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SYMMETRY IN THE MUSIC OF JOHN ADAMS

Alexander Sanchez-Behar

Tempo / Volume 68 / Issue 268 / April 2014, pp 46 - 60

DOI: 10.1017/S0040298213001678, Published online: 20 March 2014

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How to cite this article:

Alexander Sanchez-Behar (2014). SYMMETRY IN THE MUSIC OF JOHN ADAMS. Tempo, 68, pp
46-60 doi:10.1017/S0040298213001678

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46 Tempo 68 (268) 46–60 © 2014 Cambridge University Press
doi:10.1017/S0040298213001678

symmetry in the music

of john adams
Alexander Sanchez-Behar

Abstract: Close examination of John

Adams’s oeuvre reveals that symmetry
is one of the predominant features of
his music. Three common types of sym-
metry are encountered in Adams’s
works: reflection, translation and rota-
tion. This article investigates these sym-
metries and tracks their development
throughout Adams’s compositional car-
eer. An analysis of selected works from
the 1970s (China Gates and Phrygian
Gates), 1980s (Grand Pianola Music and
Fearful Symmetries) and 1990s (the John Adams (photo by
Violin Concerto and Century Rolls) high- Margaretta Mitchell)
lights the most pervasive symmetry in
each decade and shows a shift from preconceived overarching sym-
metries that frame entire musical structures to smaller-level sym-
metries that affect the music at a level of phrase and motivic
structure.

Introduction
Over the course of his compositional career, John Adams has devel-
oped a penchant for engaging symmetrical processes that contribute
to his own brand of minimalism. Adams’s method for employing sym-
metry originates in the late 1970s, with works such as China Gates
(1977) and Phrygian Gates (1977–78), both of which are considered
by Adams and scholars of his music to be his first mature works.
These pieces subject formal structure and pitch content to symmetric-
al processes at various levels. Adams’s focus on symmetry continues
in the 1980s, with works like Grand Pianola Music (1982) and Fearful
Symmetries (1988). In this period, he begins to loosen the strictures
of all-encompassing symmetrical structures. Since the 1990s Adams
has redefined his notion of symmetry by borrowing and emulating
melodic materials derived from Nicolas Slonimsky’s Thesaurus of
Scales and Melodic Patterns (1947).1

1
Nicolas Slonimsky, Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns (New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons, 1947).

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 symmetry in the music of john adams 47

In this article, I will detail three kinds of symmetries found in

Adams’s works: reflection, translation and rotation.2 While these sym-
metries transform music in divergent ways, their common trait entails
the transformation of an object, which preserves its original condition
in size and shape relative to an axis point.3 Reflection symmetry is syn-
onymous with mirror symmetry across an axis; translation considers
the repetition of an object at periodic intervals; and rotation changes
the orientation of an object by shifting it around a fixed rotational axis
point. To gain a clearer insight into Adams’s ever-evolving compos-
itional style, I will explore the aforementioned instrumental works,
and highlight the ways in which his trajectory from an early minimal-
ist composer – producing formal structures that prioritize direct aud-
ible processes – to a more intuitive post-minimalist composer, is
affected by notions of symmetry.

China Gates (1977)

Adams’s use of symmetry in China Gates permeates the whole work at
multiple levels of structure. The overall design of China Gates can be
depicted with a geometric construct known as a hyperboloid, which
resembles an hourglass shape.4 In Figure 1, I transform a hyperboloid
into a discrete geometric shape of stacked rectangles to mark the for-
mal sections of this work. Musical sections are delineated by sudden
modal shifts, and the emergence of a new pedal tone that projects a
tonic for each modal centre.5 Adams borrows the term gating from
electronics, to describe ‘moments when the modes abruptly and with-
out warning shift’.6 Adams described China Gates as a piece that calls
for attention to ‘details of dark, light, and the shadows that exist
between’.7 The Mixolydian and Lydian modes, both close to the
major scale, are associated with light sections, and the Aeolian and
Locrian modes, close to the minor scale, with dark sections.8 Modal
sections in the upper cone exhibit a diminishing 4:3:2:1 ratio of pro-
portions, and reverse the order for the lower cone. Counting the
sum of crotchets from the upper and lower cones yields a value of
600. Coincidentally, in the Greek numeral system, the letter chi
(‘X’) – essentially the basic skeleton of a hyperboloid – also contains

2
Candace Brower investigates these types of symmetries in her ‘Paradoxes of Pitch Space’,
Music Analysis, 27, no. 1 (2008), pp. 51–106.
3
Various authors have described symmetry in this manner. See Hermann Weyl, Symmetry
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952) and György Darvas, Symmetry:
Cultural-Historical and Ontological Aspects of Science-Arts Relations (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2007).
4
The application of a hyperboloid stems from Daniel J. McConnell’s analysis of China Gates:
‘John Adams’s Perpetual Motion Machine’, unpublished paper presented at the Society for
Music Theory Annual Meeting (Boston, 2005).
5
My designation of modes, which concurs with Daniel J. McConnell’s analysis, is based on a
low pedal note that signals the opening of each section. This interpretation also accords
with Timothy A. Johnson’s preference rules specifically designed for analyzing modes
and chords in Adams’s music. See his ‘Harmonic Vocabulary in the Music of John
Adams: A Hierarchical Approach’, Journal of Music Theory, 37, no. 1 (1993), pp. 117–56,
esp. p. 130.
6
John Adams, ‘China Gates’, http://www.earbox.com/piano-solo-or-duet/china-gates
(accessed 2 October 2013).
7
Adams, ‘China Gates’.
8
While McConnell’s geometric depiction is compelling, and his modal designation of for-
mal sections is accurate, his analysis overlooks other symmetries that interact with the
hyperboloid structure. For instance, McConnell’s shadings in the lower cone do not reflect
those of the upper cone. Furthermore, McConnell’s dark- and light-shaded regions are
represented on different rows, while my own hyperboloid reinterprets these regions on
the same horizontal plane to associate another aspect of this work’s symmetry I will
soon detail.

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 48 tempo
Figure 1: Geometric Hyperboloid Representation of China Gates

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 symmetry in the music of john adams 49

Figure 2: a value of 600. Further presence of Greek thought appears in the

Symmetrical Modes in Upper and application of modes. The hyperboloid’s axis point resides in the
Lower Cones
core’s centre. Closer inspection of the core and its axis lies outside
the scope of this study due to the apparent breaking of symmetry;
nevertheless, its influence throughout the work affects modal and
motivic content and the interaction of ostinati in the core.
The symmetrical properties of hyperboloids comprise reflection
between upper and lower cones and rotational symmetry about an
infinite number of points, a quality also shared by cones. Reflection
in music entails the mirroring of a shape about an axis of symmetry
such that its respective points and those from its reflection are equidis-
tant to the axis, albeit in reversed directions.9 This kind of symmetry
associates proportional relations (having two equal halves in the
hyperboloid), but it also accounts for more direct musical operations
such as inversion and retrograde. Rotation moves a shape by a point
axis of rotation at an angle of 360°/n, where n represents a natural
number.10 Adams explores reflectional symmetry in a core section
and its epicentre acting as the horizontal axis; in place of rotational
symmetry, he derives another type of reflectional symmetry through
a vertical axis that transforms major modes into minor ones using
inversional operations.
The first type of inversional symmetry in China Gates considers the
relation between adjacent modes in the upper and lower cones of
the hyperboloid. In Figure 2, I compare the intervallic structure of
the modes from the upper and lower cones of my diagram, respective-
ly. The major-like modes appear on the left side and are read from
right to left, starting from the axis point, while the minor-like
modes appear on the right, in their normal ascending order.
Counting the number of semitones from the axis shows the same
intervallic distances between major and minor corresponding
modes, revealing inversional symmetry. Adams disguises the sym-
metry by evading straightforward scalar iterations. Instead, he moulds
ostinato patterns of various lengths that transform gradually and shape
the entire work.

9
György Darvas, Symmetry, p. 4.
10
Darvas, Symmetry, pp. 4–5.

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50 tempo

Figure 3:
Step-class retrograde inversions
across gate changes, in Adams, China
Gates. CHINA GATES, by John
Adams. © 1983 by Associated Music
Publishers, Inc. (BMI). International
Copyright Secured. All Rights
Reserved. Used by Permission.

