Composer tests his own faith with new piece

Losing your religion may be an occupational risk for artists who like to weigh in on the Big Questions.

But when John Adams set out to write music representing the Crucifixion of Jesus, the composer underwent what he calls "a good old-fashioned crisis of faith."

"It was a very, very profoundly disturbing experience for me," said Adams, whose opera-oratorio "The Gospel According to the Other Mary" will have its world premiere Thursday at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

"I doubted whether my moral or spiritual powers were strong enough to try to take on this archetypal image, this event, which all the greatest artists in Western history, from Michelangelo to Johann Sebastian Bach to Bernini have dealt with. And then here's John Adams, a sort of secular liberal living in Berkeley, Calif., dealing with this."

In establishing himself as America's best-known as well as one of its most respected contemporary composers, Adams, 65, repeatedly has put his convictions and those of his audiences to the test. His operas have probed the ethics of nuclear weaponry ("Doctor Atomic"), the theological roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ("The Death of Klinghoffer") and the fissures in L.A.'s social fabric that were exposed by the 1994 Northridge earthquake ("I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky").

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Steve

A measurement of the depth of "faith" in a lapsed Unitarian might need to be calibrated in nanometers. Whatever insights someone of this ilk brings to the table are sure to be informed far more by socio-political philosophies and imaginary fancies than by any honest spiritual evaluation. He at least gets credit, though, for his research into the alleged reputation of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute.
Brista

The only thing we know of Mary of Magdala is that Yeshua cast of her seven demons and that she followed HIM wholeheartedly. We should do the same!!!!!!!!!!!!
- Evermyrtle
  
  And she washed HIS feet with expensive perfume and dried them with her hair. She turned for her sin and became a Christian.
keyboardshark

This reminds me of Lee Strobel, an atheist who was converted after doing an intensive investigation, using his journalism and legal training (he was a legal editor for the Chicago Tribune) to conduct an investigation into whether there was any credibility to the claims of the Bible. He spent a year and 9 months in his investigation, and concluded that it would require far more faith to maintain his atheism than to become a Christian.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AT_bMuFBfs