[1][2][3] However, after the premiere Adams heavily re-wrote the beginning of the piece; this revised version of Absolute Jest was first performed in Miami Beach on December 1, 2012, by the St. Lawrence String Quartet and the New World Symphony under the composer's direction.
[1] Adams first conceived the idea for Absolute Jest during a performance of Igor Stravinsky's Pulcinella by Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony.
[4] Adams wrote, "Hearing this (and knowing that I was already committed to composing something for the San Francisco Symphony's 100th anniversary) I was suddenly stimulated by the way Stravinsky had absorbed musical artifacts from the past and worked them into his own highly personal language."
The composer found the task of merging the "highly charged manner and sound" of a string quartet and the "mass and less precise texture" of an orchestra to be considerably difficult.
Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle reflected much Adams's own criticism of the piece, observing of the musical allusions, "Some of that material proves propulsive in helpful ways.
131 quartet, for example, with its headlong drive toward five stuttering repeated notes, serves as a recurrent rhythmic motor, and Adams works some interesting variations on music from the Op.
However, Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times gave the piece a more positive review, writing, "With Beethoven bits bouncing off the walls, Absolute Jest has all the chugging rhythmic and contrapuntal complexity expected of Adams.
Tom Huizenga of The Washington Post wrote, "From its ominous opening strains to its ramshackle final bars, Absolute Jest, scored for the unlikely combination of string quartet and orchestra, is a funhouse stocked with flashes of Beethoven.
"[7] The music was also praised by Eric C. Simpson of the New York Classical Review, who observed, "At any rate, intended or not, Absolute Jest should be devastatingly funny to any listener who is well versed in Beethoven's oeuvre.
Rather, it's a vivacious, lively homage, a recent example in a long line of composers (including Brahms and Stravinsky, to name but two) looking back and 'sampling' the work of their forebears in order to create new and exciting compositions.
"[9] In contrast to his original criticism of the piece, Joshua Kosman more favorably wrote, "The harmonies and textures draw on Adams' post-minimalist vein, while the thematic materials are Beethoven's — except that very often the two blur so beguilingly that it's hard to tell where one stops and the other begins.
Reviewing a recording of the work, Andrew Clements of The Guardian compared it unfavorably to Adams's Grand Pianola Music, writing, "Absolute Jest, though, is much harder to admire.
Mashed-up fugue themes from the Grosse Fuge and Op 131 lead to a finale that transforms the radiant opening chord progression of the Waldstein Sonata into a funk stampede."