The reiterating fragments from the left-hand textures in China Gates

comprise yet another instance of symmetry.11 These repetitive patterns
generate a mirror counterpart that is transformed at each gate. The
symmetrical relationship of the realised patterns in the black and
white formal sections is illustrated in Figure 3.12 This excerpt exhibits
the shortest black and white portion in the lower cone of the hyperbol-
oid (bars 113–120). Bars 113–116 derive from the Locrian mode, and
bars 117–120 invert the mode to F Lydian. While Adams’s right-hand
ostinato figures maintain rhythmic momentum and even influence per-
ceived metre, the left-hand musical line is transformed through a
retrograde-inversion operation, but with a slight change that engages
step-class intervals.13 A step-class interval is defined as the directed
distance in steps between two notes of any given collection.14 The
example, representative of the transformations that occur throughout
China Gates, reveals how step-class intervals maintain the intervallic
identity across the gate change. Both pitch and rhythmic parameters
are affected by the retrogression operation, and while rhythm is homo-
genous in bars 117–120, other sections exhibit rhythmic contrast, mak-
ing the retrograde component even more discernible. The step-class RI
operation retains the letter-name of the last note of the Locrian mode,
and it draws on its Lydian inflection to mark the first note from the sub-
sequent section (bars 117–120), a procedure for conversion that holds
constant for most of the remaining retrograde-inversion operations.
Retrograde-inversional operations can at times yield the same values

11
Gretchen Horlacher derived the term reiterating fragment to describe a repetitive pattern
that is similar to an ostinato, except that its iterations can be modified or offset by rest.
See her ‘The Rhythms of Reiteration: Formal Development in Stravinsky’s Ostinati’,
Music Theory Spectrum, 14, no. 2 (1992), pp. 171–87, esp. p. 180.
12
CHINA GATES, by John Adams. © 1983 by Associated Music Publishers, Inc. (BMI).
International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.
13
McConnell states that formal sections are related by retrograde-inversion, but he fails to
acknowledge step-class transformations.
14
For a detailed discussion of step-class intervals in analytical literature, see: Christoph
Neidhöfer, ‘A Theory of Harmony and Voice Leading for the Music of Olivier Messiaen’,
Music Theory Spectrum, 27, no. 1 (2005), pp. 1–34 and Matthew Santa, ‘Defining Modular
Transformations’, Music Theory Spectrum, 21, no. 2 (1999), pp. 200–229.

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 symmetry in the music of john adams 51

as standard directed intervals, as it is the case in the upper cone; only in

the lower cone does Adams’s technique become apparent.
The kinds of symmetries I have found in China Gates operate on
various levels of structure. First, the modal collections serve as the
basic material that links sections through inversional symmetry.
Another kind of symmetry that fuses formal sections concerns the
transformation of reiterating fragments through step-class retrograde
inversions. The modal shifts transpiring at each gate (or axis point)
are sudden and provide a means of sectional contrast aided by reflec-
tional symmetry. At the largest level, we can observe mirror sym-
metry of proportions between the upper and lower cone. All of
these symmetries operate on different levels of structure and interact
with one another. As Jonathan Bernard states, ‘it should be possible, if
symmetry is a significant force, to discover a hierarchy of relationships
in which smaller symmetries contribute to larger ones, which in turn
contribute to even larger ones, and so on, across ever longer spans of
time’.15 From the smallest symmetry to the largest, each revolves
around a single reflectional axis that transforms either its modes,
motivic patterns or sections.

Phrygian Gates (1977–1978)

In contrast to the delicate textural nuances of China Gates, Adams’s
second piano work Phrygian Gates showcases virtuosic ‘arches of
sound’ throughout its four movements.16 The organising principle
of Phrygian Gates revolves around the alternation of Lydian and
Phrygian modes traversing around half of the circle of fifths, with A
Lydian as its point of origin (followed by A Phrygian, E Lydian and
E Phrygian, and the process continues until the concluding E♭
Lydian/D♯ Phrygian sections).17 For Adams the Lydian’s ‘light, sen-
sual, resonant personality’ contrasts directly with the Phrygian’s ‘vola-
tile, unstable, but often heroic qualities.’18 This process of modal
development runs through the entire work undisturbed even as
new movements are initiated: the second movement coincides with
the G♭ Lydian opening (bar 402); the third movement, titled ‘A
System of Weights and Measures’, with the C♯ Phrygian opening
(bar 640); and the fourth movement with the launch of the A♭
Lydian section (bar 809). What delineates each movement are the
stark textural contrasts and the processes that help the work unfold.
After reaching a climax at the end of the first movement, through a
gradual additive process that increases the number of notes from
each chord, the second movement initiates a sparse texture containing
ostinato figures. In the third movement, a slow chordal texture
appears in contrast to the ostinato figures permeating earlier sections.
Catherine Ann Pellegrino interprets the development of the chordal
texture as a series of gradually unfolding voice-leading transforma-
tions, in which a single tone from each chord descends repeatedly
through a cycle of seconds, thirds, fourths or fifths, until the chord

