WNET Licensing (A's)

The “A’s” (Source: NET microfiche, unless listed) Aaron Copland Meets the Soviet Composers (1959) Initial Broadcast: N/A Number of programs: 1 Origin Format: Undetermined Running time: 30 minutes AARON COPLAND MEETS THE SOVIET COMPOSERS is a half-hour studio production kinescope of an interview between Copland and six Soviet musicians, musicologists and/or composers who were travelling in the US. My impression is that this was a visit in return for one made to the USSR by an American group earlier that included Menned (?), Sessions, Harris and Kay (?). The setting for the interview is a recreated concert hall stage with the guests sitting in players’ chairs and Copland and his translator located where a solo instrumentalist would be seated. The questions appear to have been scripted in advance – and scripts placed on the music stands. The responses from the Soviets appear to have been ad lib. Copland’s questions were translated into Russian by an American (?) of Russian origins, Nicholas Slonimsky, himself a musician. The Soviets spoke in Russian and were heard through simultaneous translation. The translator was unseen and uncredited. The Soviet guests include (in order of answering questions): Dmitri Kabalevsky, Boris Yarustovsky, Tikhon Khrennikov, Dmitri Shostakovich, Konstantin Dankevich and Fikret Amirov. Kabalevsky was asked about the knowledge of American music in the USSR; Yarustovsky on the influence of American music on Russian music; Khrennikov on the reactions of Soviet musicians to the visit of four American musicians earlier (in the exchange program?); Shostakovich on American jaZZ and its influence; Dankevich on younger Soviet composers and Amirov on the adaption of native musical types to series music. Follow-up questions were added to fill the program to a half-hour including Copland to Shostakovich on American understanding of his music as compared to Soviet understanding of it (approx. 865 feet in). This latter segment may be useful as an outtake. The film appears to be a reasonably good quality kinescope with adequate sound. Executive producer was David Davis. Produce: Jordan Whitelaw Director: Paul Noble No copyright date 1043 feet, optical sound Aaron Copland: Music in the Twenties (1965) NET first broadcast week: June 6, 1965 Number of Programs: 12 Origin format: Videotape B&W or Color: B&W Running time: 30 minutes Series Description: The 1920’s was an era charged with creative activity. In literature the names of Hemingway, FitZgerald, Joyce, Stein, and Eliot were being heard for the first time. In music, it was Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartok, Satie, Milhaud, Hindemith, Ives, Bloch, and others that were part of a vast creative explosion – an explosion which set the pace in series music for the century. MUSIC IN THE 20’s, America’s most renowned composer, Aaron Copland, pays tribute to this remarkable era of music. Acting as series host and frequently as conductor, Copland is joined by outstanding guest soloist including the great singer Lotte Lenya, harpsichordist Sylvia Marlowe, the members of the Juilliard String Quartet, soprano Bethany Beardslee, baritone Donald gramm, violinist Tossy Spivakovsky, controversial avant-garde pianist David Tudor and others. The Cambridge Festival Orchestra is guest orchestra for the series. Each of the 12-half hour programs is divided between live performances of works and Mr. Copland’s comments and anecdotes on the people and the music of the period. As is suggested by the individual program titles, each half-hour illustrates a special phase or trend “JazZ and JazZ Influence,” “New Movements in Opera,” “Paris: Neo-Classicism and Stravinsky.” AARON COPLAND: MUSIC IN THE 20’S is being produced for NET by WgBH, Boston’s educational station. David Davis of WGBH is producer-director. Associate producer is David Sloss. James Perrin of NET is the executive producer. Notes on Aaron Copland: “Aaron Copland is without question North America’s leading composer. He has a flavor which is at once personal and American … he can be grand solemn or gay – bleak or ‘juicy’. As a teacher, public lecturer, author, pianist and conductor, Copland has had the greatest influence of any composer now active in the United States.” (From Music Today, Dr. Carleton Sprague Smith) The composer of “Appalachian Spring,” “Rodeo,” and “Billy the Kid,” was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1900 where he attended the local public schools and studied piano. In his early twenties he left for Paris, then the focal point for the post-war upsurge in the arts. There he studied at the newly established Fontainebleau School of Music and subsequently became a pupil of the great Nadia Boulanger. Four years later he returned to the United States where he was the first composer to be awarded a guggenheim fellowship. Today Copland’s music has been heard in performance by leading orchestras throughout the world. Highlights in his career include the 1945 premiere of “Appalachian Spring,” a favorite in the ballet repertoire of Martha graham, for which he received the Pulitzer PriZe. The following year marked the