''Slonimsky's Earbox'' is an orchestral work written in 1996 by American composer

John Adams John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was a Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Before Presidency of John Adams, his presidency, he was a leader of ...

. The world premiere was given by the Halle Orchestra, conducted by

Kent Nagano Kent George Nagano (born November 22, 1951) is an American conductor and opera administrator. Since 2015, he has been ''Generalmusikdirektor'' (GMD) of the Hamburg State Opera (until 2025). Early life and education Nagano was born in Berkeley, ...

on September 11, 1996 as part of the opening night celebrations for

Manchester Manchester () is a city and the metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. It had an estimated population of in . Greater Manchester is the third-most populous metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2.92&nbs ...

Bridgewater Hall The Bridgewater Hall is a concert venue in Manchester city centre, England. It cost around £42 million to build in the 1990s, and hosts over 250 performances a year. It is home to the 165-year-old Hallé Orchestra as well as to the Hallé ...

. The piece is based on

Igor Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ( – 6 April 1971) was a Russian composer and conductor with French citizenship (from 1934) and American citizenship (from 1945). He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century c ...

's work '' Le chant du rossignol'', as Adams was drawn to the modal harmonies that Stravinsky employed. It is a step toward integrating standard

minimalist In visual arts, music, and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in the post-war era in western art. The movement is often interpreted as a reaction to abstract expressionism and modernism; it anticipated contemporary post-mi ...

techniques with a more complex

contrapuntal In music theory, counterpoint is the relationship of two or more simultaneous Part (music), musical lines (also called voices) that are harmonically dependent on each other, yet independent in rhythm and Pitch contour, melodic contour. The term ...

style. It is approximately 13 minutes in length. Adams wrote the piece in tribute to his friend, the

Russian-American Russian Americans are Americans of full or partial Russian ancestry. The term can apply to recent Russian immigrants to the United States, as well as to those that settled in the 19th-century Russian possessions in what is now Alaska. Russia ...

composer, critic and musicologist

Nicolas Slonimsky Nicolas Slonimsky ( – December 25, 1995), born Nikolai Leonidovich Slonimskiy (), was a Russian-born American musicologist, conductor, pianist, and composer. Best known for his writing and musical reference work, he wrote the ''Thesaurus ...

, who had recently died. Slonimsky, the long-time editor of ''

Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians ''Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians'' is a major reference work in the field of music, originally compiled by Theodore Baker, PhD, and published in 1900 by G. Schirmer, Inc. The ninth edition, the most recent edition, was published in ...

,'' was the author of ''The Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns,'' a book of which Adams has made frequent use. Adams describes Slonimsky as "a character of mind-boggling ability", and says that ''Slonimsky's Earbox'' "memorializes his wit and hyper-energetic activity."

BBC Radio 3 BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, Radio drama, drama, High culture, culture and the arts ...

'
''Afternoon on 3'' program
3 May 2010

References

Compositions by John Adams (composer) 1996 compositions Funerary and memorial compositions {{Classical-composition-stub