Copland: Suite from “Appalachian Spring”

Suite from “Appalachian Spring”

Aaron Copland (1900-1990)

Usually when a composer dies his reputation suffers a decline in popularity and critical estimation, time eventually correcting of the balance. Aaron Copland has been a happy exception to that pattern, and remains secure in his position as America’s foremost composer, indeed probably more highly regarded than ever. He seemed to have been born under a lucky star. Coming from a background quite similar to his near contemporary, George Gershwin, Copland was born in Brooklyn to Jewish parents who had come to America from eastern Europe, passing through through Ellis Island, eager to make a new life in the New World. After some solid, rather uninspiring training in New York he traveled to France, where he became one of the first pupils of the celebrated Nadia Boulanger, who for half a century would train an amazing succession of outstanding American composers. With Boulanger’s encouragement he returned to America, quickly setting out on his career with immediate success and public attention. While the best-loved music of Copland would not to appear until the late 1930s, the young composer became the focus of a dynamic generation of young American musicians (Roger Sessions, Roy Harris, Virgil Thomson and many others) who in one fell swoop were establishing 20^th century American music as a force to reckon with. Ironically, during those years the work of Charles Ives was but dimly known, and most of Copland’s best-known works were written before a note of Ives was to be heard by the general public!

Copland’s compositions of the 1920s and ‘30s, for all their spare and rhythmically-charged American flavour, were rather in keeping with the dissonant harmonic idiom which marked European music of the period. It was with the appearance of “El Salon Mexico” (1937) which signaled a conscious move on the part of the composer to turn increasingly to musical subjects (and musical elements) taken from the American landscape, popular culture and folk music traditions. Although he would compose two operas (one for high school children, and another on a larger scale, “The Tender Land”), Copland seemed temperamentally out of sympathy with the world of opera. The dance was another question, and Copland’s involvement with modern dance was well timed to come about during the period of its explosive growth in the hands of such figures as Martha Graham, Agnes De Mille, and Lincoln Kirstein.

Before Appalachian Spring received its title, Copland called it “Ballet for Martha,” which remains its subtitle. (Graham came up with the title from a poem by Hart Crane, which, as she told a surprised Copland, had otherwise nothing whatever to do with the ballet!) We now know that the stages leading to the completion of “Appalachian Spring” were far from smooth, and the details of the scenario and dramatic content of the final work went through a long process of trial and error. The completed ballet was first performed in 1944 in Washington, D. C. at the Library of Congress, with a chamber orchestra of thirteen players. Shortly afterward Copland cut the score somewhat, expanding the scoring for a full orchestra. For years the original version was suppressed by Copland, only becoming heard in the 1960s. That version (which was performed by the Princeton Chamber Symphony in 1995) has begun to be heard with some regularity, although the full-orchestra suite has from the very beginning grown in popularity, and probably is the most-performed orchestral work ever composed by an American.

In the planning stages for the ballet Martha Graham toyed an idea of including a “Shaker” element in the story. For most people the Shakers were known (if at all) for two things: their beautifully spare, strangely “contemporary” appearing furniture design---and their curious history as a late 18^th century utopian religious community rooted in New England, practicing a tradition of total celibacy, and making lively singing and even dancing a part of their worship.. What was little known was an amazing body of hymns composed for use in Shaker worship, sung without accompaniment, and written down in an inscrutable musical notation which few persons could comprehend. The Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts” was composed around 1875 by Elder Joseph Brackett, and thanks to Copland has become immensely popular. (It can be heard on a recently-issued CD, sung by members of the last surviving Shaker community of Sabbathday Lake, Maine. Although there were no references to the Shakers in the ballet, (nor were they found in the Appalachian region of western Pennsylvania where the work was set), Copland took the hymn as symbolic of the simplicity and spareness of the ballet setting and dramatic framework. (This can be seen in the opening words of the hymn, “’Tis the gift to be simple, ‘tis the gift to be free; /‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be;/ And when we find ourselves in the place just right, /“Twill be in the valley of love and delight.”

The score carries this description of the ballet’s scenario: “A pioneer celebration in spring around a newly built farmhouse in the Pennsylvania hills in the early part of the last century. The bride-to-be and the young farmer-husband enact the emotions, joyful and apprehensive, their new domestic partnership invites. An older neighbor suggests now and then the rocky confidence of experience. A revivalist and his followers remind the new householders of the strange and terrible aspects of human fate. At the end the couple are left quiet and strong in their new house.”

The work opens in a hushed mood suggesting the dawn of a new day, the peaceful atmosphere of the rural countryside. There is a sudden burst of energy, full of buoyancy and hope, as well as a tender duo for the bride and her husband-to-be. With the appearance of the revivalist there is a change to a mood of sternness, followed by an episode with the music taking on a distinct character of country fiddling and square dancing. There follows a solo for the bride, filled with the mingled feelings of joy, wonder and fear. A pantomime scene, depicting the prospect of daily married life, takes place, culminating in a set of variations on the Shaker him, first heard in the clarinet. The variations rise to a climax of impressive grandeur, suddenly giving way to the hushed mood of the opening, now a benediction of lyrical tenderness.