Copland S Establishment of an American Sound

Khan 1

Sohini Khan

Professor Thomas Neenan

Mu 139

19 May 2013

Copland’s Establishment of an American Sound

Between 1936 and 1944, Aaron Copland created music that was distinctly “American.”

Periods go inside parentheses”. Copland combined avant-garde techniques with melodies familiar to the American people to create music that was appreciated by almost everyone; he was able to finally provide America with a music that it could call its own.

Copland drew from a variety of sources to create this distinct American sound. At first, he experimented with abstract musical structures which provided him with a modern platform on which to base his later work. Then, he started began to integrate (you “start” a car; you “begin to compose;” avoid passive past tense such as began integrating integrating jazz elements in his concert pieces. His leftward political leanings in the 1930s helped led him him (this is an issue of precision; his leanings didn’t help him; they inspired, led or prompted him) explore a more popular style that appealed to the broader masses. By the end of the decade, Copland found the

American sound he was looking for by writing music free of political content but communicative and accessible to all.

Nonetheless, events in Copland’s childhood in Brooklyn as well as his studies in Paris as a young man had great impact on Copland’s evolution as a composer. Copland grew up as athe son of Russian-Jewish immigrants in a “drab” neighborhood in Brooklyn populated by Italians,

Irish, and African Americans (Copland xix). Copland received little musical inspiration from his family as he was growing up and even his first music teachers taught him to appreciate and write Khan 2 music that was conservative and conventional when he was in high school (Copland xix – xxi).

Copland’s need to rebel and experiment with modern music allowed him to write his first pieces like such as/including The Cat and the Mouse that revealed his talent for creating an innovative style (Copland xxi).

In 1921, at the age of twenty-one, Copland began studying composition under Nadia

Boulanger at the American Conservatory in the Palace at Fontainebleau in France. The recent end of World War I allowed precision Paris to be “an international proving ground for all the newest tendencies in music. Much of the music that had been written during the dark years of the war was now being heard for the first time,” explains Copland (xxii). Works written during the war by composers like Stravinsky and Bartok and composers from outside France like Prokofiev and Kodaly were played in Paris for the first time you already said this exposing Copland to the most cutting edge music of the European avant-garde. Boulanger made sure that her students were not just appreciating these works as audience members, but were critically thinking about the composition and orchestration of these pieces in class (Pollack, “Copland in Paris”, 3).

Both Boulanger’s classes and the cultural environment in Paris allowed Copland to embrace breabreak king musical convention and experiment with his compositional style. In 1923,

Boulanger arranged for Copland to meet with the conductor Serge Koussevitzky and Copland impressed him with his composition, Cortege macabre. This allowed him the opportunityHe was invited by Koussevitzky to write a symphony for organ and orchestra to be performed in New

York and Boston in 1924 (Ross 291-292).

Copland’s first compositions, including his Organ Symphony, were so radical that many of his American listeners were quite shocked. After conducting Copland’s work, Walter

Damrosch is known to have exclaimed, “If a young man at the age of twenty-three can write a Khan 3 symphony like that, in five years he will be ready to complete murder” (Berger 421). Americans were not as accustomed to hearing the modern European ideas of composers like Stravinsky or

Schoenberg that had influenced Copland’s works (Kay 24). Copland responded to the feedback and instead of drawing all inspiration from the European avant-garde, he starting began to incorporateing elements of jazz into his compositions in order to provide his audience with something more familiar. By 1930, however, Copland transitioned into a more serious style of music “distinguished by the leanness of its textures and patterns” (Berger 422). This new style is evident in Copland’s work, Piano Variations, written in 1930 where he showcases all possible thematic and rhythmic combinations of a four- note motif to create a twelve minute piece (Kay

25). Piano Variations is built upon “extremely restricted pitch content, which extends itself through repetition and the gradual accretion or interpolation of new elements” which is characteristic of the typical style Copland continues to use in his future works (Starr 73).

Copland mastered this economical use of notes as he began to establish the sharp and clean

“American” sound in his future works.

