674. How Does a Composer Feel After the World Premiere?

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Freakonomics Radio – Episode 674

"How Does a Composer Feel After the World Premiere?"

Date: May 8, 2026
Host: Stephen J. Dubner
Guests: David Lang (composer), Matias Tarnopolski (President/CEO, New York Philharmonic), audience members, Glory Liu (Political Scientist)

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Overview:

This episode explores the aftermath of a world premiere for a major new orchestral work: David Lang’s Wealth of Nations, inspired by Adam Smith’s seminal text. Host Stephen Dubner follows Lang’s emotional journey post-premiere, delves into the challenges and rewards of composing and producing a modern oratorio, examines the human, economic, and philosophical themes of the piece, and reflects on the intersection of art, economics, and society.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Post-Premiere Emotional Rollercoaster

• Lang’s Immediate Response: A blend of pride and post-premiere letdown.

  • “Last week I was a superstar. This week I'm nothing.” — David Lang, [03:04]
  • Lang discusses the “post-experience depression” artists often feel, noting “the bigger the triumph, the deeper the hole.” [04:15]

• Lang’s Expectations for Success:

  • Says he sets the bar low: “The definition of success would be to come out and not have everyone think that I’m incompetent.” [04:28]
  • Discusses tiny details that can haunt a composer, most listeners wouldn’t notice but he would. [04:51]

2. The Musical Process: From Page to Stage

• Cooperation and Community:

  • Lang describes composing as providing “instructions for 100 different people,” and stresses that rehearsal is about building a community, not just learning notes.
    • “The process of rehearsal is them learning how to be a community that comes together to build this thing.” [09:44]

• Magic of Ensemble Creation:

  • Dubner marvels at the alchemy of translating dots on a page into living music.
    • “One afternoon... musicians and soloists get together and... turn this two-dimensional thing into not even three, like six.” [08:26]

• Working with Living Composers:

  • Discusses how rare it is for performers to work with living composers, versus mostly playing music by the dead. [10:35]
  • Lang appreciates being involved but feels pressure to contribute meaningful feedback during rehearsal. [11:40-12:55]

3. Reception: Audience, Critics, and Philanthropy

• Public and Critical Reception:

  • Audience members described the work as emotionally powerful, thought-provoking, urgent, and complex.
    • “It was urgent and curious and dark and heroic and hopeful. I really did not expect to feel such a range of emotions.” — Glory Liu, [27:06]
  • Critics praised Lang for bringing out the humanity in economics, reframing Smith’s ideas as deeply human [02:39].

• Philharmonic’s Investment and Patron Reactions:

  • The costs and risks of such productions are high; modern patronage is essential. [14:10-15:55]
  • Some concern that the piece critiques the very class funding it, but patrons responded positively.
    • “Nobody [complained]. I was kind of ready for it... People have their eyes open to what’s happening.” — Matias Tarnopolski, [20:22]

4. Wealth, Equity, and the Role of Art

• Smith Reconsidered:

  • Lang and guests discuss how Smith’s ideas have been cherry-picked to support opposing economic ideologies, but the oratorio explores the whole Smith—including his progressive calls for justice and equity.
    • “No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.” — Adam Smith, quoted by David Lang, [43:09]

• Art as Social Mirror:

  • Tarnopolski and Dubner reflect on art’s historic role in holding up a mirror to society, especially in turbulent times. [20:30]
    • “It is the writers and the poets and the musicians who get silenced when authoritarian regimes take hold... David Lang is a fearless, fearless artist.” — Matias Tarnopolski, [20:45]

• Philosophical & Religious Dimensions:

  • Lang draws parallels between religious imagination and utopian hopes for justice, arguing that “imagining a better world” is inherently spiritual. [37:17]
  • Lang relates the piece’s moral vision to his Jewish heritage:
    • “Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you.” [40:59]

5. Reflections on the Oratorio’s Structure & Legacy

• Narrative Composition:

  • The oratorio weaves text from Smith and other historical figures (Emerson, Douglass, FDR, Eugene Debs) across 18 movements—deliberately chosen for its symbolism of “life” in Judaism. [42:23]
  • Discussion of the final movement, “The Very Simple Secret:”
    • “The establishment of perfect justice, of perfect liberty and of perfect equality is the very simple secret which most effectually secures the highest degree of prosperity to all.” — Adam Smith via Lang, [43:09]

• Reuse of Pre-existing Music:

  • Lang admits to incorporating an older piece he wrote based on Debs’ courtroom speech, sparking debate about artistic “cheating.”
    • “It’s slightly cheating to stick old pieces into new pieces” — David Lang, [30:08]
    • Justifies it as “in dialogue with everything else I’ve ever thought.” [31:04]

• Ongoing Impact:

  • The oratorio is set to be performed elsewhere, but, as Lang notes, the ephemeral nature of live music means these “tight and powerful” relationships dissolve after the concert. [46:10]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On the Artist’s Emotional Cycle

“There’s always this post experience depression, and the bigger the peace and the bigger the triumph, the deeper the hole.”
— David Lang, [04:15]

On Community and Creation

“The process of rehearsal isn’t about them learning the notes... it’s them learning how to be a community that comes together to build this thing.”
— David Lang, [09:44]

