The Pulitzer for music makes sense, finally.
The classical music community went into a tizzy last week when it was announced that John Adams had won the Pulitzer Prize. "I can't believe they gave it to a minimalist!" they squealed. Some were undoubtedly excited by what they believed was a major breakthrough for "downtown" music. A few curmudgeons muttered (again) about the death of classical music.
It should be pointed out that, technically, the Pulitzer is awarded to a work?not a composer?and the work that did win, On the Transmigration of Souls, was hardly one of Adams' hardcore minimalist settings. The New York Philharmonic commissioned the work to commemorate September 11, and the first performance was one of the most emotionally charged premieres that the Philharmonic has ever given. And how could it not be? The piece, while not the most challenging, complex or analytic composition of the year, was probably the most relevant. Every person in the hall could connect to it in some way, and this, sadly, is a rarity in contemporary classical music.
Had September 11 never happened, perhaps (former) minimalists John Adams and Steve Reich being recognized by the Pulitzer Board (notorious for its stuffy musical taste) would be the single noteworthy aspect of this story. But even though many composers long for insularity from the rest of the world, it did happen. Even as the Pulitzers were being announced up at Columbia University, three journalists were killed as their hotel in Baghdad was attacked. Even the most out-of-touch artists can't shut out the world?or forget their place in it.
Most noteworthy about this year's finalists is the fact that, for the first time ever, all three were intimately connected to the world at large. In addition to Adams' piece, Paul Schoenfield's nominated work, Camp Songs, sets five poems culled from the writing of Holocaust survivor and Polish journalist Aleksander Kulisiewicz, while Reich's Three Tales, a video documentary opera, recounts three major historical events: the Hindenburg, the nuclear tests at Bikini Island and Dolly, the cloned sheep. Somehow these pieces seem even more suited to an award ultimately decided by a board of journalists than, say, William Bolcom's 12 New Etudes for Piano (1988) or Walter Piston's Symphony No. 3. Which is not to say that these works aren't interesting; it's just that they don't seem to gel with the Pulitzer awards with a firmer grounding in current events.
Last year, eight of the 14 journalistic awards went to coverage of September 11 and Afghanistan. When the awards were presented at a luncheon, then-Pulitzer Board President John Carroll linked all of the different Pulitzers. "In literature, music and drama, with their longer periods of gestation, we have yet to feel the full effect of September 11," he stated. "The terror and its aftermath will no doubt ripple through our books, poems, plays and music for many years to come, just as the ripples of earlier American traumas pervade the work we celebrate today." And indeed he was right. Adams' piece was only one of dozens of pieces written to address the attacks.
Newsday critic Justin Davidson (a member of the jury this year) predicted that New Yorkers would turn to music and entertainment as part of their healing process. Certainly music has always been an invaluable measure of the emotional climate of an era, and the honoring of these three works of musical, political and emotional significance with such a prestigious prize is an overdue realization by the Pulitzer Board that new music can be relevant. While the classical music industry tries to keep itself hermetically sealed, arguing about the best recording of the Beethoven piano sonatas, this year's Pulitzer in Music is not only refreshing but, in the best of circumstances, an indication that classical music can once again mean something to America.