Switching over to Blogger!

Hello friends!

After hosting this webpage on Ghost for almost two years, I have decided to make a switch and move the website to Blogger! 

Some changes to the new webpage:

• Everything should load faster.
• The webpage looks like it was made in the early 2000s.
• It's arguably cleaner and easier to navigate.
• It's still a huge eyesore.

On the bright side, it matches the vibe of the MTO website, which I am sure has not been updated since the early 2000s.

Why I made this switch:

• Blogger is free.

I hope to keep this site on Blogger. The sidebars have an automatic archive by date, which is something I always wanted to implement on the old site, but all you can do is make an additional page and linking up the posts with labels. The pictures also adjust to the right size right on the editor, so no more huge and unruly photos that take up the entire screen and jumpscare you when you click on a link. Best of all, Blogger actually lets you post without a picture, so say goodbye to the deceptive stock images of cool opera productions just for you to click and be shown a long and boring theory article.

Furthermore, this new site lets you leave comments on every page and post! If, by some miracle, you've found this website and are reading this far into a post about a website update, congratulations! Leave a comment! I'll buy you a coffee or something.

Okay, that's it for today. Thanks for sticking by!

Introduction to Adams' Nixon in China (Part 0)

This opera has captivated all my musical attention for a good part of this year. I started listening to it after accidently finding it on YouTube during a binge of Glass's opera Akhnaten and realised that there were more minimalist operas other than Akhnaten. Nixon in China does something that most operas just cannot do for me: keep my attention span. The libretto is actually well written, and the arias make sense to the story without dragging the runtime. It's excellent English-language opera in the 20th century that appeals to a wide audience. That's its best feature, by the way. The fact is that most people that enjoy classical music will enjoy this opera. This is solely due to its strong roots in tonality. Composers, you don't need to write in an atonal stream for your opera to be taken seriously. Atonal music sucks.

The music in Nixon in China is what keeps making me come back. As opposed to traditional composers writing harmonically focused music, Adams takes rhythm and meter to the foreground and focuses on it, slowing the harmonic rhythm that traditional composers would use to drive interest in their music. It's hard to count how many times I've listened to this opera. There's always something new to discover on every listen through. How he sets the text in such thoughtful word painting that each word makes total sense in the context of the music, even when he's working with the most basic harmonies and melody. How he creates form with just two or three chords and the audience can still organize the songs in their head on their first listen through. Adams creates an atmosphere to his music that is easy to follow, easy to enjoy, and honestly, easy to analyse. And it sounds so good.

It's hard to put how good this opera is into such little words. In the next couple of weeks, I will analyse various sections of Nixon in China that exemplifies the style and character that Adams writes in. Namely, the aria "I am the wife of Mao Tse-tung", and how melody contrasts with form and harmony to avoid monotony in minimalism, the opera in an opera, and how Adams changes how he composes for the "communist/foreign" work, and The Chairman Dances, which although not from the opera itself, are pieces in the same style. The orchestration of The Chairman Dances is phenomenal.

Adams shows that modern tonal operas lead the field (along with Glass) with minimalism, and not whatever atonal composers are doing. At least that's my most honest opinion. I hope you will join me in finding great joy listening to Adams' most popular opera.