On Philanthropy and Artistic Irony

“I was sort of worried that maybe some of the board members would get mad at me, but actually, several of the board members came up and thanked me.”
— David Lang, [14:59]

On Adam Smith’s Enduring Message

“No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.”
— Adam Smith via David Lang, [43:09]

“Things are not what they seem. Every word and act matters. There is a human dimension and a human cost to everything we do, and we need to wake up to that.”
— Matias Tarnopolski, [21:30]

Important Segment Timestamps:

• [04:15] – Lang discusses post-premiere depression
• [09:44] – Rehearsals as community-building
• [14:51] – Patronage and financing new music
• [17:02] – Philosophical underpinnings for commissioning the work
• [21:30] – Tarnopolski on the piece’s central message
• [27:06] – Glory Liu on the complexity and impact of the music
• [31:04] – Lang on “cheating” by reusing his own music
• [40:59] – Lang on moral teachings from Judaism
• [43:09] – The final movement: “The Very Simple Secret”
• [46:10] – The ephemeral nature of music and relationships forged in performance

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Flow & Tone

The tone is intimate, intellectual, and reflective, echoing the emotional complexity of Lang’s music and the weight of Smith’s economic and moral ideas. Dubner’s curiosity and empathy drive the narrative, inviting both artistic confession and philosophical debate. The participants openly acknowledge ambiguity and complexity—there are no neat answers, only deeper questions about art, justice, and our shared humanity.

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Conclusion

This episode offers an immersive look at the intersection of music, economics, and morality through the lens of a bold new oratorio. It explores what it means for art to both challenge its patrons and inspire its audiences, and what it means for an artist to invest years of life into something ephemeral. The result is less about finding economic “answers,” and more an invitation to reconsider what it means to flourish—together.

Transcript

[Stephen Dubner]

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[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

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[David Lang]

The Secret

[Matias Tarnopolski]

the Very Simple Secret at

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

the end of March, the composer David Lange debuted a modern piece of music set to a 250-year-old book, Adam Smith's the Wealth of nations. The Establishment. The Establishment. It had four sold out performances by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. Last week on the show, we heard from Lange about the origins of the piece and we sat in on a few rehearsals. We also attended one of the performances. Afterward, we spoke with some audience members in the lobby.

[Stephen Dubner]

I'm here on a band trip and

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

this is one of the activities.

[Stephen Dubner]

So yeah, I really like all of the crescendos and how it was all

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

building up to like a really big moment at the end.

[Stephen Dubner]

I think it actually speaks to what is most beautiful about humans, that we feel better when we help others. I think that's a beautiful emotional and pragmatic loop.

[David Lang]

This is the kind of piece the Philharmonic should be doing. It was also interesting watching Gustavo Dudamel up close. He was really into it. I mean, he was really inside the piece.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

The published reviews were also positive. Stacey Vanek Smith, writing for Bloomberg, said that David Lang had shown that economics, often reduced to stock tickers and earnings reports, can in fact be profoundly human. And what about Lang himself? How did he feel about the first performances of his new composition? Well, he was pleased and proud, at least for a little while.

[David Lang]

Last week I was a superstar. This week I'm nothing.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

Today on Freakonomics Radio, the global economy has changed a great deal since Adam Smith, but the underlying lessons may be more pertinent than ever.

[Matias Tarnopolski]

There is a human dimension and a Human cost to everything we do, and we need to wake up to that.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

The math and aftermath of wealth of Nations. Starting now.

[Stephen Dubner]

This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything, with your host, Stephen Dubner.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

I caught up with David Lang about a week after the last of the four performances of the wealth of Nations. And I asked what it felt like to work on a big new piece like this for years and then hear it come to life and then go away.

[David Lang]

There's always this post experience depression, and the bigger the peace and the bigger the triumph, the deeper the hole.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

But, I mean, you have to feel it was a great success.

[David Lang]

No, I always go into these things thinking that the definition of success would be to come out and not have everyone think that I'm incompetent.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

That's the way to set the bar low.

[David Lang]

I want to set the bar low because there's so many things that can go wrong, you know, and my music repeats a lot. So if you make a mistake, it could be like, there's 10 minutes of this mistake.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

And when you say a mistake, what would that actually be or sound like? And would we know?

[David Lang]

I'm not sure you would know, but I would know if I orchestrated a chord wrong or if I asked someone to do something that I ended up not liking. And it's really easy to make those mistakes. There are, you know, like a thousand little tiny detail things, and they really can affect how the piece feels to me, maybe not to anybody else, because the piece didn't exist before. Nobody knows what it could have been. But I have a little checklist in my head of all the things that I might have done wrong.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

What was on that checklist?

[David Lang]

There's that movement that we talked about last time, the Woolen Coat, which I really wanted to make sure that it sounded as emotional and as full to everybody else as it did to me singing it at home in my studio. And I was really happy that that worked out really well. The solo things, like, I didn't know if having Fleur singing these arias with no accompaniment, if they would be so emotional.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

Lange is talking about the mezzo soprano Fleur Baron. She was one of the two vocal soloists in wealth of nations, along with the bass baritone, Devon Tynes. Here is one of the arias that Lang was thinking of.

[Stephen Dubner]

I thought, after all.

