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Edward Kennedy was born in 1899 and by the 1920s had made New York City his home. And for those born 25, or even 50 years after him, I like to imagine, “what was your Harlem like?” I don't doubt the presence of outsiders on an A train rumbling uptown, excited for a taste of “adventure” or urban “edge.” After all, of those able, who wouldn't want to visit a neighborhood that stands above as a cultural colossus? Still, I can't imagine the tourists with dollars in hand being a regular sight to those Harlemites of old. You see, the neighborhood, with its grit and history and familiar sights—like many other Black neighborhoods or other ethic hubs across America’s cities feeling gentrification’s seismic fractures—has changed. Dramatically. So we think about what was—with books or photographs or oral histories from family members and strangers alike. But with Harlem (a piece commissioned by the NBC Symphony Orchestra under the auspices of Arturo Toscanini), our quintessential American composer, recognized by his youthful peers as a Duke among commoners, plays the role of archivist. It’s his Harlem, preserved in sound.

Our Tone Poem begins with a trumpet, bell fitted with a plunger, in a descending yawn, distinctly duo-syllabic. “Haaaaar-lem,” it sighs, though not for exasperation. It’s Sunday in Harlem and we’re at 110th and 7th, due north. We’ll wake soon enough. But that initial Harlem will echo and rebound throughout as a crucial motif, making it impossible to remember exactly where we are: one of the many hearts, or souls, of Black America.

The trap kit’s cymbals steadily tap out a swinging step, as the rest of a the orchestra shakes off the excesses of Saturday night. The skittering brass here, the tumbling but tight saxophones there, and a rogue clarinet stumble to the sidewalk for a morning stroll.

Duke recorded the memory of his Harlem to staves adorned by clefs and all manner sharps and flats and accidentals, markings denoting dynamic and tempo. And while so much has changed today, the bones may still be recognizable—your unhurried pace on a weekend morning, matched by the unmistakable sounds and rhythms from the Caribbean—a brief interlude with gourds and cowbells in clave, and stout brass making a stubborn and chromatic march up the scale.

And then, on a dime, after we’re crossing a street, with incessant horns honking, our pace has slowed. The air is become somber, as in a funeral. Clarinets and trombones share an elegiac melody, as leading the mourners massing in front of the funeral parlor or church, and reassuring family and friends with hopes of a better tomorrow, of the promise of the comforts of memory, and—if you dare to believe it—a peaceful afterlife. But the tears and kisses and wailing and grim smiles are only secondary to the primary responsibility to those on that Amen Corner—to hold dear the memory and to perpetuate it for the future. Still we don’t leave the scene—or Harlem itself—with head hung low. The dirge springs us forward into a bright spot before the masters of percussion drive our bodies to move as they are able, a yearning for the energy of groove and propulsion. The orchestra erupts in a colorful explosion, as if to signal that the sun never sets on our Harlem, may her bones remain strong.

Instrumentation: Three flutes (second doubles piccolo), two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, five trumpets, three trombones, tuba, two alto saxophones (second doubles b-flat clarinet), two tenor saxophones (first doubles b-flat clarinet), baritone saxophone, timpani, harp, piano, bass drum, cymbals, cowbell, congas, gourd, two suspended cymbals, shakers, snare drum, trap set, tom tom, tam tam, strings

Kennedy and Frost shared a special friendship—in fact, in January 1961, Frost became the first poet to perform at a presidential inauguration. That day, Frost had bypassed Kennedy’s request that the former recite his poem “The Gift Outright.” Instead, Frost composed an entirely new poem for the occasion. (Unfavorable conditions made it difficult for the elder poet to read his new work; “The Gift Outright” was then recited from his memory).

Summer 1962, mere months before the dread of the Cuban Missile Crisis, at a Washington dinner party: Robert Frost and Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet Ambassador, are engaged in lively conversation. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall notices this budding rapport, and suggests to Kennedy that Frost be part of the diplomatic party to Moscow. Kennedy assents, and Frost sets off, hoping to play his own part in the easing of  tensions between East and West. The trip seemed to be going well. But when they returned home in early September, in front of the press, Frost carelessly attributed one of his own phrases—“too liberal to fight”—to the Soviet Premier. The resulting headline from The Washington Post: “Frost Says Khrushchev Sees U.S. as ‘Too Liberal’ to Defend Itself.” To Kennedy, it was a national embarrassment. He did not invite Frost to the debriefing. He cut off contact.

Frost died four months later in January 1963.

Nine months after that, on October 26, 1963, Kennedy delivered a speech at Amherst College as a new library was to be named for the poet. “The great artist is thus a solitary figure,” spoke Kennedy, as he memorialized friend. “He has, as Frost said, a lover’s quarrel with the world. In pursuing his perceptions of reality, he must often sail against the currents of his time. This is not a popular role.”

