SKU: HL.233289

12.0x9.25x0.43 inches.

Score and separate parts with spiral-bound keyboard/organ part. Number 5, 1950 was Mark Rothko's last painting before the breakthrough into his mature format. In it the luminous color fields of a classic Rothko are inscribed across the middle with three delicate lines. Describing this painting and its pivotal position in Rothko's work, Brian O'Doherty observes: 'After this, the lines disappear completely.' In recent years gesture and figuration have disappeared from my music. What used to be background has emerged to become a musical world composed entirely of floating color fields. In this new world I've changed media, moving from the orchestra to smaller combinations of acoustical instruments and electronically-processed sounds. I still think in orchestral terms, but this hybrid medium allows me to create orchestral textures for more practical and readily available ensembles. Initially I imagined this as a kind of monolithic music -an entire piece as one rich and complex sound. Then I came to hear it as homophonic or heterophonic. And now - in this musical world that I thought was completely free of lines - I've come to hear a polyphony of harmonic clouds. Maybe the lines never disappear completely. Maybe Christian Wolff was right when he quipped: 'No matter what we do, sooner or later it all sounds melodic.' - John Luther Adams.

SKU: HL.49046391

ISBN 9781540086549. UPC: 842819108696.

The general inspiration for the music was an idea of Durham, garnered from two or three short visits and a reading of a short history - so a sort of Durham of the mind, a stylized Durham; 'my' Durham, if you will, imagined into music. However, the defininginspiration for the piece was the Cathedral. My first visit to Durham in 2001 saw me standing open-mouthed on Palace Green, and then in silent awe as I walked into that formidable magnificence inside. Most of the themes came from the days immediately following my first experience of this extraordinary, inspiring building. The feeling that the very stones and pillars themselves are imbued with centuries of prayer, withpeople's joy, grief, despair, even anger; gratitude and hope. As the tunes and chords and sounds started to organize themselves in my mind and onto manuscript paper, I realized that I was writing a sort of day in the life of Durham, and that the Cathedral wouldbe its beginning, would be in its middle, and would be at its ending. The piece consists of six 'pictures' arranged into three parts - the morning, afternoon and evening of this imaginary Durham city. Jon Lord, 2017.