15
Jonathan Bernard, ‘Space and Symmetry in Bartók’, Journal of Music Theory, 30, no. 2
(1986), p. 192.
16
John Adams, ‘Phrygian Gates’, http://www.earbox.com/piano-solo-or-duet/phrygian-
gates (accessed 2 October 2013).
17
John Adams, ‘Phrygian Gates’.
18
John Adams, liner notes to Phrygian Gates and Shaker Loops (1750 Arch Records S-1784,
1980).

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52 tempo

returns to its original state.19 It is interesting that Adams begins a pal-

indrome in the fourth movement with A♭ Lydian/G♯ Phrygian, rather
than traversing through all the keys in order to reach closure.
Pellegrino believes that if closure is to be experienced, it must be
anticipated.20 A complete trajectory through the circle of fifths sug-
gests an end point. But the complete duplication of notes that exists
between the opening mode of the first movement, A Lydian, and
the first minor-type mode of the fourth movement, G♯ Phrygian,
sets the work on a path towards closure. In what is the first instance
of mode duplication, the opening notes transform from their light and
sensual affective quality to a more unstable and heroic one.
Adams’s experimentation with symmetry in China Gates has a direct
influence on Phrygian Gates. Figure 4 demonstrates how the overall
structure of the fourth movement (bars 809–1092) can be illustrated
using a hyperboloid.21 The proportional relationship between formal
sections decreases in the upper cone by a divisor of two, and reverses
the process in the lower cone, which is suggestive of, yet different
from, the 4:3:2:1 ratio of China Gates. Using crotchet durations, the
total span of the upper and lower cones equals 900, a whole number
that shares the same multiple of 300 as China Gates. Prevailing
musical operations between major- and minor-type modes, such as
step-class retrograde inversions, are not apparent in Phrygian Gates.
Furthermore, contiguous modes do not exhibit inversional symmetry.
Instead, symmetry in Phrygian Gates is experienced at a more grand
level of overall form through reflectional symmetry about a horizontal
axis point in the central core. Adams’s willingness to forgo some of the
smaller-level symmetries we encountered in China Gates in favour of a
single overriding symmetry reflects the collective struggle of early min-
imalist composers between creating meticulously symmetrical precom-
positional designs and merging the composer’s voice and intuition.22
The core section also exhibits reflective symmetry. In Figure 5,
I reveal the structure of the core by examining elements of propor-
tion, modes and a central axis. As a matter of preference, the durations
of each section are counted using quavers to maintain whole numbers.
Considered in its entirety, the duration of the core constitutes precise-
ly a fifth of the upper and lower cones. The individual sections bear

19
Catherine Ann Pellegrino, ‘Aspects of Closure in the Music of John Adams’, Perspectives of
New Music, 40, no.1 (2002), pp. 147–175, here 150–51. The late K. Robert Schwarz also dis-
cusses the third movement and draws his analysis from an interview with Adams. See
‘Process vs. Intuition in the Recent Works of Steve Reich and John Adams’, American
Music 8, no. 3 (1990), p. 257.
20
Pellegrino, ‘Aspects of Closure in the Music of John Adams’, p. 150.
21
This hyperboloid resembles McConnell’s depiction of China Gates. Pellegrino also recog-
nises a palindrome in the fourth movement without introducing any geometric
representations.
22
This shift from process-driven works to a more intuitive conception of music is examined
by K. Robert Schwarz. See Schwarz, ‘Process vs. Intuition in the Recent Works of Steve
Reich and John Adams’, American Music, 8, no. 3 (1990), pp. 245–73. In an interview
with Schwarz, Adams said ‘I’ve stopped worrying about whether intuiting a structure is
right or not; as far as I can tell, most nineteenth-century composers wrote on intuitive
levels’ (‘Process vs. Intuition’, p. 247). There are elements in Adams’s work that can be
interpreted as efforts to break free from the early minimalist aesthetic that, through a
detachment of the composer’s voice, generated self-mechanised processes and eventually
led to a more personal, intuitive style. According to Schwarz: ‘Not only does Adams
exploit this modal conflict to create contrasts in melodic patterns, textural density, rhyth-
mic figuration, and dynamics, but he does so with a directionalised motion that sweeps
toward climaxes—a motion far removed from the stasis of minimalism. Such a subjective
approach works to loosen the bonds of musical process and heighten the role of intuition’
(p. 258). The sheer size of Phrygian Gates also poses a challenge to maintaining audible
symmetrical structures; a primary concern of the early minimalist style was creating grad-
ual, perceptible processes.