By the mid-1930s, after he had established his own style in works like Piano Variations and Symphony No. 2, Copland set out to build a better relationship with his audience (Kay 26-

27). In fact, by the mid-1930s, Copland saw the need to communicate to the “music-loving public” so that music would not just be confined to “the old special public” by condensing his musical message “in the simplest possible terms” (Copland xxvi). These ideas were influenced by Copland’s leftward political leanings that probably arose in response to the Great Depression and World War II (Crist, “Aaron Copland and the Popular Front, 412). As Copland became involved with the American Communist Party, he started to simplify his style so that his music could convey political messages. Khan 4

Copland soon became well-known for his support of leftist ideas as he even spoke at political rallies for the Communist Party of the U.S. (Ross 298). He joined socialist groups of artists who were in support of using art to advocate for government based social welfare and reform of capitalist corporations (Crist, “Music for the Common Man”). His compositions like

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! and Statements are fully of audible imagery and motifs that reflect his agreement with the progressive ideas of his peers. These messages include a distorted version of

“The Star Spangled Banner” to portray dissatisfaction with the government’s dealings with the corruption of capitalist corporations; other messages involve blasting motifs reminiscent of public demonstrations (Ross 298).

However, as an artist, Copland showed more support of the progressive creative movement that the Communist party stood for rather than the politics it involved (Crist, “Music for the Common Man” page?). His activities with Harold Clurman’s Group Theatre and the

Composers’ Collective in New York allowed him to learn how to better reach and connect with the general audience. His lack of interest in the politics of Communism is apparent by the fact that he never formally joined the Communist Party (Ross 300). His relationship with other leftist composers helped set up his “aesthetic position” to “reach the general public through a newly accessible but plainly modern style” untainted by the commercialism in jazz and the highly modern and esoteric style of composition that could only be appreciated by a special elite class of people (Crist, “Music for the Common Man”). By 1935, the New Deal was under way, and rather than reacting against the government, the general political climate had evolved to embrace

American culture (Crist, “Music for the Common Man”). Hence, Copland sought a musical sound that would be appropriate for the changing times. Khan 5

Copland wrote his first “American sounding” piece after being exposed to the cultural revolution in Mexico that was based on bringing art to the masses in 1932 this reads as if the revolution was brought on by a desire to bring art to the masses. Is that what Ross says? (Ross

299). Artists painted murals of workers and peasants while composers like Carlos Chavez were incorporating themes of Amerindian folk music in their compositions. Copland discovered that

Chavez had been able to capture the “Mexican sound” in his compositions by melding

“modernist modal melodies” with “rhythmic ostinati” and “complex cross-rhythms” of indigineous Mexican music (Crist, “Music for the Common Man). Chavez’s work helped

Copland recapture it for America as he started composing the tone poem El Salon Mexico.

Copland’s process of combining Mexican folk music with his own modernistic style helped him introduce the changing culture of Mexico to America. The great popularity of El Salon Mexico in

America shows that Copland had discovered an accessible style of composing that was accepted and appreciated by the general public. Even though it was based in Mexican song, Copland was able to communicate a universal message celebrating everyday real-life heroism. This meant that to find the American sound, Copland would have to integrate a part of traditional American culture in a modern way to showcase the universal importance of the proletariat.

Copland achieved this modern take on traditional Mexican folk songs in the score for the ballet El Salon Mexico by creating a “discontinuous musical surface” throughout the piece that brought “to the fore a more fundamental distinction between the genres of traditional song and orchestral music.” Copland also uses “staggering, syncopated rhythms to underlie tonic to dominant motion and vacate any sense of forward momentum created by the introductory flourish” (Crist, “Music for the Common Man”). Copland continued to use both of these techniques to establish the quintessential style of his “American” works. The contrast between Khan 6 folk song and modern orchestration allowed Copland to showcase the cultural evolution of the modern working class. This clash was a very accessible theme to contemporary Americans of the 1930s and 1940s as even though they had nostalgic feelings about the past (represented by the folk or traditional melodies), they realized the importance of looking forward and modernizing in order to progress and leave the Great Depression behind. Additionally,

Copland’s creation of the sense of motion in his pieces really helped create a vivid image of progress for his audience. After all, this theme of forward motion very easily can be interpreted as a symbol of progress as a reminder of the vast frontier symbolic of rustic and pre-industrial America. What I have italicized is very confusing.