[David Lang]

But in my. What I hoped would happen would be that all those changes of scale would end up kind of focusing what happened to our attention as we listened. But you should tell me what you thought. I mean, I'VE been living with this piece for years. You just heard it the first time. So I'd be very curious to know what you thought.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

I thought it was wonderful. I thought it was thought provoking, but also totally engaging. It was deep, but accessible. There's a lot of different movements, obviously, and a lot of different emotions and a lot of different colors in the music. And you'll forgive me if I speak about music in a language that isn't quite the language of, you know, musicians or composers. But I found the music spiky and kind of punky at times, but also very delicate. I found the piece celebratory, but also mournful. I found it confident, but also seeking. And I found I walked out of there with a new appreciation for Adam Smith, which is not nothing. Cause I had quite a bit of an appreciation for him. And a pretty big appreciation for David Lange.

[David Lang]

What's weird, you know, being a young composer, you try to learn things and figure things out. And you're always aware of what you're trying that you've never done before when you become an old composer. And I can say that as a senior citizen, you know things instinctively that you're not really paying attention to any longer. So these issues of pacing and depth. There are all sorts of really important things that I don't think about as intensely as I used to think about them. I just trust that I will know how they work. And so, for me, one of the really fun things was thinking that I was gonna have an experience that had a particular shape. Like this giant, enthusiastic Adam Smith stuff with a full orchestra at the beginning. And that gradually, as the piece went on, it would taper down to these more personal American thoughts. And we would get someplace that would be, as you said, optimistic. But also kind of really trying to pay attention to what's going on around us. And I wasn't really sure that that was gonna work. But for me, that's the thing that I was really satisfied with. The shape of the intellectual argument. I was really happy with.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

I had a lot of fun being at rehearsals. And there were many things that really impressed me. First of all, I'm just blown away by how good the New York Philharmonic is and their singers. And when I heard the first choral rehearsal and then the first orchestra rehearsal, it sounded so good. I thought, oh, well, everybody must have rehearsed a bunch before already together. But in fact, they haven't. It does seem like an absolute miracle that a person like you could sit in your studio in soho for a bunch of Years and write dots on the paper. And then one afternoon in March of 2026, you know, 48 vocalists and then a whole bunch of musicians and a couple soloists get together and they turn this two dimensional thing into not even three, like six. Part of my thrill of watching you get enmeshed in this and watching you get happier and happier during the course of rehearsals. Part of it was about the mystery and the magic of that, honestly. And so when I say it was inspiring and moving, the piece itself was. But I guess I also see the creation of a thing like this representing something really good about humankind, that we're able to do this.

[David Lang]

I love that you say that, because I really think that that's what you heard during the rehearsal was you heard what's good in people. Everyone has their individual part. One of the things you do as a composer is you're actually writing a series of instructions for 100 different people in this piece. And everybody has their own instruct. And they sit at home before the first rehearsal and they practice their own instruction. So they have an idea of what they're responsible for, but they have no idea if they're going to be able to make something good with someone else when they get together. And so the process of rehearsal isn't about them learning the notes. The process of rehearsal is them learning how to be a community that comes together to build this thing.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

So you, the composer, were there in the room for all the rehearsals. I'm guessing that for all the performers, the chorus, the soloists, the musicians, the conductor, they're accustomed to playing music by dead composers at least 90% of the time. Right?

[David Lang]

That's absolutely right.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

And you're, you know, unless something gone really wrong during rehearsals, you were gonna be alive at the end of it. And I was very curious to see how undiva like you were both the conductor of the vocal chorus and then the conductor of the orchestra, Gustavo Dudamel. They would often turn to you and ask a question or defer to you. How do you like that? How's that sounding? Should we try this? What surprised me, I'll be honest, was how I'd say 99% of the time you'd give them a big thumbs up and say, beautiful. It's beautiful. And I wondered, did you really feel that way or was it somewhat strategic? Do you feel like your work is done and now if you start nitpicking, you're just gonna make your a pain in the neck and therefore you're just gonna be positive and encouraging like that? Or were you really feeling that?

[David Lang]

I think it's a little bit of everything. You know, I'd never heard the piece before either. If I had rehearsed with them for a month, I might actually be able to say, oh, this one note, can you bring it out a little more? I might have more specific comments. But I'm only able, at that moment, to take in the overall shape. But I also think they are really great, and they are musical. And their job is to take those notes that look like nothing on a piece of paper. And they know how to breathe a certain kind of life into it. So even if they are not breathing the kind of life into it that I imagined, it already starts at a very enlivened space. And so I just got super happy from the whole thing. There was one moment on one day of rehearsal, though. Where Gustavo was asking for detailed notes about every movement. And this sent me into a little bit of a terror. Because I realized he was gonna go, movement one, what are your comments? Then movement two, what are your comments? Then I realized I better have comments for movement three and movement six and whatever. So as he's fixing the things that I just pointed out. I quickly rammed my score and thumbed through, and I went, okay, I gotta say something for movement five. Right. I felt like then the pressure was on.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

It sounds as though you attended every performance. Correct.

[David Lang]

I went to every rehearsal and every performance, yes.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

What was the experience like for you over the course of those four performances? Were you listening in the same way for the same things?

[David Lang]

I got very relaxed. I don't usually enjoy myself this much. The first night, the piece really felt like it was long. Not like it was too long, But I felt the massive quality of the piece. And every night, it really felt like it got faster. Even though it didn't get faster. It's just. I got used to the trajectory of the piece. And by the end, I couldn't believe that we were at the end already. The quality of the performance, not the musical quality. But what the players, the singers and the soloists found in the piece. Changed a little bit every night. Some of the nights were much more emotional. And I thought that was really interesting. It's like they got to the point very quickly. Where everyone could make a great sound. And could make the argument for the piece. But I think what happened those four nights of performances. Is that Gustavo is finding something different. He's bringing something out. He's looking at a different bunch of players in a particular moment. To give them confidence and make them emerge.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

As I was Watching rehearsals, I got to thinking and recognizing really how phenomenally expensive it is to produce something like this. A lot of people, a lot of real estate, a lot of probably not enough rehearsal for your taste, but still a lot of performances where there's no ticket sales and so on. And, you know, music like this today, as it was a couple hundred years ago, is really only possible because of patronage, because of wealthy individuals and institutions. And this piece has some harsh words for wealthy individuals and institutions. Did you ever feel that the piece was a little bit biting the hand that feeds it and pieces like it?

[David Lang]

First of all, I think it costs a lot of money in our society to do bad things, too.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

What's on your list of bad things?

[David Lang]

I think that list is very long. The idea that you might actually be able to take a bunch of money and do something for good, that doesn't sound like a bad thing. I really would hate to live in a world where all of the good and virtuous things have to be done very cheaply. I was sort of worried that maybe some of the board members would get mad at me, but actually, several of the board members came up and thanked me. We're at a time right now where maybe there's such a division and a distance between the people who have billions and billions of dollars and actually control the world and the people who only have $400 million. I actually think the billionaires are trying to make the people who have $400 million feel really bad about themselves. So it could be that it is a time when there are actually billions things that we can say together. For a large group of people about how money can be better spent,

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

this got me to wondering how the New York Philharmonic spends its money. The Philharmonic, like the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Ballet, and all the other arts organizations at Lincoln center, all the arts organizations everywhere, really are struggling with rising costs, falling ticket revenues, and let's call it unpredictable philanthropy. The Metropolitan Opera, whose annual budget is around 330 million million, had been working on a partnership with the Saudi Arabian government that would bring in $200 million. But the Saudis just pulled out. The Philharmonic, with a budget of around $90 million, is in better shape, in part because they have just landed Gustavo Dudamel, who is a superstar, as its music and artistic director. The Philharmonic also has a new president and CEO, Matias Tarnopolski, who has a long standing friendship with Dudamel.

[Matias Tarnopolski]

The New York Philharmonic is on the cusp of a transformative new era.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

I asked Tarnopolski to Explain how the Philharmonic decides to invest in a big new piece like David Lange's wealth of Nations.

[Matias Tarnopolski]

It makes sense as we are approaching the 250th birthday of America as an organization that is approaching itself almost 200 years, to think, how are we going to recognize this moment in not just American history, but global history, through what we do, which is music. So that began a conversation with David, with Gustavo Dudamel, with my colleagues at the orchestra, and that led to David's pitch to us about something inspired by a great moment in musical history, cultural history, Handel's Messiah, and a great moment in economic, and let's not forget literary history in Adam Smith's the Wealth of Nations.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

Did you for a moment maybe just think that was a crazy idea instead of a great idea?

[Matias Tarnopolski]

Are you kidding? I thought it was a crazy idea until I sat down and started hearing the rehearsals. I mean, really, I walked in here and I say this with great love for David and my colleagues. Like, what are we doing? The wealth of nations handles Messiah. But, you know, there's a lesson there which we should remind ourselves. Trust the artists, because they know David knows, and the musicians of the orchestra know, and Gustavo and you know Devon Tynes and Fleur Baron and the fantastic chorus, they know you were there and you were struck by the awesome power of that piece of music.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

How many times did you see or hear part or all of wealth of Nations?

[Matias Tarnopolski]

I heard four performances all the way through. And I loved every minute of everyone. I thought it was a magnificent piece of music. And I was surprised by my response, but because I really did think, how is this going to work? The music, beautiful. The choral writing, beautiful. The narration, the text. The approach to the text was really clear. I kept discovering new things and in retrospect I realized that the first half was the narration of Adam Smith's treatise through music, and then the second half was the effects. I want some bread, I need shelter. Oh my goodness. I mean, it's so powerful, the second half, in light of the first, I mean, like, devastating.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

What it made me wonder is, especially since so much of the Philharmonics revenues come from philanthropy and philanthropists, and those are often the kind of people who have the concentrated wealth that is being decried in a piece like this. How do you think about how some of your most generous patrons are hearing that?

[Matias Tarnopolski]

It was a searing indictment to our society today, that piece. But the people who give money to the New York Philharmonic, in philanthropy, and for that matter in tickets as well, care deeply about this enormous public and civic Good. That is this beautiful orchestra. They care deeply about their city.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

But I mean, were you concerned at all? Did any patrons come up to you after any of the four nights and say, you know, wonderful piece, Matthias. I'm always thrilled to be here, but boy, oh boy, did he lay into us.