premiere of his “Third Symphony,” which was awarded the New York Music Critic Circle Award. He has also written the score for several films, among them “Of Mice and Men,” “Our Town,” “North Star,” and “Something Wild.” In recent years, Copland has also gained an important reputation as a conductor and as an author and lecturer on music. He has led more than thirty major symphony orchestras in Europe, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Far East. He is the author of four books on music, What to Listen for in Music, Our New Music, and Music and Imagination, Copland on Music. Program 1: Background 1910-1919 This premiere program features the music of Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky, with soprano Bethany Beardslee, violinist Robert Koff, and Aaron Copland conducting. Stravinsky and Schoenberg, the two dominant musical personalities of the twenties, both made their initial appearances in the early teens, setting the stage for the post-war revolution in music. Stravinsky’s “neo-classicism,” a style which he continued to develop for the next thirty years, broke with the then prevalent 19th century Wagnerian romanticism. Schoenberg was the leader of an even more radical revolution which he called “the emancipation of dissonance.” He emerged in the mid-twenties, with a new method of composition – his now famous twelve-tone system. The program features: “Pierrot Lunaire,” by Arnold Schoenberg, a pre-twelve tone composition which is a setting of 21 poems by Belgian poet Albert guiraud. Bethany Beardslee performs seven of the poems. Robert Koff is violinist-conductor. “The Story of a Soldier,” by Igor Stravinsky (1918). The first three sections are performed. Notes on Bethany Beardslee: American soprano Bethany Beardslee studied music at Michigan State University and subsequently won a three-year scholarship at Juilliard. She has received international acclaim for her premieres of the works of Stravinsky, Berg, Babbitt, Schoenberg, Webern, Krenek, and many major American composers. Her repertoire is both modern and classic. She has been the featured soprano with the New York Pro Musica, has sung Bach with the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood, and has performed the major Oratorio works of Handel and other Baroque masters. Program 2: Paris: Les Six Aaron Copland talks about Paris in the twenties, the famous group Six (composers Poulenc, Durey, Honneger, Tailleferre, Milhaud, Aurio) and their patron-philosopher Erik Satie. Copland plays Poulenc. Guest Pianist Paul Jacobs plays Honneger. Copland conducts. In Paris of the twenties, “The Six” typified the Twentieth Century “type” of composer. Their compositions seemed to signify the end of the germanic and solemn approach to music. It was Erik Satie, their “musical godfather,” who stressed the anti-grandiose, anti-impressionistic, and anti- impressive in music. Copland plays a piece by Francois Poulenc, Satie’s most direct musical heir, whose music is bright, witty, impertinent, and thoroughly French in character, according to Copland. The two most important members of “The Six” were, however, Arthur Honneger and Darius Milhaud. Here pianist Paul Jacobs illustrates Honneger with “Concertino for Piano and Small Orchestra.” Program: Poulenc, “Mouvement Prepetual” (1919), Aaron Copland, piano Honneger, “Concertino for Piano and Small Orchestra,” Paul Jacobs, piano Program 3: Jazz and Jazz Influence Aaron Copland talks about a major innovation of the 1920’s – the introduction of jaZZ elements in serious music. European composers like Igor Stravinsky and Darius Milhaud, rather than Americans, were the innovators. Here Copland conducts the Cambridge Festival Orchestra in a complete performance of Milhaud’s “The Creation of the World.” During the first part of the program Copland seeks the reason why jaZZ, its mood, its new rhythms, and its new dry sound appealed to the composers of the twenties. He traces back its first appearances to the turn of the century, compositions of Ravel, Debussy, and Stravinsky. Copland has chosen to illustrate the trend with Darius Milhaud, “the man who really understood what jaZZ was all about best.” Milhaud wrote his “The Creation of the World” in 1923 for the Ballet Suedios in Paris, based on a story by French novelist Blaise Cendrars and produced that year amidst great scandal. Program 4: Neo-Classicism Part of the great musical revolution of the 1920’s was “neo-classicism,” when the avant-garde composers began to cast an eye backwards to the 18th century. Stravinsky was the leader. Others were Hindemith, de Falla, Villa Lobos, and in America, Sessions and Piston. Here Copland talks about Stravinsky and neo-classicism. Sylvia Marlowe, the celebrate harpsichordist, plays Manuel de Falla’s “Harpsichord Concerto,” one of the milestones in neo-classicism. She is accompanied by the Cambridge Arts Ensemble. Copland talks about the emergence of neo-classicism with the 1923 premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s “Octet,” a work with modern sonority and rhythm, yet strikingly classical in form and texture.

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