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 symmetry in the music of john adams 53
Figure 4: Geometric Hyperboloid Representation of Phrygian Gates, fourth movement

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54 tempo

Figure 5:
Symmetry in the Core of Phrygian
Gates, fourth movement

the same kind of proportional relationship as in the macro-structure of

the whole, with sections reducing in size by half pointing towards the
axis. In other words, the core contains an embedded micro-
hyperboloid structure and could easily be depicted as such. The
lower micro-cone in bars 950–977 also completes reflective symmetry
by reversing the order of modes.
The modes in the core are interposed and in this way their inter-
action occurs in close succession. The axis point of this fourth

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 symmetry in the music of john adams 55

movement is marked in bars 947–953 with the reiteration of a single

note. Adams alternates the spelling of this note enharmonically, E♭/
D♯, depending on the mode reinforced in other sections of the core.
Although no aural distinction emerges from the enharmonic spelling,
the arrival of this note and incessant repetition points to its function
as the centre of the movement. A teleological view of the movement
might consider the axis point a kind of nucleus since it presents the
only note invariant to all four modes from the fourth movement –
A♭ Lydian, G♯ Phrygian, E♭ Lydian, and D♯ Phrygian.23 Writings by
Timothy A. Johnson support a notion that the preservation of common
tones is integral to understanding Adams’s musical style.24

Grand Pianola Music (1982) and Fearful Symmetries (1988)

Adams’s instrumental works from the 1980s shift away from the pre-
compositional constructs witnessed in the gate works, towards an
affinity with translational symmetry. This type of symmetry is charac-
terised by the periodic repetition of an object that preserves its
full identity in shape and proportion. While composing Fearful
Symmetries, Adams detected that its harmonic structures unfolded in
‘almost maddeningly’ symmetrical units.25 The title stems from a
key phrase in William Blake’s poem The Tyger, but this is the only
link to the poem. Adams deliberately embraces repetition in his com-
positional techniques of this period, as a way of distancing himself
from opposing avant-garde styles. Adams elaborates further on his
effort to express his distinctive minimalist approach: ‘rather than try
to deconstruct the obviousness of these harmonic structures, I did
the opposite: I amplified their predictability and in so doing ended
up composing an insistent pulse-driven juggernaut of a piece’.26
In his autobiography, Adams compares the symmetrical nature of
Fearful Symmetries to the third movement of Grand Pianola Music
(1982), titled ‘On the Dominant Divide’. The textures in this earlier
work are more lucid than those of Fearful Symmetries. Consider the rhyth-
mic aspect from the principal phrase of ‘On the Dominant Divide’,
shown in Figure 6. Repeated phrases – or phrases that bear nearly the
same rhythmic characteristics – dominate much of the dialogue between
piano parts (and brass instruments) in bars 104–178. The phrases contain
a sentence structure of three sub-phrases followed by a cadence, and are
affixed to dominant-tonic or tonic-dominant iterations.27 Musical