[Matias Tarnopolski]

Nobody. Nobody. I was kind of ready for it. Look, people have their eyes open to what's happening in the world.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

If you look back at history and you look at particularly turbulent times in history and you look at the art from those times, you see that the artists were very often not just describing the turmoil of the moment, but seeing, you know, holding the mirror up to society in a way that just nobody else does.

[Matias Tarnopolski]

It is the writers and the poets and the musicians who get silenced when authoritarian regimes take hold. David Lange is a fearless, fearless artist. But he's not laboring under the conditions Shostakovich labored under, of great suffering or Prokofiev. He's not fearing for his life. And I can't imagine how that impacts an artist. Though I have a sense listening to the Shostakovich symphonies and string quartets.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

So if you had to summarize the theme or the message of David Lang's wealth of nations, all in the music, the text from Adam Smith and others, the intensity of the writing and the performance. What is this piece saying to you?

[Matias Tarnopolski]

Things are not what they seem. Every word and act matters. There is a human dimension and a human cost to everything we do. And we need to wake up to that once awakened.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

Do what then?

[Matias Tarnopolski]

Once awakened, don't accept the suffering of others as okay.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

We will be right back after the break. This is Freakonomics Radio and I'm Stephen Dubner. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Mint Mobile. If you're tired of spending hundreds on crazy high wireless bills, bogus fees, fees and free perks that cost you more in the long run then a premium wireless plan from mint mobile for 15 bucks a month might be right for you. Mint Mobile is here to rescue you with premium wireless plans starting at 15 bucks a month. All plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Bring your own phone and number, activate with ESIM in minutes and start saving immediately. No long term contracts, no hassle. If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop [e-mail] freak that's mintmobile.com freak upfront payment of $45 for 3 month 5 gigabyte plan required equivalent to $15 per month. New customer offer for first 3 months only then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Adobe Acrobat. You need to make a huge presentation in an hour. Luckily, Adobe Acrobat uses AI to take all your documents and generate a presentation in a few clicks, building slides faster than ever before. So if you need a last minute pitch deck, do that with Acrobat. Need to level up your presentation design? Do that with acrobat. You have 30 plus documents that need to be simplified into a proposal. Do that, do that, do that with Acrobat. Learn [e-mail] do that with Acrobat. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Rula Deciding to try therapy is an important step, but getting started isn't always simple. From cost concerns to insurance questions to findings, the right therapist There are a lot of hurdles along the way. Rula is built to make that journey easier, helping people access quality mental health care with less stress. With Rula, sessions cost an average of $15 with insurance. Rula works directly with insurance companies and provides personalized cost estimates up front with no hidden fees. You can sign up and find a licensed therapist in as little as five minutes. Appointments are available as soon as the next day. 93% of patients report symptom improvements after beginning care. By simplifying the process and removing administrative friction, Rula makes it easier to begin therapy. So head to rula.com that is r u l a.com to find the therapist the easy way. David Lang told me he was going through some post premier depression after the New York run of his wealth of nations oratorio. Although I'll be honest, he didn't seem depressed to me. Let's talk about the audience response. Tell me how it felt for you.

[David Lang]

I really didn't know what people would think. I thought I might get polite applause because I did spend a lot of time thinking about the libretto and I thought there was something of a kind of essay type narrative structure.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

[David Lang]

That's a good thing. I think it's kind of vaguely and indirectly making an argument that leads someplace and it could be that people could appreciate it and like it and enjoy it and have a good time with the music and not feel roused by it. And people got very enthusiastic about it. I was really, really, really excited that people enjoyed it that much.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

I'm curious if you had any conversations with either people you knew or didn't know about Adam Smith's writings themselves. Whether anyone said something like wow, no Idea that he circumsc this idea this way or anything like that.

[David Lang]

I think the more people knew about Adam Smith, the more they came up and told me about things I missed or like how come you didn't put in the pin factory. I never got anyone who came up and said, you know, nothing about economics, which I was expecting. So I was really happy about that. Maybe those people just stayed away from me.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

When we published a Freakonomics radio series on Adam Smith a few years ago, we interviewed Glory Liu, a political scientist at Georgetown and author of a book called Adam Smith's How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism. When Lou heard that there was a new oratorio based on wealth of nations, she came to New York to see it. We caught up with her afterwards and asked if she thought that Lange had omitted any important parts of the book,

[Stephen Dubner]

why wasn't there a piece on the digression on Silver? Just kidding, just kidding.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

This Silver digression in wealth of nations is a long and data heavy section of the book that even Smith fans find tedious. Glory Liu loved David Lang's wealth of Nations.

[Stephen Dubner]

It exceeded all of my expectations. It was urgent and curious and dark and heroic and hopeful. I really did not expect to feel such a range of emotions.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

In her book, Lou argues that Adam Smith is often used selectively by the right, by the left, by free market evangelists and by their critics. Everyone wants a piece of Smith, but not everyone wants the whole Smith. She thought David Lange's piece avoided the usual traps.

