John Luther Adams: Composer of the Year

I have only mentioned John Luther Adams (who lives in Alaska and is not to be confused with John Adams who lives outside San Francisco) once before on this blog when he won the Pulitzer Prize in music back in April. At that time I described his piece Become Ocean as follows:

It sounds just a bit like Sibelius, getting mugged, on the beach, at dawn, by Steve Reich--which is actually kind of interesting...

Now that Musical America has named him composer of the year for 2015 I have been listening to some more of his music. Dark Waves from 2007 sounds a bit like Philip Glass, if he had discovered the major second instead of the minor third, crossed with Brian Eno. Now I am listening to The Farthest Place, which sounds a bit like John Adams' Phrygian Gates plus Philip Glass' Glassworks with a touch of Brian Eno.

Musical America referred to him as "the world's only Green composer". Notice the capitalized "Green". "Green" is the religion of today. I notice two trends in music recently (and not so recently): one is towards "environmental" music, music that largely evokes tranquil landscapes, oceans, clouds and so on. I have written some music like this myself. The natural world is a compelling inspiration. Another trend is "spacey" music; music that floats and shimmers and drones on. Both of these kinds of musical textures seem to be the fashion of the 21st century. Which is why they give you prizes for writing like this.

UPDATE: Forgot to include the clip of Dark Waves:

I suppose I could write something in this vein. Maybe I have: here is my piece Cloudscape for violin and guitar:

That sounds too much like music, I suppose. To really write proper environmental music I need to eliminate triadic harmonies, themes and rhythms. That would be pretty easy to do. Listening to Dark Waves by John Luther Adams, I hear a lot of drones and pedals spread over a lot of octaves. There are long crescendos and diminuendos. A big part of it is klangfarbenmelodie with the subtle mixing of timbres. But what seems very important is that there be no, or little, sense of rhythmic motif. This is what I really have trouble with. Long held waves and sheets of sound are all very nice, but from my point of view the result just lacks content. This is why I keep mentioning Brian Eno, the originator of what is often called "ambient music":

Actually, I have done something a bit like that, without much metrical division. Here is an early piece for guitar orchestra:

But that lacks the tranquility.

So I am starting to ask myself, is the secret to compositional success in the 21st century to simply do droney, spacey music without meter but with crescendos and tone colors that is basically soothing? Frankly, that seems a bit like Composition Lite to me...

On the other hand, there is the music of Esa-Pekka Salonen that is a bit spacey, but seems full of content: