***Warning: The author of this post is shamelessly writing to finish an assignment and has not actually listened to the piece under consideration. He is, however, a fine fellow in most other respects.***
How do you review a monument? (That goes to the tune of "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria"?) Every commemoration of 9/11 is one. On what grounds do you evaluate it? Barzun has said that the critic's task is to evaluate a thing's true effect against its intended one. If the intended effect is to memorialize an event with effects at once so universal and individual, I know of no sound basis for following Barzun's advice.
It seems that any given person's response to 9/11 will be intimately connected with that person's view of human nature, the history and role of America, and the relationship between the dead and the living on both sides. Aesthetic philosophy then determines the acceptable parameters of expressing that response. Every single one of these issues is so divisive that any attempted evaluation stands open to charges of worship (over agreement) or intolerance (on disagreement).
So on the grounds of cosmological impossibility--but mostly because I haven't listened to it, don't know much about John Adams's style or philosophy, and don't have any time--I will not review the piece.
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