[Stephen Dubner]

It's so easy to get a one sided version of Smith, the one that most people are familiar with and I bet the one that most people walking in these doors had the expectation they were going to hear. The triumphant story of the invisible hand of the market over the heavy hand of government, that self interest is the universal force of human coordination. And yes, there are elements, right? But the fact that Lang was able to make that so much more complex, it wasn't a simple message. It challenged your preconceptions of who Smith is, what he stands for, what the concepts mean and how these conversations evolve over time. Like I was so blown away by it. What I really hope will happen is that people are going to have these really frank conversations about what they saw and what they encountered and an interpretation of Adam Smith that they didn't know was possible. And I hope that that changes the conversation. I think that that that's how change happens. You change the way people talk about an idea, you change the way people talk about the history of an idea, and you change the people who are included in that conversation.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

And here's another audience member. Her name is Tracy Fenton.

[Stephen Dubner]

I actually work in the finance industry. I thought it was incredibly moving, really moving.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

Fenton did object to a passage that was drawn from a courtroom speech by the socialist leader Eugene Debs.

[Stephen Dubner]

The big line about people who do absolutely nothing becoming millionaires. I can't say that's true. Being behind the scenes and knowing what the intelligent movement of money does for so many people, I'm a lot less black and white than I used to be.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

Fenton was also thinking about how a piece of music like this gets paid for.

[Stephen Dubner]

I can only assume how this was financed by benefactors who made their money in the finance world or from their grandfathers who made their money in the finance world.

[David Lang]

I knew I wanted, from the beginning, I wanted to end with the Debs, because I felt like that's a strong pull.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

And that, again, is David Lang.

[David Lang]

It actually really helped me writing the piece.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

This is movement 17, statement to the court.

[David Lang]

That's right.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

Which we should say. And I didn't know this. I was surprised to learn this. This was a piece you'd written about 15 years ago.

[David Lang]

Yeah, I wrote that piece a long time ago. And it's slightly cheating to stick old pieces into new pieces.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

I did have this debate after with family and friends.

[David Lang]

Oh, really? Whether it was cheating.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

Well, I brought it up and I said, you know, I felt this movement was incredibly strong, powerful, interesting, dark. It was a lot of things. And I was saying to my friends and family, you know, I don't know how I feel about this, that one of the main components of this larger piece was a piece that David had written and had been performed years earlier. So does that feel lazy, like cheating, or is it more? Then we started to talk about your piece in relation to Messiah. And of course, Handel was a great reuser of pieces, as I'm guessing many other composers of that era were. And the consensus, I'll have you know, among my group of people was that, no, no, no, no, no, not lazy. This is what a writer does. You'll be happy to know. I was the only naysayer there.

[David Lang]

I definitely was worried that people who knew that piece might think that it was a little bit of cheating. But I'm in my studio thinking my own thoughts, and this piece really is about me trying to figure out what I think and what I believe. And so it automatically is, on some level, in dialogue with everything else I've ever thought. And all the other music that I've already written. So it didn't seem that out of place to me. The idea of a finished piece is a more recent idea in music history, that something is done, and we treasure it. You know, composers were very practical.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

So how do you feel? Cause you have Eugene V. Debs saying, I am opposed to the social system in which we live. I believe in a fundamental change, but if possible, by peaceable and orderly means. Does that fit David Lang as well?

[David Lang]

Yeah, basically, I would like to have change happen peaceably. That would be really great.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

What kind of change?

[David Lang]

Oh, I don't know. I'm not a politician, so I don't want to even go there. What I tried to do in this piece was to make a piece where I wouldn't be telling you that there's one right way to answer that question. You almost got me. You almost tricked me into saying what the right answer is.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

The reason I ask is that I believe, and I'm hardly the first person to believe that. Especially in a time of chaos and partisanship and so on. It is often the artist who, from a very different vantage point, will say something, write something, paint something that will make us all stand back and say, oh, I see. You really are holding a mirror up in a way that I wasn't able to. I suspect that deep down, you feel that way about yourself with this piece.

[David Lang]

I guess I feel like this is a kind of mirror. But music is not really about specific things. You know, music is about how we feel about things. When we talk about the community which is created by people who pass money from one person to the next, how do we feel about that? There isn't necessarily a way to change how that system operates until we deal with how we react emotionally to how that system makes us feel. And we try not to pay attention to it. We try not to pay attention to the life of the people who sell us things or the life of the people that we sell to, we think that everything is frictionless. We're trying to live more and more in a world where we never meet the people who take care of us. We never meet the people that we employ.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

The invisible hand is just taking care of it all.

[David Lang]

That's exactly right. And maybe that's not such a good thing. You know, maybe we need to pay attention to what all of those hands are contributing to each other. And if you do pay attention to all those hands, all those. Maybe you care about how those people live. Maybe you care about whether those people have enough money. Maybe you care about. Are their children being educated? Are they able to go to the hospital when they need to? Maybe there's a whole network of things that we are trying to keep ourselves from seeing.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

Coming up after the break, what happens to wealth of nations next. I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio. You can follow us in all the places that you follow things. We will be right back. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Feeding America. Feeding America races to make sure that good food reaches neighbors facing hunger. That's why they work in real time, using technology to connect food to people fast. Together with supporters like you, they part partner with local organizations to rescue food quickly, safely and at scale so that it reaches a home while it still can. Hunger doesn't wait. Food Rescue can't either. Give now to help rescue good food for [e-mail] RescueFood Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by CIGNA Healthcare. For many men, mental health challenges aren't recognized until they've already taken a toll. Work pressure, financial stress, changing relationships and traditional expectations around masculinity can quietly wear men down, often without clear warning signs. In season three of the Visibility Gap, Dr. Guy Winch and his guests explore how these pressures show up, how to spot them earlier, and how men can access meaningful support. Listen to the new season of the Visibility Gap, a podcast presented by Cigna Healthcare.

