By Ralph P. Locke

Samuel Adler, now 96 and still composing, has released an updated version of his rich, entertaining, and sometimes gripping memoir of a life well lived.

Building Bridges with Music: Stories from a Composer’s Life by Samuel Adler, edited by Jürgen Thym. Expanded 2nd ed. (paperback), Paraclete Press (Brewster, MA), 264 pages, $59.99.

To order, click here.

Samuel Adler is one of the most-respected composers and composition teachers in America today. He has written in a wide range of genres, including string quartets, solo-instrument pieces, symphonic works, choral items, and operas. Classical-record magazines such as American Record Guide and Gramophone have hailed LPs and CDs of dozens of Adler’s works over the past half-century. (I have praised several of his recent CDs here, here, and here.) But even many musicians and listeners who enjoy and admire Adler’s compositions may not realize how rich and varied a career this amazing man has had. His life, continuously intertwined with his musical activities, has had its share of tumult, striving, and plain good luck.

All of this is apparent in the substantial book of memoirs that Adler has just published in an expanded second edition. The book first appeared from Pendragon Press, but the publishing house suddenly went out of business so copies could no longer be ordered. The new publisher is Paraclete Press, a book-publishing firm in Brewster, Massachusetts, that also releases CDs, including many by the choral group known as Gloriæ Dei Cantores. (That chorus has sung and recorded several works by Adler.) Paraclete Press describes itself as “the publishing house of a Cape Cod Benedictine community, the Community of Jesus.” Its books reflect a wide range of Christian stances (not always Catholic ones), and this memoir is by a musician who is not Christian but Jewish. Adler’s religious and cultural identity is one of the central facts and facets of his life, having been determined by family history, and it finds strong expression in certain of his compositions, though he has also set Christian texts as well as much poetry that deals with other kinds of issues.

The title of Adler’s memoir — Building Bridges with Music — stresses his lifelong efforts at helping music flourish in many different contexts: that is, his devoted attempts at bringing music to many different kinds of audiences. And the key word “stories” in the book’s subtitle aptly reflects Adler’s eagerness to share — as anyone who has met him knows — his lively and interesting memories and anecdotes and the heartening, deeply humane messages they carry. (Adler tells some of these same stories, and some different ones, in four interviews that are available for streaming through the website of the Performing Arts Center of Cape Cod.)

Some of the stories that Adler has to tell may be familiar to people who knew him during his many years as a professor at North Texas State University (now University of North Texas), the Eastman School of Music, and the Juilliard School, or who participated in his summer composition courses at Bowdoin College (Maine) and in Germany.

The 40 years that I spent teaching music history and musicology at the Eastman School overlapped with Sam’s 30 years as a prominent professor of composition there. When Sam showed me the manuscript of this book, I urged him to send it to (the aforementioned) Pendragon Press, for its “American Music and Musicians” series. Pendragon quickly saw its merits, and the publisher’s first edition brought to a large and diverse readership news of Adler’s wide-ranging activities, particularly the artful way that he has managed so many aspects of “the music biz.” The new expanded version from Paraclete should help Adler’s thoughts remain available for decades to come.

Young Samuel Adler (front), in January 1939, sees the Statue of Liberty while on board the refugee ship (the S. S. Manhattan) bringing him and his family to America.

I pointedly mentioned a “diverse readership,” for the stories in this book will interest performing musicians, lovers of classical music, and anyone who likes to reflect on the ways in which classical music and the arts in general (and literature, for that matter) have thrived — and might still thrive in the future — in the social and cultural melting pot that is the United States. I am delighted that Paraclete Press has taken the initiative of adding a new final chapter, in which Adler brings his story a few years closer to the present moment. Adler continues to compose, at age 96, so there’s no way that a book — which takes months to copyedit, print, and bring to market — could be totally up to date. (For the absolutely most recent events, see https://samuelhadler.com/.)

