Doctor Faustus and His Composition: Reflections on Thomas Mann's Fictional Composer episode artwork

EPISODE · Sep 8, 2010

Doctor Faustus and His Composition: Reflections on Thomas Mann's Fictional Composer

from Yale University: Humanities · host Whitney Humanities Center

In this first Tanner Lecture, Adams discusses how Thomas Mann uses the Faust myth to show obsession with order and objectivity leads to creative sterility and cultural barbarism. Adams also examines his own compositional practices in this context.

Episode metadata supplied by the publisher feed · Published Sep 8, 2010

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Known for moving American concert music away from academic modernism and toward a more expansive humanist musical language, Adams brings wide ranging creative insight to his Tanner Lectures. As well as his renowned orchestral and choral work and politically charged operas, Adams’ recent memoir, “Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life,” has been lauded as an explication of the creative process and was named a New York Times Notable Book. In his teaching, writing and composition, Adams has been hailed as a “philosopher/craftsman, attempting to reflect and render the truth as he observes and feels it, in all its complexity and its simplicity.”

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