Kennedy’s somber voice wavers and seems to even crack, as he shares the sometimes uncomfortable truth that art holds the power to account. Art, he says, isn’t propaganda. A good artist’s job, by Kennedy’s definition, isn't always going to make you feel good: “If Robert Frost was much honored in his lifetime, it was because a good many preferred to ignore his darker truths.”

Now, Adolphus Hailstork sets this moving speech to music, breathing new life into old truths; an affirmation of the transformational power art can have on the spirit of an individual or a nation.

Instrumentation: Solo soprano voice, flute, oboe, English horn, clarinet, bassoon, two horns, two trumpets, three trombones, harp, strings

For those unfamiliar with The Matrix, an extremely brief synopsis: Hundreds of years into the future, humanity finds itself at war with machines and artificial intelligence. The humans are betrayed by the products of their hubris; defeated by, and imprisoned in, the Matrix—a computer simulation that projects the ideal of reality. (Think Plato and his allegorical cave). Some humans, including the hero Neo, escape this illusory existence imposed on mankind, and lead a resistance against the machines. By the end of the third film, a peace is reached, and humans can either opt to remain in the newly constructed world, or exit the program and live in the real world. It’s a radical exercise of choice.

Back to John Adams and that first movement, which was inspired by a dream the composer had of a supertanker on the San Francisco Bay rocketing into space. Brass heavy E minor chords bookend the movement, pounding one after another in sonic arrhythmia. Everything you hear in between—winds rising above the din, bursting like shimmering bubbles, the lonely call of a trumpet or horn, the drowned sound of the marimba lording over a sunken city, the incessant skitter of the strings undergirding this whole frightening structure—all of these are elements that Davis brings down like fire in his own dystopian score. (In the Adams, we also get a dose of Wagner and I can't help but think of Davis’ Neodämmerung when I hear it) This is not wholly inappropriate, because in this, Harmonielehre, Adams is some sort of kin to Neo.

A German word, ‌Harmonielehre roughly translates to “study of harmony.” It's also the name of a 1911 textbook by composer and music theorist Arnold Schoenberg, in which tonal harmony is his central preoccupation. Tonality, with its conventions of tension, resolution, and importantly, stability serve as the foundation for a lot of so-called classical music, folk music, and popular music. But after Schoenberg published this book, he set out on a mission to seemingly abandon tonality altogether, ushering in his era of 12-tone serialism—a new school, with new rules, at a new frontier. The avant-garde, some would say. A new reality.

Schoenberg’s influence was outsized—Adams name-checks both Pierre Boulez and Gyorgy Ligeti as bringing Schoenberg’s idea further into the future, into music festivals and into academia. “Rejecting Schoenberg,” Adams writes, “was like siding with the Philistines.” But that’s just what he sets out to do because, to put it bluntly, he did not jibe with this new music. In his reference to Schoenberg’s text, Adams rebels against “the agony of modern music” in a return to the tonic fundamentals. By the standards of the Western concert hall, he’s returning to the source. He’s offering composers and listeners a choice, or at least a reassurance that indulging in the pleasures of tonality doesn’t make you any more boring or less interesting.

In the second movement, Adams loops in references to Sibelius and Mahler: the unforgiving freeze of the former’s Fourth Symphony, and the chalkboard-scrape of dissonance from the latter's unfinished Tenth. Its name, “The Antforas Wound”, is a nod to Adams’ own interest in Carl Jung’s writings, particularly that of the Fisher King, later Anfortas. In Arthurian legend, he suffers from a wound that renders him impotent and physically limited. In a Jungian reading, Anfortas symbolizes a depression and impotence of the spirit. Here, we receive the barren landscape, punctuated by extreme discomfort and the occasional lurching pain. The burden of the spirit, clearly, is consequence for knowing the real world.

The final movement, “Meister Eckhart and Quackie” is a relatively light-hearted affair. It’s so called because Adams was visited one day by a dream in which his recently arrived infant daughter, Quackie, rode on the shoulders of medieval theologian and mystic Meister Eckhart. The piece, celestial and serene, offers listeners the most peace in this act of rebellion, as this study of tonality builds to a heroic climax, revealing an alternate creative path.

Instrumentation: Four flutes (second, third, and fourth double piccolo), three oboes (third doubles English horn), four clarinets (third and fourth double bass clarinet), three bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, two tubas, timpani, two harps, celesta, piano, bass drum, cymbals, glockenspiel, tam tam, chimes, gong, marimba, two suspended cymbals, sizzle cymbal, vibraphone, xylophone, crotales, two triangles, strings