Building a Collection #27
Appalachian Spring Suite (1945)
By Aaron Copland
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“People seemed to like it, so I guess it was all right.”
-Aaron Copland in 1944 after the premiere of Appalachian Spring
Welcome to #27 on our Building a Collection journey covering the top 250 classical works of all-time. Our entry here is by American composer Aaron Copland, the second American composer to be represented on the list, and the work is Appalachian Spring (Suite for Orchestra 1945). This is also the highest entry for music from a ballet, in this case Martha Graham’s and Copland’s Appalachian Spring.
Aaron Copland
Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1900, Aaron Copland remains one of the greatest American composers in the history of classical music. A composer of ballet, orchestral, keyboard, vocal, symphonic, film music, concertos, chamber music, band music, and opera genres, Copland occupies a central place in the history of music in the United States, being referred to as “the Dean of American composers”.
Copland was the youngest of five children born to Harris and Sarah Copland, Lithuanian Jewish immigrants who owned a department store in Brooklyn. He took formal piano lessons, but not until age 13, and by that time he had begun dabbling with writing musical pieces.
As a young man, Copland began studying music theory and composition and began to attend as many concerts, operas, and ballets as he could. Copland took formal lessons in harmony, theory, and composition and in 1921, Copland took a giant leap by going to France to take composition and conducting classes in Fontainebleau. Later he would travel to Paris to meet with the famed composition teacher Nadia Boulanger (Boulanger would later say she knew immediately that Copland was very gifted). He soaked up European culture for the next three years, and came to greatly admire composers such as Stravinsky, Milhaud, Mahler, and Faure.
Copland wrote an Organ Symphony in 1924, and it was performed with Boulanger on organ and conducted by Serge Koussevitzky (Koussevitzky would go on to conduct the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1924 to 1949). The friendship Copland formed with Koussevitzky would lead to an offer to teach at the Berkshire Music Center (Tanglewood) in western Massachusetts from 1940 until 1965. Koussevitzky proved to be a great champion for Copland, especially as he gave airtime to many of Copland’s new compositions.
Returning to America after his time in France, Copland soon discovered that composing music in the eclectic and modern approach advocated by his teachers in Europe and similar to what was in vogue among European composers was not a good decision for him financially or artistically. It was the 1930s, and the Great Depression dictated that Copland look for more approachable ways to present his music. He became best known for the “populist” works he wrote in the 1930s and 1940s, written in an incisive and intentionally accessible style. The works composed during this time include the ballets Appalachian Spring (1944), Billy the Kid (1938) and Rodeo (1942), as well as his Fanfare for the Common Man (1942) and Third Symphony (1946).
Copland eventually became one of the leading voices in American music and was instrumental in working with fellow composers such as Roger Sessions, Roy Harris, Virgil Thomson, and Walter Piston. After World War II, Copland was very generous in giving his time to new young composers and advocating for their works.
Ballet would form a great proportion of Copland’s music, and he would come to be known for representing “Americana” in his ballets in much the same way Stravinsky represented Russian life in his ballets. At the time, Copland’s ballets also became important in the life of American dance companies and artists such as Busby Berkeley, Martha Graham, Fred Astaire, and George Balanchine. Soon Copland would also turn to composing music for film including the scores for Of Mice and Men, Our Town, and the folk ballad John Henry.
Perhaps predictably, Copland was soon criticized for “selling out” and for “pandering to the masses” due to his newer, more popular style. Copland's response was that writing as he did and in as many genres was his response to how the Depression had affected society, as well as to new media and the audiences made available by these new media. As he himself phrased it, "The composer who is frightened of losing his artistic integrity through contact with a mass audience is no longer aware of the meaning of the word art."
Copland’s method of composing usually involved sitting at the piano and capturing snippets or fragments as they came to him. He would then further develop that fragment into something more substantial or keep the fragment for something later. His composition wasn’t so much a flow of ideas as an assembly line.
In the 1960s, Copland would begin to pursue conducting much more often than composing. He would later say of his decreased compositional output, “It was exactly as if someone had turned off a faucet.” Copland would frequently guest conduct in the United States and the United Kingdom and would produce some very fine recordings for Columbia Records (including the ones under review here).
Copland’s music became strongly linked to popular culture, and in the 1940s musical tastes began to move away from populist music. Copland was strongly criticized as appealing to the lowest common denominator, there were accusations from intellectuals that his music was dumbed down for the masses. Part of writing for a large audience was using the new technologies of television, radio, and film, which Copland certainly did. Copland would write an opera for television titled The Tender Land, which was initially critiqued as having a weak story, but in time would become part of standard opera repertoire. Even though Copland would travel widely in his final decades sampling much of the avant-garde music in Europe and would build a relationship with the composer Takemitsu in Japan, he found much of modern music dull and repetitive, commenting “I've spent most of my life trying to get the right note in the right place. Just throwing it open to chance seems to go against my natural instincts.”
Because of Copland’s leftist political views, which included support for the Communist Party USA in 1936 and his support of Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace in 1948, he was investigated by the FBI in the 1950s. He was on an FBI list of 151 artists thought to have Communist associations and was blacklisted. Copland was called to Washington, D.C. and questioned by Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn. This was somewhat ironic given that Copland’s music championed American values and his music was so closely associated with “Americana”. Copland himself was deeply patriotic. Although the investigations stopped in 1955, Copland felt the need to stop his association with some leftist groups. Meanwhile, he was extremely critical of the lack of artistic freedom in the Soviet Union, and in his 1954 Norton lecture he asserted that loss of freedom under Soviet Communism deprived artists of "the immemorial right of the artist to be wrong." He began to vote for Democrats, first for Stevenson and then for Kennedy.
Copland was gay and the composer came to an early acceptance and understanding of his sexuality. Copland guarded his privacy, especially in regard to his homosexuality. He provided few written details about his private life, and even after the Stonewall riots of 1969, he never felt the need to "come out”. Author Howard Pollack notes, "...he was one of the few composers of his stature to live openly and travel with his intimates. They tended to be talented, younger men involved in the arts, and the age-gap between them and the composer widened as he grew older.” Most became enduring friends after a few years and, in Pollack's words, "remained a primary source of companionship."
Appalachian Spring (1945)
The music for Appalachian Spring was written for the Martha Graham ballet by the same name. Martha Graham (1894 - 1991) was one of the most well-known dancers and choreographers in American history, and by the 1940s she had established her own dance company and had developed her own modern dance style called the “Graham Technique”, which is still taught all over the world. Graham approached Copland in the early 1940s to commission him to write a score for a new ballet. By that time, Copland had already adopted a more populist and folksy compositional style. Copland would borrow quite a bit from American folk music, and this would include some of the music for Appalachian Spring.
During the time of the correspondence back and forth between Graham and Copland, she was teaching in Vermont, and he was in Hollywood working on film scores. In one of her telegrams to Copland, Graham describes what she is looking for in the music: “This is a legend of American living. It is like the bone structure, the inner frame that holds together people. This has to do with living in a new town, someplace where the first fence has just gone up.” Copland was inspired to depict his vision of America, and he created a sound world that would become part of the national consciousness of what “Americana” is all about. It is not sophisticated or overly complicated music, but Copland wanted to create music that was easily understandable and digested by the masses. In its simplicity, it communicated the heart of the national spirit. While Copland came up with almost all the themes himself, the most famous theme is the Shaker hymn Simple Gifts, which Copland fully develops and uses snippets from in his other themes.
As Jeff Lunden from NPR’s All Things Considered noted:
“Appalachian Spring is set in a western Pennsylvania community in the early 19th century. Most of the scenario revolves around the courtship and wedding of a young couple, originally played by Martha Graham and Eric Hawkins. Once Copland's score was completed, Graham and her dancers went to work. One of the performers commented, ‘The first day we heard this music, it was like the sun spread over the floor. Every rehearsal was like that. The music is so clear and so beautiful and so rhythmically alive.’”
Originally Appalachian Spring was scored for a chamber orchestra of 13 instruments, but Copland scored it for full orchestra in suite form in 1945 and this is the version most often heard today. You will find some recordings of the chamber version, as well as of various suites taken from the ballet. But it is the orchestral suite where the work gained its fame, as many American and UK orchestras almost immediately programmed the work in concerts.
The movements heard in the 1945 suite version are as follows:
Very slowly (Introduction of the Characters)
Fast/Allegro (Sudden Burst of Unison Strings)
Moderate (Duo for the Bride and her Intended)
Quite fast (The Revivalist and his Flock)
Still faster (Solo Dance of the Bride)
Very slowly (Transition Scene to Music Reminiscent of the Intro)
Calm and flowing (Shaker Theme and 5 Variations)
Moderate (The Bride Takes her Place among her Neighbors)
Music critic Terry Techout said of Appalachian Spring:
"It is the ultimate statement of Copland’s American musical language. In that piece, all of the elements come together and they're in perfect balance. It is probably the greatest piece of classical music composed by an American. Certainly, the greatest dance score composed by an American, completely comparable in quality to the great ballets of Tchaikovsky or Stravinsky. All that is best about mid-century American music is in this piece."
The ballet was very well received by the public upon its premiere in 1944 with the New York Times critic John Martin writing, "Aaron Copland has written a score of fresh and singing beauty. It is, on its surface, a piece of early Americana, but in reality, it is a celebration of the human spirit."
Copland won the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Musical Composition for Appalachian Spring in 1945.
The Essential Recording
Around the 1960s, Aaron Copland turned to conducting more than composing. He noted that he felt as though the well had dried up for him as a composer. But as a conductor, he was one of the finest advocates of his own works. Although Copland had recorded Appalachian Spring previously with the Boston Symphony Orchestra for RCA in 1959, it is his 1970 recording with the London Symphony Orchestra, recorded by Columbia in EMI Studios in London, that is essential listening. While this is not the fastest or most exciting account (see Bernstein for that), it is the warmest, most profound, and most lovingly played version on record. You can tell Copland had a great relationship with the LSO, as they gave their best for him. But this is also a window into Copland’s own approach to this music. Remember this is ballet music, and Copland emphasizes the pointed rhythms and sprung dance episodes. But also, the more tender parts are played with the utmost feeling and color. The sound is exceptional for 1970, the very best analog quality. It is a wonderful recording.
Other Recommended Recordings
A close second to the Copland recording above is the well-loved 1961 recording by the New York Philharmonic and Leonard Bernstein on Columbia (now Sony). Of course, Bernstein revered Copland as a mentor and friend, and Bernstein seemed to have an intuitive understanding of Copland’s music and his recordings may be considered authoritative. Indeed, next to Copland himself, the only other conductor that approaches Bernstein is Michael Tilson Thomas (see below). Bernstein brings the music to life here like no one else, putting his own energetic stamp on the dance rhythms and using his heart-on-sleeve approach in the slower, pastoral numbers. This just sounds like “Americana” coming from Bernstein, himself an American icon. The atmosphere is electric, the recording exudes excitement, and it is clear Bernstein wants to give this music the performance it deserves. He does that very well, and if he doesn’t quite eclipse Copland himself in terms of warmth and depth, this is just fantastic music making. Bernstein would record the piece again later with the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Deutsche Grammophon, also a worthy if more relaxed account, but the earlier one still takes precedence.
American pianist and conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, a protégé of Bernstein, also has a wonderful touch when it comes to Copland. Tilson Thomas recorded Appalachian Spring for RCA in 1999 with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, the band he took over in 1995 (he is currently the Music Director Laureate of the SFSO). Tilson Thomas has the advantage of good sound, but he also uses the longer ballet scoring for orchestra, which adds about 10 minutes of music. I have enjoyed this recording since it was first released on the album Copland the Populist. There is plenty of energy here as well, enhanced by incisive playing by the musicians, sharp rhythmic accents, and gorgeous strings. If I had to choose, I would still put Bernstein and Copland ahead of Tilson Thomas, but this is highly recommended.
American conductor Robert Spano made a spectacular recording of Appalachian Spring with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, released on the Telarc label in 2003. Spano’s reading can stand with the very best, and it has outstanding digital sound. Spano never rushes, but also doesn’t dawdle, and his feel for the rhythms and folk idioms feels just right. Spano clearly relishes this music and gives it an infectious bounce and offers his own small individual touches. The tempo is pushed when needed, but in appealing ways, and in the end, I am always left feeling quite satisfied with this recording. Also, this recording appears on an album that includes several other attractive works by Barber, Theofanidis, and Higdon.
The British conductor, arranger, and musicologist John Wilson (b. 1972) recorded Appalachian Spring with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra for the Chandos label in 2016 as part of a large survey of Copland’s music. Currently the director of the Sinfonia of London, Wilson has fully immersed himself in American musical idioms over the years with recordings of full musicals, showtunes, and popular music from several decades. This version is beautifully recorded in Chandos' brilliant sound, but more importantly Wilson brings a sense of freshness and vitality to the score. There is verve and excitement, but Wilson is most adept at projecting the flow of the score’s more intimate moments. Don’t expect edge of your seat fizz like Bernstein, but Wilson is faithful to the big picture and provides enough contrast between sections that we keenly remain aware of the change of moods. In fact Wilson comes closest to Copland’s own 1970 recording, and the sound is outstanding.
If you want to hear an excellent chamber performance of the score, my recommendation would be the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra recording from 1989 on Deutsche Grammophon. You will notice the greater intimacy of the smaller number of instruments, and the immediate sound. This is extremely well done, and is played with all the character of any of the accounts listed above. Some listeners may even prefer the chamber version, especially when all the details of Copland’s wonderful writing are brought out as clearly as they are here. While I prefer the greater weight of a full orchestra, this recording can be heartily recommended for the smaller scale version.
The Next Tier
As always there is a good bit of subjectiveness in choosing recordings, and even though the recordings below did not make the recommended list, you may want to hear them for yourself. All of them have good qualities. They include:
Boston Symphony Orchestra / Aaron Copland (RCA, 1959)
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra / William Steinberg (Command, 1967)
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra / Louis Lane (Telarc, 1982)
Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra / Leonard Bernstein (DG, 1983)
Detroit Symphony Orchestra / Antal Dorati (Decca, 1988)
Cincinnati Pops Orchestra / Erich Kunzel (Telarc, 1997)
Detroit Symphony Orchestra / Leonard Slatkin (Naxos, 2014) (complete ballet)
Once again thank you for reading, and I hope you are keeping up with all of the great music I have had the privilege of reviewing in these posts. Join me next time for #28 on the list: J.S. Bach’s seminal piano composition The Well-Tempered Clavier (Books 1 & 2). See you then!
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Notes:
BBC Music Magazine. A guide to Copland's Appalachian Spring and its best recordings. June 23, 2022.
Brennan, Gerald. Schrott, Allen. Wise, Brian. Woodstra, Chris. All Music Guide to Classical Music, The Definitive Guide. All Media Guide. Pp. 309-312. Backbeat Books, San Francisco. 2005.
Copland, Aaron; Perlis, Vivian (1984). Copland 1900 Through 1942. New York: St. Martins/Marek. ISBN 978-0-312-16962-6.
Copland, Aaron; Crist, Elizabeth B.; Shirley, Wayne (2008). The Selected Correspondence of Aaron Copland. New Haven: Yale University Press. doi:10.12987/9780300133479. ISBN 978-0-300-11121-7. JSTOR j.ctt1nq05k.
Martin, John (November 1, 1944). "Graham Dancers in Festival Finale: Repeat Earlier Performance of Three New Works on the Library of Congress Stage". The New York Times. p. 19. ProQuest 106763600.
Oja, Carol J.; Tick, Judith (2005). Aaron Copland and His World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Pollack, Howard (1999). Aaron Copland. New York: Henry Holt. ISBN 978-0-8050-4909-1.
Puccio, John P. Copland: Appalachian Spring. Classical Candor. Online at https://classicalcandor.blogspot.com/2014/09/copland-appalachian-spring-hdcd-review.html.
Ramey, Phillip. (1988). Copland Conducts Copland. Liner Notes. Pp. 4-5. CBS Records Masterworks.
Smith, Julia (1953). Aaron Copland. New York: E. P. Dutton.
Tobin, R. James. Rainbow Body. Classical Net. 2003. Online at http://www.classical.net/music/recs/reviews/t/tlc80596a.php.