Which American minimalist composer created the symphony Naïve and Sentimental Music, first performed in 1999?
Naïve and Sentimental Music Naïve and Sentimental Music is a symphonic work by the American composer John Adams. The title of the work alludes to an essay by Friedrich Schiller, "On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry", that contrasts a creative personality that creates art for its own sake (the "naïve") versus one conscious of other purposes, such as art’s place in history (the "sentimental"). The composer cites both the slowly developing harmonies of Bruckner's Fourth Symphony and the atmosphere of the Sonoma coastline (where the piece was composed) as inspirations for the work. The piece was co-commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Ensemble Modern, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. It received its first public performance by the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen on February 19, 1999. A recording by Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic was subsequently released by Nonesuch Records.
Gordon Sherwood Gordon Sherwood (August 25, 1929 – May 2, 2013) was an American classical composer. Known in Germany as the "Beggar-Composer", his works exhibit various early 20th-century European and American classical music styles, as well as showing influences from blues, Arabic, Indian and Asian music. The New York Philharmonic under Dmitri Mitropoulos gave his career a promising start as a prize-winning young composer at Carnegie Hall in 1957. Aaron Copland said he was "his most gifted student". He studied with famous teachers and won more awards and stipends in academia, but drifted into virtual anonymity until the mid-1990s. He began begging on the streets of Paris around 1980. A 1994 Norddeutscher Rundfunk/Arte feature-length television documentary "Der Bettler von Paris" exposed his life and work to German audiences, who were the first to hear his symphony and other works were premiered and recorded at the beginning of the 21st century.