clarinets , four bassoons , eight horns , four trumpets , four trombones , four percussionists, four harps , and strings . The performers are further divided into five groups that surround

252-438: The piece, some of them tonic triads and some of them not. ...We use the term cadence to mean a harmonic goal, specifically the chords used at the goal. This music-related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This music-related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Become Desert Become Desert is a composition for choir and orchestra written in 2017 by

270-584: The piece, this time for its Nordic Premiere. Cantaloupe Music released the premiere recording on October 30, 2014, on CD and DVD . The DVD includes still images and a surround sound mix supervised by Adams. After hearing this recording of Become Ocean , Taylor Swift donated USD $ 50,000 to the Seattle Symphony. Become Ocean was preceded by Become River (2010) for chamber orchestra and followed by Become Desert (2017) for an ensemble of five orchestral and choral groups. The composer said these works formed "...a trilogy that I never set out to write in

288-465: The result of the coincidence of relatively large numbers of structural phenomena". A unit of a larger work that may stand by itself as a complete composition. Such divisions are usually self-contained. Most often the sequence of movements is arranged fast-slow-fast or in some other order that provides contrast. While the ultimate harmonic goal of a tonal composition is the final tonic triad , there will also be many interior harmonic goals found within

306-505: Was "packed with moments of drama in microcosm. Over a nearly 40-minute span, those slight twists combine to create a new route toward a grand impact. Precisely because the two are so distinct in method, Desert came across as a thoroughly worthy successor to [Become] Ocean ." Tom Huizenga of NPR wrote that the piece "shimmers in majestic stillness," adding, "Through intricate orchestration, Adams conjures glistening shafts of light, distant rolling thunder and flickering colors refracting in

324-688: Was the first live performance of the work that Adams himself heard, as an eye condition and resulting surgery caused him to miss the world premiere in Seattle. Reviews, including one by the New York Times chief music critic, Anthony Tommasini , were generally highly complimentary. Subsequent performances have occurred in Winnipeg (February 2015), Los Angeles (November 2015) and Miami (December 2015). The UK premiere took place in Birmingham at Symphony Hall on 19 May 2016, Ludovic Morlot conducting

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