Koh 10
Chan-Hee Koh
Professor Thomas Neenan
MU 139
21 April 2013
Aaron Copland: The Pioneer of American Sound
Aaron Copland was an American composer who set the foundation of a distinctly American style of composition. His popular work combined the folk aspect of music as well as jazz idioms to generate a composition that was easily accessible by the masses. Before his major contributions, classical music was predominantly European in origin. There were no classical works that could be deemed distinctly American. However, Copland was able to develop such a unique American sound by breaking from the traditional essence of classical music of the time with his passion for tonal and rhythmic experimentation. His passion and obsession of the works of European composers such as Debussy, Chopin, and Stravinsky were the precursors to the development of his future work. On the other hand, Copland desired to compose music that sounded uniquely American and reflective of its culture. Thus, Aaron Copland’s unique contribution to classical music as well as the foundation of American Sound was best described by his works which integrated American folk music with his passion for the European avant-garde.
Copland’s early years were crucial stages in his development as a composer. During this time, Copland discovered his talents and passion for music. His obsession with European as well as American literature drove him to devise his own opera scenario, Zenetello, after eagerly reading the libretti his sister had brought home from the Metropolitan Opera in Brooklyn (Pollack 31). While composing this piece, he gave up after realizing that his work would remain immature and crude due to his lack of formal training, despite his musical gift (32). This paved the way for his musical education under Leonard Wolfsohn, who provided him with the necessary training to play the piano. Copland eventually went on to study theory and composition with Rubin Goldmark. Here he developed his own musical tastes and saw that they differed from the Goldmark’s deference of German Romantic composers. Copland soon realized that “Goldmark derived no pleasure from seeing what seemed to him to be ‘modernistic experiments’” (Copland “Composer from Brooklyn” xxi).
This divergence in taste was exemplified in his friendship with Aaron Schaffer in high school. The two developed a passion for the European avant-garde, as “both shared a passion for music and literature, with rather similar musical taste” (Pollack 37). Copland even wrote compositions based on Schaffer’s poems, which he referred to as Three Songs (38). Furthermore, he “derived profound satisfaction from exteriorizing inner feelings—at times, surprisingly concrete ones—and giving them shape”, when he was writing his juvenilia (Pollack 40). Consequently, his compositions assimilated characteristics of Debussy, Ravel, Scriabin, and Bloch, who were all paragons of the avant-garde.
Copland travelled to Paris in 1917 to further advance his studies in music where he attended Fontainebleau School of Music with Isidor Philipp and Paul Vidal. However, he felt Vidal was too similar to Goldmark and he found the teacher he was looking for in Nadia Boulanger (49). She “introduced Copland to a wealth of music, complementing discoveries he made on his own. This included Renaissance madrigals, Bach’s cantatas and organ works, and a wide range of modern music” (49). Throughout his studies, Copland discovered his affinity and admiration of Bach, even referring to him as the perfect composer. In an autobiography, he said, “if one were asked to name one musician who came closest to composing without human flaw I suppose general consensus would choose Johann Sebastian Bach” (Copland 36). Another musical hero that had a considerable influence on Copland was Igor Stravinsky. Stravinsky’s style of “jagged and uncouth rhythmic effects,” “bold use of dissonance,” and “hard, dry, crackling sonority” proved to have such a profound effect on Copland that his future works were packed with similar styles (Pollack 65).
The effect of Stravinsky on Copland cannot be trivialized. Despite Stravinksy’s influence on Copland’s musical style, Copland had already developed his own individual voice (Matthews 11). For example, Copland’s Dance Symphony (1925) contained obvious influences from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. However, in his Music for the Theatre, Copland explored his own style and an authentic “American sound” (11). This piece and Copland’s Piano Concerto were attempts at creating a distinctive American style. Music for the Theatre contained jazz themes, which were indicative of the 1920s American obsession with that particular sound. Matthews’ juxtaposed some “generalities” between Copland and Stravinsky in that, ballets were both important in their output of music, whose influences were derived from their respective country’s folk melodies (American folk sources for Copland, Russian folk sources for Stravinsky) (13).