The most gripping parts of Building Bridges with Music are the early chapters, in which we learn how 10-year-old Sam and his sister Marianne and their parents, a Jewish family living in Mannheim, Germany, managed to make their way in 1939 from life under Hitler to the United States, got settled in (eventually) Worcester, Massachusetts, and began to build new and productive lives. Sam was a talented all-around musician — violinist, fledgling composer (studying with the noted Boston-based German-Jewish composer Herbert Fromm), and eager conductor — when he began making his mark at Boston University and then pursued further compositional study under Hindemith and Copland.

One of the most fascinating episodes concerns the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra (1952-62), which was Sam’s idea to create — and conduct — in order to improve the public image of the United States military in post-WWII Germany. The remainder of that ensemble’s fascinating history was told in the book Uncle Sam’s Orchestra by John Canarina, its last conductor. The “Uncle Sam” in the title of course refers primarily to the United States but could, with equal justice, point to another Sam: the orchestra’s founder!

In his memoirs, Adler sheds light on the inner workings of several major music schools. He also offers memorable accounts of his interactions with prominent figures in musical life, including a humorously annoying run-in with ’50s pop singer Eddie Fisher. He sketches the main lines of his personal life — Sam Adler is a devoted family man — but he focuses primarily on his musical activities. We get the back story to many of Adler’s compositions and learn about the challenges involved in bringing the larger-ensemble ones, especially, to successful performance.

Samuel Adler, in the 1950s and in uniform, conducting the Seventh Army Symphony in Kassel, Germany.

Throughout, one senses Adler’s determination to write music that draws on a wide range of stylistic resources yet communicates directly. For a wonderful taste of the results, I recommend Canto XII for solo bassoon: four characterful etudes, including one titled “Sermon” and another based on the famous opening of The Rite of Spring. It can be heard on Albany 306 or on YouTube, played with character and elegance by New York Philharmonic first-chair bassoonist Judith LeClair.

The book concludes with the aforementioned 10-page chapter about Adler’s life and productivity in recent years (“Turning 90”); a short Coda; two insightful essays based on Adler’s extensive experience creating music for Jewish worship; an interview with Adler, led by Marilyn Shrude, on teaching composition; plus an index of his works that are mentioned and a list of his composition students. At age 96, Samuel Adler continues to compose, and his latest works are being performed and recorded; in this and many other ways he remains an active force in the musical life of our nation and the wider world. This book makes clear how deep his devotion is to the art of music and how eager and skillful he has been at bringing it to listeners across the nation and abroad.

The book’s editor, Jürgen Thym (a longtime professor of musicology at the Eastman School), provides a touching, engagingly personal Introduction (he heard the Seventh Army Symphony at the age of 17 in southern Germany!) and helpful footnotes identifying the many individuals mentioned.

Paraclete has gone to the expense of publishing the book in a wider-than-usual format, and has used bright-white paper. These decisions allow dozens of photos to be included, some of them in a format large enough for interesting details to “tell.” (For yet further photos, click here.)

A few of the photos are even in color, notably a very recent one on the book’s cover, taken by Sam’s wife, the renowned conductor Emily Freeman Brown. But some of the ones from before color, once seen, are unforgettable, notably a sepia-toned snapshot of Sam (two months short of 11 years) on board a ship with many other immigrants. He stands in open-mouthed astonishment, his hands reaching slightly outward, as the Statue of Liberty comes into view.

Ralph P. Locke is emeritus professor of musicology at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music. Six of his articles have won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for excellence in writing about music. His most recent two books are Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections and Music and the Exotic from the Renaissance to Mozart (both Cambridge University Press). Both are now available in paperback; the second, also as an e-book. Ralph Locke also contributes to American Record Guide and to the online arts-magazines New York Arts, Opera Today, and The Boston Musical Intelligencer. His articles have appeared in major scholarly journals, in Oxford Music Online (Grove Dictionary), and in the program books of major opera houses, e.g., Santa Fe (New Mexico), Wexford (Ireland), Glyndebourne, Covent Garden, and the Bavarian State Opera (Munich). He is part of the editorial team behind the wide-ranging open-access periodical Music & Musical Performance: An International Journal. The present review first appeared in American Record Guide and is included here by kind permission.