[Stephen Dubner]

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[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

To what degree is your new oratorio wealth of Nations, a quote religious piece? When I think of Messiah, plainly it is a religious piece and that it's a Religious tale and religious figures and so on. On the other hand, it was first performed in a music hall, not in a church. And the fact that it is lived on so long and in such a beloved way, to me, goes well beyond what we think of as, quote, religious music.

[David Lang]

I think any situation where you can imagine a better world is kind of like a religious or a substitute religious piece. That idea that we could have a better life than the life we are living. That's a very beautiful and, I think, necessary idea in order to live. I do think that that's something that religion has. But it's not the only place where you can find that message. But I do think that that's the message that's behind this piece. And I do think it's the message behind that book. I think the wealth of nations is Adam Smith's idea. Not just a description of how things work and not just charting how things evolved, but it's his imagination about how everyone in the world gets along. I try to, in my studies, think of how what I learned can make me a better contemporary American. A lot of these ideas that I have about looking around and seeing hypocrisy and looking around and imagining a utopian world, you know, they're all things that come from reading the Bible and seeing how far away we are from a world we might possibly be in, or imagining how living up to the standards that I think my religion and probably all religions hold for us might actually be useful. And why is it we don't live up to those standards that we profess for ourselves?

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

On the other hand, you've read enough fiction and nonfiction in history to know that most utopian visions end very poorly in reality.

[David Lang]

Absolutely. This is where I think religion comes in and faith comes in, at least for me, is when you are exhorted as many times as we are to welcome the stranger and to be kind to the poor and to help people who need our help. We are exhorted so many times because the texts know that we are not actually doing this as much as we could be doing it.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

The first piece of yours that I heard was this piece called Just which is. I was just taken aback by it. I found it unbelievably beautiful and sublime and mysterious. And it was a case of religious text set to music. So I wonder if you could talk about that. You mentioned that you are a religious person. What does that mean? And how does that shape your relationship to religious texts that you set to music?

[David Lang]

I was raised in a moderately religious environment to moderately Religious parents.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

These are Jewish immigrants to la. Is that right?

[David Lang]

That's right. And I am myself, you know, intermittently religious, I would say I go through periods where I get closer and farther away.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

What does a close period feel like?

[David Lang]

Well, I've gone through periods where I've, you know, kept completely kosher, and I've gone through periods where I've gotten farther away.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

And do you study and go to shul and things like that?

[David Lang]

I have studied and I have gone to shul. I've never had a lobster. I've never had a pork chop. You know, there's certain things that are important to me, and I think that trying to understand my background is where my religious interest comes in. Not in the practice of being Jewish, but in trying to uncover what being Jewish could mean.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

If you had to describe the essence of Judaism as you've lived it and the way that it works its way into your work, and let's say you had to describe that essence while standing on one foot, which is a very

[David Lang]

Jewish thing, which is a very Jewish

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

thing, what would you say?

[David Lang]

Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you? I think the thing that I've gotten out of all of my study and my religious background, such as it is, is that there are rules that you can imagine living by that you can aim for, and with some work and effort and discipline and commitment, you might be able to achieve some of. And some of those things may lead us into a better way of dealing with each other. So for me, I think my moral compass comes from things that I learned, or at least I think I learned from my religion. I would like to think that Judaism has prescriptions for how everyone in the world should live, not just Jews. It has prescriptions for how Jews are supposed to live with everyone else in the world. And I would think that those prescriptions that I have inherited are universal. And when I see them not universal, it creates a great rift inside of me.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

This piece of yours, wealth of nations, has 18 movements, and 18 happens to be a pretty significant number in Judaism. It represents the word chai, or life alive, living. Is that a coincidence? Do a lot of your pieces have 18 movements?

[David Lang]

Maybe not a lot of my pieces have 18 movements, but I definitely felt like when I got to around 16 or 17, 18 began looking pretty good.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

Okay, so for movement 18, the final section, you go back to the text of Adam Smith. This is after we've been hearing text from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Frederick Douglass and Maria W. Stewart and fdr. Walk me through this final movement, which is called the Very Simple Secret.

[David Lang]

I was so happy when I found this in the wealth of nations because it really seemed like an essential statement of what you want out of your government and what you want out of your society. Here's the whole text to that movement. The Secret.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

The secret.

[David Lang]

The very simple secret. The Very Simple Secret. No. No. Society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity that they who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people should have such a share of the produce of their own labor. The establishment of perfect justice, of perfect liberty and of perfect equality is the very simple secret which most effectually secures the highest degree of prosperity to all. And to me, it was so powerful to see that, because I had assumed that because of the way Adam Smith is talked about in our society now when he comes up, that there would be an acceptance of winners and losers, that there would be an acceptance that society has inequality built in. And this seemed the opposite of that. It seemed like the acknowledgement that the people who do the work need to be treated fairly. I also liked that it had the word equity in it. I thought it was really important to say this word was important 250 years ago, and it was seen by someone who we revere. So it should still be a value for us.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

And how do you think about that still being a value today? On the one hand, the world is immeasurably more prosperous than it was 250 years ago. On the other hand, there's all kinds of inequity and other problems. So do you think we've demonstrably improved and we should be grateful for that and keep trying to do better? Or do you feel that we've somehow missed the lessons of history?

