Aaron Copland: Appalachian Spring – Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra (HD 1080p) Bayram Cigerli Blog All Big Info Archve

The Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra performs Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring. The concert was recorded at First Presbyterian Church in Santa Monica, on November 23, 2014.

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Aaron Copland has long held a secure position in the cultural pantheon of America. Yet it took him some time to arrive at the style of directness and simplicity that sounds so "right"-as if he'd started out writing that way without having to struggle toward it. One of Copland's most inspiring quotes speaks to a belief in the resilient power of art that many have discovered in his own music: "So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning".

Copland composed Appalachian Spring as a ballet for Martha Graham's company in 1943-1944; in 1945 he arranged and reorchestrated the score into the familiar concert suite we hear. The full ballet was first performed on October 30, 1944 at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., while the orchestral suite was premiered on October 4, 1945 by the New York Philharmonic.

Appalachian Spring marked an important turning point not only in the composer's career but in the history of American music and has retained its bracing freshness despite close to seven decades of familiarity. This music conveys an unselfconscious beauty, as if Copland were merely transcribing something already there-"a home-spun musical idiom", as the composer himself termed it. Yet Copland also pointed out that this idiom represents "a kind of musical naturalness that we have badly needed" – an idiom that, in other words, had to be crafted afresh.

Appalachian Spring has come to epitomize Copland (even if it represents only one stage in a long career); it has even come to epitomize the "American voice" in classical music. In fact Copland, who was the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, had tried out several styles before deciding to cultivate a more straightforwardly popular language. He had previously spent time studying in Paris and experimented with modernist ideas that he never entirely discarded. After the premiere of his Organ Symphony in 1925 caused a stir, writes Copland's biographer Howard Pollack, the conductor Walter Damrosch melodramatically turned to the audience and declared: "Ladies and gentlemen, when the gifted young American who wrote this symphony can compose, at the age of twenty-three, a work like this one, it seems evident that in five years more he will be ready to commit murder!"

But the Great Depression sharpened Copland's desire to communicate with a wider audience. During the 1930s he began to gain greater prominence through his music for ballet, theater, and film. In 1943, he was commissioned by the eminent art patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge to create a ballet on American themes for choreographer and dancer Martha Graham (1894-1991), a trailblazer in modern dance. The familiar title came later; Copland's working title was "Ballet for Martha" (now the subtitle), and he composed the music without any particular notions of Appalachia or springtime in mind. It was actually Graham who chose the title, derived from a section of Hart Crane's epic poem The Bridge. It's also worth noting that Copland composed this undiluted, classic evocation of a simple, folk-like America while living in Hollywood and Mexico.

Copland originally scored the ballet for a small chamber ensemble of 13 instruments. For the concert suite he cut out some of the original material, reducing the story to eight numbers. At the same time, Copland rescored the music for a fuller orchestra. "The larger palette", observes Pollack, "provided a new grandeur and brilliance to the work", while "some of the episodes acquired a whole new richness with full strings and brass".

Copland immediately establishes the pastoral scene in his idyllic, dreamy opening, expanding a simple three-note idea. (A more-assertive variant of this theme appears in the contemporaneous Fanfare for the Common Man.) That simplicity, though, is deceptive, and Copland unfurls a striking range of emotions from his basic material. As each of the characters is introduced, the music layers into bright, warm chords, like a dawn mist that slowly evaporates. The promise here of a fresh beginning is as bright and enveloping as the sunny textures of a Georgia O'Keefe canvas.

The action then begins with a sudden charge of energy. Copland indicates that "a sentiment both elated and religious gives the keynote to this scene". A gentle duo dance for the Bride and her Groom follows, and the tempo then quickens-with "suggestions of square dances and country fiddlers" – for the scene with the Revivalist preacher and his flock. The Bride's solo introduces even faster music and exciting rhythmic accents to reflect the "extremes of joy and fear and wonder" as she thinks of future motherhood.

A brief transition recalling the introductory music leads to the ballet's best-known sequence: a set of five variations on a Shaker melody which had been published in a mid-nineteenth-century collection under the title "Simple Gifts". Interestingly, this tune – first heard on solo clarinet, with decorative comments from the woodwinds – is the only pre-existing folk melody used in the score. Other sections of the music which sound folk-like only emphasize the composer's skill in fashioning an aura of spontaneity through his music. The ballet concludes with a moving coda beginning with muted strings: the music of the opening now rendered as a quiet, inward hymn. Copland distills his material to an even more lucid simplicity that is indeed, in his words, "quiet and strong".