These underlying themes are very apparent in their creation of the “American sound,” in

Copland’s subsequent works like Billy the Kid and Appalachian Spring. Copland discovered that the timeless symbol of the American proletariat could be encapsulated by images of “the West, the prairie, the pioneer, and the cowboy” (Crist, “Music for the Common Man” page). The earliest pioneers of American history had trekked to the West in search of new land and new opportunity. Now, during the Great Depression, Americans had to look to new frontiers, even if not geographically, to improve their economic state. The quintessential “American style” is very evident throughout Copland’s ballet score for Billy the Kid. The first movement of uses open- fifths and gapped melodies to create a sense of a vast expanse. Even though the ballet,

Appalachian Spring, was a story about western Pennsylvania before and during the Civil War,

Copland created images of an ideal America through the same sort of open frontier melodies as in Billy the Kid (Ross 329). The first movement of Billy the Kid also contains a “contrapuntal progression accompanied by the syncopations of a triple-meter march” that develops a sort of forward motion. The second movement contains variations and combinations of folk songs of Khan 7 different racial and ethnic origins including cowboy tunes and even Mexican dances. The diverse melodies help capture the modern more culturally diverse American working class of the modern day (Crist, “Music for the Common Man”). Copland continued to use melodic and thematic variations of folk songs in his later works in order to provide his audience with something familiar and simple. Additionally, in Billy the Kid, Copland introduces the contrast of the bucolic world of the past with the modern world with accents by “cymbals and bass drum.” He also creates melodic clashes such that the music mimics the clash between industrialization and the open prairie (Ross 301).

Ultimately, Copland was able to create a unique American sound. For the first time in

American musical history, he created a style that was unique to America and which was evocative of “industrial backgrounds, landscapes of the Far West, and so forth” (Copland xxvii).

Since he wrote the music for Appalachian Spring in 1944, Copland continued to keep his music free of consonance as evident in the opening of Our Town which displays “a free use of all seven diatonic notes, with a free juxtaposition of different vertical and horizontal forces” so that even contradictions in melody were still in harmony. This kept the atmosphere of his music “open” and “American” (Kay 28). But he mostly kept this soothing and easily comprehensible style of writing music for his public works. By 1950, Copland however moved on to write more personal works that were not meant for as much public exposure as his previous pieces written for film and ballet. The Piano Quartet he wrote at this time contained very similar chromatic aspects as evident in his early Piano Variations. The Piano Fantasy he wrote in 1957 also proved his skill by building a thirty-minute structure from just one root phrase (Kay 29).

In conclusion, Copland was a versatile composer who provided America with a music of its own. He also proved himself a master of composition both for the piano and for the orchestra Khan 8 as shown by his successful orchestration of Piano Variations without destroying its subtle qualities (Kay 26). He showed that he was able to not only write music that was avant-garde and of his own style like in Piano Variations, but he also proved that he was able to cater to the public by creating rich American melodies in El Salon Mexico, Billy the Kid, and Appalachian

Spring. But just because the music he was writing was more accessible than the dense chromaticism in his earliest works did not mean that he was simply recycling well known folk tunes and melodies. Rather, he studied the cultural history of America to invent a sound that was as familiar as folk melodies and that connected his audience to the story he wanted to tell through his music. The open prairie sound that he created was of no genre that was explored before. Nonetheless, Copland’s exposure to the innovation of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and

Bartok during his studies in Paris provided him with examples of music that were created to represent the “sounds” of different cultures. Thus, Copland had some idea about the process necessary to be completely unique in developing an American style, which was lacking by the time he had returned home from his trip in Europe.

Further, Copland’s adventures into ideologies of socialism and communism really helped him understand his audience during a time of great economic and political turmoil in the United

States. If Copland had not explored the world of musical activism, he probably would not have successfully felt the urge to use his music to be clearly communicative. Finally, one of the most pivotal experience that allowed Copland to be as successful in his creation of the American sound was probably his travel to Mexico. When he visited, the Mexican government had a very similar agenda to the United States in the 1930s – to use the arts to celebrate the working class so that people would embrace the progress that their nation to get back on their feet after the Great

Depression. Thus, Copland was able to experience the process of composers like Chavez in their Khan 9 construction of music for the masses. In conclusion, his observation of this process, in addition to all his other experiences, truly helped him to come back to the United States and create the

“American sound.”