[David Lang]

Well, why shouldn't we always try to do better? I think the minute you imagine we have found the perfect system, when you imagine our constitution is frozen, when you imagine that we are living in some way, that means we don't ever have to adjust or balance or negotiate. Those systems become stalled and become misbalanced over time. So my piece doesn't end, you know, loud or grand or, you know, oppressively. It doesn't say, money is good. Let's all have more of it. And doesn't say, money is bad. Let's take it all away. It just ends with this very kind of humble thing that Adam Smith wrote about justice.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

So, David, what happens to this piece now? It's had its world debut it was a success. The reviews are good. Even I gave it a really good review.

[David Lang]

Thank you.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

This piece will now live on for, you know, maybe a very, very long time, maybe performed in many places, in many circumstances, may be interpreted, reinterpreted, will be received differently by people around the world. What does that feel like? As the composer?

[David Lang]

It's just another layer of curiosity to see how people in another country will be interested or not interested in anything that happened in American history. It's gonna be played this summer at the Aspen Music Festival, which is one of the co commissioners. So that's very exciting. I'm hoping that it will have a nice life. One of the really weird things about these projects, to be honest, is all these people assemble and they work really hard and they put all their attention and love and care into these things and the relationships are really tight and powerful. And then the second the concert is over, everyone goes their separate ways.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

Do you feel you're world famous now?

[David Lang]

I wouldn't say that anyone in my field is famous. I've seen Philip Glass shopping in a grocery store with nobody seeming to notice him. And if he can get away with that, there's no one gonna notice me. I feel like I'm at a level where I can tell people interesting and strange things that I might want to do and they might want to let me do them. I still have projects on my list that I wanted to do for 30 or 40 years.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

Can you name one?

[David Lang]

I don't want to tell you because they're all just silly ideas. And someone's going to hear a silly idea and go, well, I'm going to do that tomorrow.

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

When it comes to silly ideas, I'm guessing that some listeners may think these past two episodes were a silly idea for a show that's supposed to be about economics. To which I would say, and I think Adam Smith would also say everything is about economics, including how a composer like David Lang thinks about opportunity, cost and sunk costs, even the price of attention. My big impression from speaking with Lang over these past couple episodes is how Adam Smith reached across the centuries and worked his magic on David Lang. You may remember him describing how he first approached adapting wealth of Nations. He was looking for jokey themes like sheep and wondering how he would deal with the boring descriptions of factory work and currency exchange. But Lang was won over by a bigger and deeper idea, that any given economy is a gigantic community that can only thrive with a fair amount of both cooperation and compassion. Smith criticized the concentration of power, whether in private firms or government Lang also received this message. In one movement, he adapted text from a 1938 address by FDR called Message to Congress on Curbing Monopolies. As David Lang's lyric goes, if there ever are in this country people who are rich enough to own this country, then they will own it. I asked David Lang if or when a recording of wealth of nations would be made available to the public. He wrote back, I'm not sure if the New York Phil is planning to release a commercial recording of it. I have a meeting with them next week and I am going to beg them to My thanks to David Lang for all the conversation and music. I'd love to know what you thought of these episodes. Our email is radioreakonomics.com Also, we recently put out an episode with Judy Faulkner, the founder and CEO of Epic Systems, the biggest player in electronic health records. And we asked you to name other founders or firms that have followed the road less traveled like Epic has. Here are some of the many names you sent in Basecamp, Bob's Red Mill, Costco, Digikey, Extreme Engineering Solutions, Marvin Windows, Promega, rei, Ramsey Solutions, SAS Institute, and Schweitzer Engineering Labs. Coming up next time on the show, we will make the argument that playing games can be very, very good for you and for society. That's next time. Until then, take care of yourself and if you can, someone else too. Freakonomics Radio is produced by Renbud Radio. You can find our entire archive on any podcast app. It's [e-mail] where we publish transcripts and show notes. This episode was produced by Zach Lipinski with help from Augusta Chapman and Dalvin Abuaji. It was edited by Ellen Frankman and mixed by Eleanor Osborne with help from Joseph Webster. Thanks again to everyone at the New York Philharmonic who helped with production, especially Dinah Liu, Kaitlyn Hurst and Adam Crane. The Freakonomics Radio Network staff also includes Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Hilaria Montenicourt, Jake Loomis, Jeremy Johnston, Mandy Gorenstein, Peter Madden and Teo Jacobs. Our theme song is Mr. Fortune by the Hitchhikers and our composer is Luis Guerra. As always, thank you for listening.

[David Lang]

I have to say I was very nervous when and we started all of this because I thought you knew so much more about Adam Smith than I did and you would point out all of the things I got wrong.

[Stephen Dubner]

The Freakonomics Radio Network the Hidden side of Everything

[Stephen Dubner (Narrator/Interviewer)]

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