Short Ride in a Fast Machine (1986) is one of two works in John Adams's Two Fanfares for Orchestra alongside Tromba Lontana. It is also known as Fanfare for Great Woods because it was commissioned by the Great Woods Festival of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. As a commentary on the title, Adams inquires, "You know how it is when someone asks you to ride in a terrific sports car, and then you wish you hadn't?" This work is an iconic example of Adams's postminimal style, which is utilized in other works like Phrygian Gates, Shaker Loops, and Nixon in China. This style derives from minimalism as defined by the works of Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass, although it proceeds to "make use of minimalist techniques in more dramatic settings."
Read more about Short Ride In A Fast Machine: Reception and Performance
Famous quotes containing the words short, ride, fast and/or machine:
“I think “taste” is a social concept and not an artistic one. I’m willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else’s living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another’s brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)
“I saw him beat the surges under him,
And ride upon their backs. He trod the water,
Whose enmity he flung aside, and breasted
The surge most swoll’n that met him.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“We hear eagerly every thought and word quoted from an intellectual man. But in his presence our own mind is roused to activity, and we forget very fast what he says.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The machine unmakes the man. Now that the machine is perfect, the engineer is nobody. Every new step in improving the engine restricts one more act of the engineer,—unteaches him.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)