"On the Transmigration of Souls"- An Musically Appropriate Product

When I listen to his piece, I can’t help but compare it to Penderecki’s “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima” (and, I admit, this is one of the easiest ways for me to write a review of the work). Upon first listening, the quiet dissonances and characteristically minimalist technique of slow and subtle musical change frustrated me. For many Americans, September 11^th was a shock; I expected to hear that in the music, in the same way Penderecki’s work seems to almost programmatically tell the events of that day.

Instead,” On the Transmigration of Souls” begins with the sounds of New York city streets. Ironically, the “quiet before the storm” that Adams conveys with this “musique concrete” technique isn’t quiet or calm at all—instead, we hear the sounds of busy New Yorkers rushing by, as if Adams is commenting on the nature of the city’s residents as they continued about their New York minutes, clueless as to upcoming event that would change many of their lives.

As the music progresses, we hear a young boy announcing the names of victims over a choir singing an eerily atonal harmonic progression, the music set to no words. Slowly, more announcers are added, and the texture of the work becomes thicker: sorrowful strings mimic the vocal line, various percussive effects add timbral variety, and a trumpet and soprano sax melody, reminiscent of Charles Ive’s “The Unanswered Question,” floats on top of the quiet, slowly unfolding chaos. The vocal line becomes increasingly polyphonic and antiphonal, with the choir members now describing the crumbling towers and giving voice to the victims: “We will not be forgotten.”

A year is not a long time to grieve. Instead of providing listeners with a programmatic, play-by-play musical representation of that day, which may have been traumatic and disturbing to those of us still grieving, “On the Transmigration of Souls” focuses on the victims of 9/11. Through his awareness of these grieving Americans, Adams avoids any large or prolonged dissonances, centering instead on the actual “transmigration” process of the victims—“the passage of a soul after death into another body; metempsychosis” (dictionary.com). In this way, Adams’s piece, instead of conveying the terrible atrocities of that day and the pain still being felt by many Americans upon its premiere, gives listeners hope: the sustained notes sung by the choir early in the piece depict the image of the transmigration process; the souls, after reaching their destination, remind us they will not be forgotten, that this will not have happened in vain. My initial disappointment in the anti-climatic feel of the music was only understood after the images and text of the souls being portrayed spoke to me through Adam’s music.

Although it’s not my favorite piece of music (utilize the orchestra, dang it!), the work is appropriate for its listeners—many of whom have most likely never heard of (or listened to, for that matter!) “Nixon in China.” Adams was commissioned for this work, and he provided an appropriate, consumer-friendly product—the “memory space” he refers to the piece as. The heavy focus on the choir and the text of the work, although it seems uncharacteristic of Adams, is forgivable given the audience Adams was composing for. There is a time for innovation, for musical sophistication, for controversy-- and this wasn’t it.