AARON COPLAND
Personal Thoughts
(1991)
by
Dr David C F Wright
The recent death of Aaron Copland has prompted me to
say these few words about him.
Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" has
become a sort of phantom National Anthem for the USA.
His music is so easily identifiable. Yet people hear
music in different ways. The professional hears it differently from
the scholar and a fellow composer hears it differently from an enthusiastic
music lover.
I first met Copland in London in 1965 when he was rehearsing
his "Symphony no. 3" with the London Symphony Orchestra. This
is the symphony that quotes from the "Fanfare for the Common Man".
Immediately I liked the man but he did not look like
a composer. He was so ordinary. He looked more like a grocer. Like his
music he was simple, direct and in his music used elementary harmony.
No one sounds like Copland. The spaced octaves in the
opening of the "Symphony no. 3" is typical of him. It is also
a feature of his film music.
Copland was concerned that America had no history and
no musical heritage. He was concerned that the music of the Red Indians
and the Old West was recorded and the Library of Congress in Washington
began to study their archive material.
His three ballets indulge in American folk custom.
They are "Billy The Kid", "Rodeo" and "Appalachian
Spring". In the final ballet of 1944 he captures the nostalgia
of America.
He was Jewish, born in 1900, and came from a non-musical
family. He said that the first twenty years of his life were ordinary
living in Brooklyn. But he was enchanted with music from an early age.
He discovered music on his own.
Because France was considered the place where all the
great progress in music was being made he went there. Debussy and Ravel
were the latest thing and, of course, Stravinsky and Prokofiev walked
the streets of Paris.
At that time Nadia Boulanger did not have the reputation
she later enjoyed. Her success was in encouragement and she did not
behave as a pedagogue. She knew about the current music more than anyone
else in France and she encouraged all new styles and expressions.
Copland told us, "When I played my music for Nadia
somehow she became me. Her suggestions seem to be coming out of my mouth
whereas I had overlooked them."
She has the rare quality of giving confidence and she
saw Copland's desire to make American music particularly as America
had no musical history.
All America had was jazz which he believed was an American
invention. He was wrong, of course as its origins seem to be in another
continent altogether and, as I have said elsewhere, Beethoven's last
piano sonata has a variation which is a precursor of jazz.
But jazz was regarded as not quite nice. It was associated
with gambling joints and brothels and so Copland thought he could make
it respectable by combining it with classical music and form.
Serge Koussevitsky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra
commissioned Copland's "Music for Theatre" of 1925, the same
year that produced Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Copland's score is full
of life and fun and superbly orchestrated.
When it was played at the MacDowell Colony for Virgil
Thomson about the same time. Thomson complained that it was whore house
music.
It was certainly daring and Copland was 25 years old
but not interested in the sexual goings-on in such establishments. He
was a committed homosexual.
He still persisted that jazz was an American invention.
He also wanted to use American folk music. But he also saw the severe
limitations of jazz and folk music and its sameness within its own species.
Therefore all his life he had this identity crisis and jumped on any
bandwagon that was going.
His efforts at being more serious were not appreciated.
The "Short Symphony" and "Statements" for orchestra
of 1935 did not fare well. Copland became severely depressed.
He was not a serious composer or a composer who could
be taken seriously. Or so it was said.
So he wrote "El Salon Mexico" which is one
of those works you either like or positively dislike. He wanted to regain
favour. It is really a tone poem of a Mexican dance hall and it introduced
complicated rhythms and a sophisticated use of a folk song. This appeared
in 1936 and re-established him.
Copland was a very good conductor of his own music
whereas, for example, neither Stravinsky nor Walton were. He was very
particular that his music did not sound emotional or sentimental.
I remember at a rehearsal with the London Symphony
Orchestra he suddenly stopped conducting. The leader asked if the tempo
was wrong. Copland wagged his head. The next question was if the rhythm
was wrong. Copland did likewise. The further question was were there
some wrong notes. Copland indicated that that was not the case.
There was silence. Copland looked cross.
"Keep away from the Tchaikovsky sound", he
said, "Who wants to sound like Tchaikovsky?"
Indeed!
Copland went back to the roots of folk song in simplicity
and produced his "Old American Songs" in the early 1950s.
He saw his music as functional and this is why his ballets and film
scores took on this style.
"Billy the Kid" appeared in 1939. Here was
a ballet about the Old West and cowboys and in the performance I saw
the choreography was by Eugene Loring. "Rodeo" followed in
1942 with more cowboys dancing and the version I saw was with choreography
by Agnes de Mille.
Copland was drawn to cowboys dancing in tight jeans
because he was gay! All credit to him since he was honest enough to
say so! But ballets with cowboys seem so anti-masculine and, quite frankly,
the choreography for both is ridiculous and grotesquely absurd.
However, his career took off. He won a Pulitzer Prize
and the New York Music Critics Award.
"Appalachian Spring" of 1944 is the greatest
of his ballets. The choreography by Martha Graham was also vastly superior.
It uses American folk music such as the Simple Gifts tune but this vast
expansive music which may represent extended flat American landscapes
can become wearisome. The use of the piano in the score is a very great
asset.
