Program Notes: The Exterminating Angel Symphony
On September 26-28, Thomas Søndergård and the Minnesota Orchestra will perform a unique program highlighting two works composed by two masters of orchestral color: Maurice Ravel and Thomas Adès. The first work by Adès featured on the concerts, The Exterminating Angel Symphony, is a relatively new addition to the composer’s output and is a symphonic adaptation of his 2016 opera of the same name. Learn more about this unique work below in a program note by Nicholas Landrum, a Twin Cities-based composer, vocalist, producer and multi-instrumental performer.
THOMAS ADÈS
B: March 1, 1971, London, England
The Exterminating Angel Symphony
PREMIERED: August 4, 2021
In the world of contemporary Western classical music, few composers marry the visceral and the cerebral so perfectly as Thomas Adès. His 2020 composition The Exterminating Angel Symphony is a distillation of his 2016 opera The Exterminating Angel—which in turn is an adaptation of the cult-classic 1962 film of the same name directed by Luis Buñuel.
THE OPERATIC SYMPHONY
Although a rarity in the repertoire, a symphony adapted from an opera (as opposed to an overture or suite) has become an attractive option to composers due to the financial obstacles of staging a full opera. Another notable example, which the Minnesota Orchestra presented last June, is the Doctor Atomic Symphony, authored by another 21st-century compositional giant, John Adams.
The Exterminating Angel, in both film and opera, is an absurdist dark comedy depicting the secretive boorish nature of the bourgeoisie as they arrive at a mansion for a dinner party that they find they cannot leave. The symphony is a signature Adès production, using a large battery of percussion as well as a full complement of winds and brass. Commissioned by a consortium of orchestras led by the City of Birmingham Symphony, the symphony was first performed by that ensemble on August 4, 2021, after its earlier planned premiere was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
A TALE OF ENTRAPPED GUESTS
ENTRANCES. The first movement, Entrances, is excerpted from the opera’s opening in which guests arrive for the dinner party. It features grotesque approximations of so-called “high-society” music, thumbing its nose at the bourgeoisie as they enter the mansion. The movement employs a signature Adès technique known as irrational meters, which function as sharp accelerations of tempo—jerking the listener around like a roller coaster, one that has its rider simultaneously smiling with glee and questioning the qualifications of the architect of such a fiendish device.
MARCHES. The second movement, Marches, ratchets up the tension with maniacal snare drum rudiments that seem like a haunting ode to Ravel’s Boléro. The movement features a strong rhythmic and harmonic motive of a short, accented pickup beat preceding each menacing sonority in the orchestra, creating an auditory depiction of the party-goers searching for an exit from the mansion as they begin to realize their fate.
BERCEUSE. Adès’ tense writing only relents when the third movement, Berceuse, begins with a lilting triple-meter lullaby sweeping through the orchestra—a fitting requiem for two doomed young lovers attending the dinner party.
WALTZES. The finale, Waltzes, is the only movement that doesn’t directly quote a large swath of music from the opera. Instead, Adès describes its construction as “joining together the bits of a broken porcelain object,” with layered waltz gestures picked from various parts of the opera, both jovial and menacing, splashing about the orchestra. The final moments of the work give way to sparkling, sparse orchestration, closing with a Benjamin Britten-esque flourish of piano, chipper violin melodies and glockenspiel, interspersed with surrealist string glissandos.
Instrumentation: 3 flutes (1 doubling piccolo), 3 oboes (1 doubling English horn), 3 clarinets (1 doubling E-flat clarinet and 1 doubling bass clarinet), 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani (doubling rototoms), snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, suspended cymbal, antique cymbal, hi-hat cymbal, anvil, bass bell, castanets, cowbell, crotales, mark tree, tambourine, tamtam, triangle, whip, wood block, glockenspiel, vibraphone, harp, piano and strings
PROGRAM NOTE BY NICHOLAS LANDRUM.