Source: Thomas May (kennedy-center.org)

Aaron Copland (1900-1990)

♪ Appalachian Spring – Suite (1944)

Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra

First Presbyterian Church in Santa Monica, November 23, 2014

(HD 1080p)

Aaron Copland was one of the most respected American classical composers of the twentieth century. By incorporating popular forms of American music such as jazz and folk into his compositions, he created pieces both exceptional and innovative. As a spokesman for the advancement of indigenous American music, Copland made great strides in liberating it from European influence. Today Copland's life and work continue to inspire many of America's young composers.

Copland was born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 14, 1900. The child of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania, he first learned to play the piano from his older sister. At the age of sixteen he went to Manhattan to study with Rubin Goldmark, a respected private music instructor who taught Copland the fundamentals of counterpoint and composition. During these early years he immersed himself in contemporary classical music by attending performances at the New York Symphony and Brooklyn Academy of Music. He found, however, that like many other young musicians, he was attracted to the classical history and musicians of Europe. So, at the age of twenty, he left New York for the Summer School of Music for American Students at Fountainebleau, France.

In France, Copland found a musical community unlike any he had known. It was at this time that he sold his first composition to Durand and Sons, the most respected music publisher in France. While in Europe Copland met many of the important artists of the time, including the famous composer Serge Koussevitsky. Koussevitsky requested that Copland write a piece for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The piece "Symphony for Organ and Orchestra" (1925) was Copland's entry into the life of professional American music. He followed this with "Music for the Theater" (1925) and "Piano Concerto" (1926), both of which relied heavily on the jazz idioms of the time. For Copland, jazz was the first genuinely American major musical movement. From jazz he hoped to draw the inspiration for a new type of symphonic music, one that could distinguish itself from the music of Europe.

In the late 1920s Copland's attention turned to popular music of other countries. He had moved away from his interest in jazz and began to concern himself with expanding the audience for American classical music. He believed that classical music could eventually be as popular as jazz in America or folk music in Mexico. He worked toward this goal with both his music and a firm commitment to organizing and producing. He was an active member of many organizations, including both the American Composers' Alliance and the League of Composers. Along with his friend Roger Sessions, he began the Copland-Sessions concerts, dedicated to presenting the works of young composers. It was around this same time that his plans for an American music festival (similar to ones in Europe) materialized as the Yaddo Festival of American Music (1932). By the mid-'30s Copland had become not only one of the most popular composers in the country, but a leader of the community of American classical musicians.

It was in 1935 with "El Salón México" that Copland began his most productive and popular years. The piece presented a new sound that had its roots in Mexican folk music. Copland believed that through this music, he could find his way to a more popular symphonic music. In his search for the widest audience, Copland began composing for the movies and ballet. Among his most popular compositions for film are those for "Of Mice and Men" (1939), "Our Town" (1940), and "The Heiress" (1949), which won him an Academy Award for best score. He composed scores for a number of ballets, including two of the most popular of the time: "Agnes DeMille's Rodeo" (1942) and Martha Graham's "Appalachian Spring" (1944), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. Both ballets presented views of American country life that corresponded to the folk traditions Copland was interested in. Probably the most important and successful composition from this time was his patriotic "A Lincoln Portrait" (1942). The piece for voice and orchestra presents quotes from Lincoln's writings narrated over Copland's musical composition.

Throughout the '50s, Copland slowed his work as a composer, and began to try his hand at conducting. He began to tour with his own work as well as the works of other great American musicians. Conducting was a synthesis of the work he had done as a composer and as an organizer. Over the next twenty years he traveled throughout the world, conducting live performances and creating an important collection of recorded work. By the early '70s, Copland had, with few exceptions, completely stopped writing original music. Most of his time was spent conducting and reworking older compositions. In 1983 Copland conducted his last symphony. His generous work as a teacher at Tanglewood, Harvard, and the New School for Social Research gained him a following of devoted musicians. As a scholar, he wrote more than sixty articles and essays on music, as well as five books. He traveled the world in an attempt to elevate the status of American music abroad, and to increase its popularity at home. Through these various commitments to music and to his country, Aaron Copland became one of the most important figures in twentieth-century American music. On December 2, 1990, Aaron Copland died in North Tarrytown, New York.

Source: pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/aaron-copland-about-the-composer

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