And so, these ballets became jewels of Americana.
The New York World Fair of 1939 was a morale booster.
The USA was coming out of the Depression and the slogan for the Fair
was The World of Tomorrow. Sir Arthur Bliss wrote his scintillating
Piano Concerto for this occasion. Copland produced "From Sorcery
to Science" which is a twelve minute ballet for a puppet show in
the Hall of Pharmacy. It tells the history of pharmacy from China to
the present day. In the Chinese music Copland used the pentatonic scale.
Despite Copland wanting to go back to the root of things
he would say, "This is a modern world."
American Documentary Films commissioned Copland for
music to "The City", a blatant left wing piece of propaganda.
It starts with a New England village, explores the open spaces of the
West with corresponding open harmonies and enters a thriving city. The
traffic jam sequence is very repetitive anticipating the minimalism
of John Adams but, as Copland said, simple and repetitive music for
films is best because it may have to be cut to accommodate the precise
timing or, as he called it tight editing.
Film music is very profitable for composers. It provides
a healthy income. It supported Copland's' career.
But he was never an arrogant man. My father used to
say that the greatest men are also the most humblest of men. He was
right. Sadly, Britain has produced a couple of hatefully arrogant and
pompous composers but it was said of Copland that he took his fame graciously.
His first feature film, or Hollywood film as he called
it, was "Of Mice and Men". For his next film, "North
Star", he had a problem. This is a story of the Nazis oppressing
Russia and it starred Dana Andrews, Anne Baxter and the dependable Dean
Jagger. The director, Lewis Milestone wanted some songs for the Russian
guerillas to sing and employed Ira Gershwin to write the lyrics. His
lyrics were light-hearted, inane and out of character with the film
and with Copland.
Other notable films were "The Red Pony" and
"The Heiress" a super version of Henry James's ‘Washington
Square’ in which Olivia de Havilland had not looked so lovely since
she was in ‘Dodge City’.
Copland was always on the lookout for talented young
musicians. One of these was Leonard Bernstein. Lenny showed his works
to Aaron and although Lenny was not a shrinking violet he held Copland
up on a pedestal.
Bernstein was a fine musician. He was a good pianist,
a gifted conductor and a versatile composer. While ‘West Side Story’
may be his most popular movie musical ‘On The Town’ of 1949 is a marvellous
score. On a personal note it is my all time favourite musical and not
just because the gorgeous Vera Ellen was in it. Bernstein's music captures
exactly what it is meant to. Not many composers can do that. His ‘Chichester
Psalms’ is a glowing choral masterpiece and the Mass is unfairly maligned.
It has some marvellous music in it that the criticism is unjust and
unwarranted.
It has been said that Bernstein's jazz is a later version
of Copland's jazz. Of the two, Bernstein is the better composer by far
in that he has a wider range of expression and his orchestration is
far more interesting. While he can write tender music he has a greater
ability for excitement than Copland.
Copland had an identity crisis throughout his life.
At first he wanted to write French sounding music, then American folk
music, then jazz, then serial music and so on. He liked twelve note
music because as he rightly said it was disciplined music and the melodic
lines and the harmonies were far more interesting. Those who decry serial
music are ignorant or prejudiced or both Copland told us once and he
is right.
His "Connotations for orchestra" of 1962
is one such work. It is probably his finest work. It is strident and
captures the tensions of urban life. It is what would now be called
an in your face piece.
Copland had a high regard for Benny Goodman the jazz
clarinet player. His performance of the Mozart concerto is very good
although his tone is a little dry. In 1948 Copland wrote his "Clarinet
Concerto" for him. The slow music is very fine but when the clarinet
shrieks and screams and there are long high notes the result is ugly
and degenerate. Some has said it would be a wonderful clarinet concerto
if the clarinet did not play a note. Other clarinettists have said that
this music is clarinet abuse and I tend to agree.
But another problem is form. There is no clear structure
in his works and the other concerto, the "Piano Concerto"
has the same problems. This is strange for a man who later was to compose
disciplined serial music.
In 1954 he turned his hand to opera and "The Tender
Land". Again, the weakness of musical inactivity is often here
but I have always be fond of this work.
But he ran out of ideas. By 1983 he said that his thoughts
did not flow and this probably corresponded with the onset of Alzheimer's
disease, the brain condition that produces senility. On his piano stand
he had an attempt at a String Quartet but at no time in his life would
have been able to compose a successful work in this medium. It simply
wasn't him.
What I most liked about him was his humility and honesty.
He had been a close friend of Irving Fine the American composer I admire
the most. Aaron would talk about Fine in an almost reverential way.
On one occasion he looked away with tears forming in
his eyes, paused, and said of Irving Fine, "He is the greatest of us
all."
Copland was not a great composer but his contribution
to American music is of vital importance.
He died last year (1990) and we shall miss him.
Copyright David C F Wright 1991.
This article or any part of it must not be copied,
stored in any retrieval system, downloaded or used in any way without
first obtaining the written permission of the author.
This article was first given as a talk in March 1991
and was recorded on audio cassette and distributed."
