Meister Eckhardt and Quackie

[TC Chris]

Want your horizons widened just a little? John Adams is a leading 21st century American composer, usually classified as a minimalist. "Meister Eckhardt and Quackie" is a movement from a larger piece that I like. The movement's title? Meister Eckhardt was a 14th century mystic philosopher. Quackie is what he and his wife called their infant daughter. ( I love cool titles, like the books To The Finland Station and Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.) Here's an explanation of how they came together in the movement's title:

"In 1985, composer John Adams had a daughter named Emily, but he and his wife nicknamed her "Quackie." One night, Adams dreamed that Quackie was riding on the shoulder of mediaeval mystic Meister Eckhardt, and as they floated through the night sky, she whispered in the master's ear, sharing the secret of grace. That dream inspired an ethereal movement called "Meister Eckhardt and Quackie" in Adams' 1985 piece, Harmonielehre. "

OK. Meister Eckhardt did not play a prominent part in my education, but the music he inspired is really cool. Here's a version by the SF Symphony, for whom it was written. It runs about 12 min. I've got the premier performance of the whole thing on cassette tape from a long-ago radio broadcast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0DekYvR6qU

Chris Campbell