Harmonielehre


Harmonielehre is a forty-minute orchestral composition by the American composer John Adams, composed in 1985. In his memoir, Adams stated that the piece "was a statement of belief in the power of tonality at a time when I was uncertain about its future" and that it was "a one-of-kind once-only essay in the wedding of fin-de-siècle chromatic harmony with the rhythmic and formal procedures of Minimalism".
The composition's title, German for "study of harmony", is a reference to Arnold Schoenberg's 1911 music theory textbook of the same name, a study of tonal harmony. Other theory texts titled "Harmonielehre" include those by Heinrich Schenker and Hugo Riemann.
Adams has stated that the piece was inspired by a dream he had in which he was driving across the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge and saw an oil tanker on the surface of the water abruptly turn upright and take off like a Saturn V rocket. This dream and the composition of Harmonielehre shortly thereafter ended a writer's block Adams had been experiencing for eighteen months.

Movements

The composition is in three movements:

Instrumentation

;Woodwinds
;Brass
;Percussion, 4 players
;Keyboards
;Strings

Recordings

Harmonielehre appears in the True Detective TV series Church in Ruins . It also appears in the Modern Era soundtrack of the computer game Civilization IV, along with several other pieces by Adams. It also appears on the I Am Love soundtrack. The work was selected for inclusion in The Guardian's list of "50 Greatest Symphonies."