The Utah Chamber Orchestra and Salt Lake Choral Artists Terence Kern Conducting (For orchestra and chorus (1983). Instrumentation: 2222, 22, timpani, and strings.) And now, behold, if Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen…. And they (Adam and Eve) would have had no children; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin. But behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things. The Book of Mormon Joseph Smith, like Dante and Beethoven before him, was a transitional figure. • Dante’s roots were in the Middle Ages but his Divine Comedy anticipated humanistic perspectives associated with the Renaissance. • Beethoven’s beginnings were as a classicist, but in his mature writings (e.g., the Eroica symphony) he greatly expanded the boundaries of classical models as a harbinger of the romanticism that would come. • Joseph Smith grew up in a society steeped in Christian revivalism, but already in his twenties his Christianity was bursting at the seams, anticipating the writings of Emerson and Whitman and laying the groundwork for the Personal Religion that is only today coming to fruition. Historical Christianity attributes human depravity to Adam’s willful rebellion in the Garden of Eden. Contrastingly, Book of Mormon character father Lehi depicts Adam as bearing the traits of an American frontiersman who takes matters into his own hands. Adam, like his Greek counterpart Prometheus, acting “for himself,” went contrary to God’s command that “men might be” and then suffered God’s punishment that “they might have joy.”
Symphony No. 2 for Orchestra & Chorus
“Adam fell that man might be; Men are that they might have joy!”
2. Con Brio, 7:41 3. Andante, 7:35 4. Allegro Assai, 11:03 1. Allegro, 10:10
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Adam
(Detail from a fresco by Michelangelo, c. 1510)
Joseph Smith Jr.
(Drawing by Bathsheba Bigler Smith, c. 1843)
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