23
Pellegrino’s explanation of the core seems to miss the mark, in my opinion. Rather than
acknowledging a certain structure to the modal ordering, she states that ‘in m. 923, Adams
abandons key signatures and uses accidentals to generate the pitches needed for the
modes’ (‘Aspects of Closure’, p. 152). Furthermore, her explanation of the axis point
does not explain Adams’s preference for using D♯/E♭ over G♯/A♭: ‘these measures clearly
demonstrate that the focus of the movement is in the alternation between G♯ Lydian and
A♭ Phrygian, and the enharmonic equivalence between D♯ and E♭. There is no other rea-
son why Adams would have notated this pitch in two different ways, other than to make
this point. The enharmonic equivalence between D♯ and E♭ indicates that there is an
underlying conceptual justification for this unusual notation’ (p. 153).
24
See Timothy A. Johnson, ‘Harmony in the Music of John Adams: From Phrygian Gates to
Nixon in China’ (PhD diss., State University of New York at Buffalo, 1991).
25
John Adams, Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life (New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 2008), p. 149.
26
John Adams, Hallelujah Junction, p. 149.
27
Debra Lee Traficante concurs with the importance of the musical phrases intertwined
between pianos: ‘Of greatest melodic interest in the entire work is the introduction of a
gospel-style melody found in the pianos ... The confidently stated gospel-style melody
assists in providing a terraced build-up to the only non-vocable text, “For I have seen
the promised land”’ (‘An Analysis of John Adams’ Grand Pianola Music’, DMA diss.,
University of Oklahoma, 2010), pp. 108–9).

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 56 tempo
Figure 6: Translational Symmetry in Adams, ‘On the Dominant Divide’

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 symmetry in the music of john adams 57

phrases that bear an exact correspondent are said to have maximum

translational symmetry, whereas those phrases that generally retain
the rhythmic character but either displace one or more rhythms or
alter the chordal duration at resting moments feature near symmetry.28
The incessant level of repetition, emphatic to much minimalist music,
directs our perception of rhythmic grouping through translational
symmetry.29
The symmetrical design of Fearful Symmetries also centres on trans-
lational symmetry, though the process is not always as apparent as in
Adams’s works from the early 1980s. Adams’s style, like those of other
minimalist composers, became increasingly complex during this per-
iod. According to Robert Fink, whereas early minimalists lay ‘all the
cards on the table’, the gradual progression of the style led composers
to ‘keep at least a few [cards] up their sleeves.’30 One of the ways we
experience translational symmetry in Fearful Symmetries is tied to the
kinds of parsimonious chordal transformations that are pervasive in
the work. The recurring Neo-Riemannian Leittonwechsel transform-
ation – which makes an incremental change from a major harmony
to a minor one by moving the root down a semitone or from a
minor harmony to a major one by moving the fifth up a semitone –
undulates in predictable two-measure groupings. One of the
clearest instances of recurring L-transformations ensues with the
quasi-interlude keyboard section Adams highlights with the perform-
ance indication to be heard in the foreground (starting in bar 238).31
The process eventually breaks down, as Adams traverses through
some unexpected harmonies, thereby contrasting the high level of
symmetry with some asymmetrical moments to create a sense of bal-
ance. In Adams’s works, the polarising qualities achieved through this
balance are germane to his style. According to Weyl, symmetry ‘sig-
nifies rest and binding, asymmetry motion and loosening, the one
order and law, the other arbitrariness and accident, the one formal
rigidity and constraint, the other life, play and freedom’.32 A second,
more obvious way symmetry is created from the onset is through the
incessant repetition of the bass notes, fluctuating at mostly equal tem-
poral distances between pitch classes G and C♯ in bars 3–32, and then
between B♭ and E in bars 33–76. The interval class between each alter-
nating set divides the octave into equal parts, and the combination of
these recurring bass notes form a diminished seventh chord, a sym-
metrical collection that also evenly splits the octave through a cycle
of minor thirds. The last type of symmetry in this work concerns
the use of the octatonic scale, a resource that yields highly symmetric-
al materials bearing transpositional (and inversional) symmetry. While
the presence of the octatonic scale influences the work from the onset
(consider the fully diminished subset), its entrance is transparent in
scalar passages from the woodwind section, starting circa bar 582

28
According to Weyl, near symmetries maintain some components of symmetry, but intro-
duce at least one asymmetrical feature. See Weyl, Symmetry, p. 9–11.
29
Candace Brower, ‘Memory and the Perception of Rhythm’, Music Theory Spectrum 15, no. 1
(1993), pp. 19–35, here p. 28.
30
Robert Fink, ‘(Post-)minimalisms 1970–2000: the Search for a New Mainstream’, in The
Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music, ed. Nicholas Cook and Anthony Pople
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 542.
31
The employment of Neo-Riemannian connections in this work reveals a keen similarity to
Adams’s opera Nixon in China (1985–87). In Act 1 Scene 2, recurring L-transformations are
prominent when Mao Tse-tung calls on his ancestors and makes a declaration that the
world has come. See Timothy A. Johnson, John Adams’s Nixon in China: Musical
Analysis, Historical and Political Perspectives (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 174–77.
32
Weyl, Symmetry, p. 16.

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58 tempo

and continuing to the end. Thus symmetry is experienced at different

levels of structure not tied to large preconceived constructs.

The Violin Concerto (1993) and Century Rolls (1996)

Ever since the 1990s, John Adams has openly acknowledged the influ-
ence of Slonimsky’s Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns on his own
compositions.33 The Thesaurus is a reference book that contains
over one thousand musical patterns, organised by chapters according
to interval cycles they project, as well as ornamentations inserted
between cyclic notes.34 Slonimsky’s title suggests that a composer
can find musical synonyms that project the same cycle and share
the same cardinality and type(s) of embellishments. Slonimsky’s pat-
terns hold some notable symmetrical properties, which seem to
appeal to Adams’s compositional aesthetic and propensity towards
integrating symmetrical elements.35 Nearly all of the patterns are
derived from the octatonic collection (set class 8–28), the enneatonic
collection (set class 9–12), the hexatonic collection (set class 6–20),
the whole-tone collection (set class 6–35) or twelve-tone rows.36 By
and large, the collections found in the Thesaurus are transpositionally
symmetrical, which can be thought of as a musical representation of
translational symmetry that transposes an intervallic pattern on a ris-
ing plane.
Because Adams’s employment of Slonimsky’s patterns is often
overt, finding the source of origin can be a straightforward process.
Figure 7 illustrates Adams’s integration of Slonimsky’s Pattern 11, in
the first movement of the Violin Concerto, and Pattern 576 in the
third movement of the piano concerto Century Rolls, ‘Hail Bop’.37
As a norm, Slonimsky shows his cyclical patterns in prime and retro-
grade form. Borrowing Stephen Heinemann’s notation for pitch-class
set multiplication, the prime form of Slonimsky’s Pattern 11 comprises
0-3-4 ⊗ <06> = 0-3-4-6-9-10, and Pattern 576 0-9 ⊗ <02468T> =
0-9-2-11-4-1-6-3-8-5-10-7.38 Pattern 11 transposes its trichord on a
6-cycle, resulting in the octatonic subset 6-30 [013679], while Pattern
576 transposes its dyad on a 2-cycle, resulting in a twelve-tone
row.39 Pattern 576 has the effect of compound melody by combining
a whole-tone scale that commences with pc 0 and its literal comple-
ment starting with pc 9.

33
John Adams, Rebecca Jemian and Anne Marie de Zeeuw, ‘An Interview with John Adams’,
Perspectives of New Music, 34, no. 2 (1996), pp. 98–9.
34
A more thorough examination of Slonimsky’s Thesaurus appears in Alexander
Sanchez-Behar, ‘Counterpoint and Polyphony in John Adams’s Recent Instrumental
Works’, PhD diss., (Florida State University, 2008).
35
Of course, this is not the only reason Adams might have resorted to the Thesaurus. Adams
and Slonimsky shared a close friendship for many years.
36
For more information on the enneatonic collection, refer to Kimberly Anne Veenstra, ‘The
Nine-Step Scale of Alexander Tcherepnin: Its Conception, Its Properties, and Its Use’ (PhD
diss., Ohio State University, 2009).
37
Examples from Nicholas Slonimsky, Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns © 1947
(Renewed) Schirmer Trade Books, a division of Music Sales Corporation. International
Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Violin Concerto and
Century Rolls by John Adams © Hendon Music, Inc., a Boosey & Hawkes company.
Reprinted by permission.
38
Stephen Heinemann, ‘Pitch-Class Set Multiplication in Theory and Practice’, Music Theory
Spectrum, 20, no. 1 (1998), pp. 72–96. Heinemann’s multiplication signified by ⊗, trans-
poses the underlined multiplicand series by a cyclic multiplier to yield its union, known
as the product. In Pattern 11, for instance, the multiplicand 0-3-4 is transposed to pc 6 giv-
ing a product of 0-3-4-6-9-10.
39
For general information on interval cycles, see Joseph N. Straus, Introduction to Post-Tonal
Theory (Upper Saddle River: Pearson, 2005).

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 symmetry in the music of john adams 59

Figure 7:
Nicholas Slonimsky’s Thesaurus of In the Violin Concerto, Adams superimposes Slonimsky’s pattern
Scales and Melodic Patterns, patterns with several transpositions that comprise vertical second-inversion
11 (a) and 576 (c), used in Adams’s
Violin Concerto (b) and Century Rolls major triads. As the movement progresses, Adams transforms this pat-
(d). Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic tern through numerous rotational operations. Weyl and Darvas
Patterns by Nicholas Slonimsky © describe this type of symmetry as rotation, whereby an object retains
Copyright 1947 (Renewed) Schirmer
Trade Books, a division of Music its identity under a circular axis of rotation.40 In using rotations,
Sales Corporation. International Pattern 11 remains intact, retaining the same octatonic subset, though
Copyright Secured. All Rights the starting position of the scale is altered. In ‘Hail Bop’, Adams adapts
Reserved. Used by Permission.
Slonimsky’s rhythm but retains the prime and retrograde forms using
Violin Concerto by John Adams © a different level of transposition for each. Pattern 576 is discernible in
Copyright by Hendon Music, Inc., a
Boosey & Hawkes company. the highest pitches from the prime form (A4-F♯5-B4-A♭5-C♯5, and so
Reprinted by permission. Century on) and the lowest pitches from the retrograde (E♭6-F♯5-D♭6-E5-C♭6,
Rolls by John Adams © Copyright by and so forth). In both of these works, these patterns assume a signifi-
Hendon Music, Inc., a Boosey & cant role and govern motivic content following the introduction of
Hawkes company. Reprinted by
permission. Slonimsky’s pattern. Speaking of the Violin Concerto, Adams
remarked that he performed ‘all kinds of operations on these rising

40
Weyl, Symmetry; Darvas, Symmetry, p. 4.

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60 tempo

waves of triads, transforming them into a multitude of shapes and

forms: they change mode, change direction, undergo all kinds of aug-
mentation and diminution, and at one point even become a kind of
walking bass line’.41

Conclusion
Reflecting on Adams’s compositional career and on his ever-evolving
approach to symmetry, one can posit that the progression of his min-
imalist style – moving from the early markers that focused on a strict
adherence to audible and gradual processes, towards a freer approach
that brings the composer’s voice to the fore – is paralleled by his treat-
ment of symmetry. Initially, Adams’s handling of large-scale structure
adhered to pre-defined symmetrical constructs. After his gate works,
formal design was no longer dominated by symmetry, but rather by
musical development and repetition. In Adams’s allowing the
large-scale construct to gradually evolve as a result of minimalist pro-
cesses, one senses a balancing act between symmetry and asymmetry;
but what may be so appealing about symmetry is that ‘even in asym-
metric designs one feels symmetry as the norm from which one devi-
ates under the influence of forces of non-formal character’.42 As
listeners, we latch onto norms or use them as our measure for under-
standing the parameters of music separately and in combination.
While Adams’s attraction to symmetry may well stem from the nat-
ural qualities of creating a sense of order and beauty conventionally
associated with symmetry, there is little doubt that Steve Reich –
one of Adams’s favourite composers, whose music steered Adams
in the direction of minimalism – has been instrumental in defining
Adams’s style and perhaps even shaping his notions of minimalism.
For Reich, minimalism is the musical art of symmetry.43 And so in
the current era of post-minimalism or perhaps more appropriate,
‘post-styleism’, as Adams describes it, the composer plays a balancing
act, in which symmetry bears the capacity to animate his music while
working in conjunction with minimalist processes.44

41
Adams, Jemian and Zeeuw, ‘An Interview with John Adams’, p. 91.
42
Weyl, Symmetry, p. 13.
43
Steve Reich discusses symmetry in this manner in ‘The Canon’, http://www.studio360.
org/story/106790-the-canon (accessed 13 October 2013).
44
Adams in John Adams, Hail Bop! A Portrait of John Adams, produced by James Wills and
John Kelleher, 98 min, (Kultur International Films, DVD, 2006).

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