Copland’s Piano Variations (1930) was another piece that had many Stravinsky influences. The “massive bitonal chords in the coda of the Piano Variations (1930) are clearly of Stravinskian origin, and his influence on the outer movements of the Short Symphony of 1933 is even more potent” (12). The piece was based “on a broadly gesticulating four-note motif—E, C, D-sharp, C-sharp an octave above—that Copland probably extracted from the slow movement of Stravinsky’s Octet. The theme is subjected to an astringent sequence of permutations that at times approaches twelve-tone writing” (Ross 207) The piece also contained “stark textures that tend towards simple unisons and two-part writing, textures that seem all the more sinewy thanks to a prevalence of sharp dissonances—in particular, simultaneous-sounding minor seconds and their inversions” (Pollack 147). This meant that tonal centers are hard to distinguish due to the dissonance.
Copland’s relationship to the American Communist Party had some influence on his compositions. When the Great Depression hit in 1929, “one quarter of the American people wanted a socialist government and another quarter had an ‘open mind’ about the prospect” (Ross 208). On his trips to Europe, Copland encountered Mahagonny Songspiel and The Threepenny Opera, and fell to thinking about how a composer could combine social critique with mass appeal” (Ross 210). This focused Copland on composing popular music has he was “deeply concerned with the artist’s relation to society” (Matthews 14). Consequently, “political themes infiltrated Copland’s scores in the early and mid-thirties. The ballet Hear Ye! Hear Ye! (1934) uses a distorted version of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ to convey, in Copland’s words, ‘the corruption of legal systems and courts of law’” (Ross 210-211). He even spoke at a rally for the Communist Party of USA in Minnesota in the summer of 1934. Despite such political leanings, Copland never joined the Communist Party and was more focused on effectively delivering his music to the masses rather than transmitting a political message (212).
Such focus on composing popular music was a key factor in developing the American sound. Copland found inspiration in the Wild West, Abraham Lincoln, rodeos, and Mexican saloons in developing his authentic “American sound” (202). Such themes were icons that were romanticized by many Americans and thus evoked emotions of longing for simpler, innocent times. Copland’s most popular ballet, Billy the Kid commemorated “the legendary outlaw William Bonney, who, it was said, stole from the rich, befriended the poor, charmed the ladies, and killed twenty-one men” (213). Copland incorporated cowboy tunes to “evoke America in a prelapsarian state, before the loss of innocence under capitalism” (213). Copland incorporated the “subtle use of the triple meter” and after the woodwinds finished their opening harmonies, which are reminiscent not only of the prairie but also of birdsong, “the basses enter with a syncopated, two-note motive” (Pollack 321). As the bass crescendo “dramatically from pianissimo to a triple-forte climax, vividly suggest[ing] the laborious trudging of the settlers,” the portrayal of the “modally ambiguous prairie music” is thrown “into a dark minor modality” (321). This has the effect of painting a vibrant panorama of the story of Billy, as specified by Eugene Loring, the ballet’s choreographer who “brought forth from Copland a high level of inspiration” (321). At the end of the ballet, Copland “hints at the paving of the West” after Billy falls victim to Pat Garrett by transforming the pioneer march into a “juggernaut in three-quarter time, accented by cymbals and bass drum,” upon which a “new key are of E major clashes with remnants of the heroic E-flat of the opening” (Ross 213). This symbolized the rapid industrialization of the west as skyscrapers rose on the prairie, their hard forms glinting in the sun (213). This ballet was thus a key piece which truly evoked an American emotion and contributed to Copland’s development of an “American sound”.
Another popular work that Copland produced was Appalachian Spring. The idea for this piece came from “choreographer Martha Graham, who wished to use her airy, athletic style of modern dance to create a mythic picture of life on the American frontier” (Ross 232). The story of the piece is set in western Pennsylvania leading up to the Civil War. Populated with nameless American archetypes, “the Mother The Mother embodies the purity of the preindustrial American soul; the Daughter is a plucky pioneer type; the Citizen, who marries the daughter and carries her across the threshold of his newly built farmhouse, is a fighter for civil rights, perhaps something of an intellectual, certainly an abolitionist; the Fugitive represents the slaves; and the Younger Sister “suggests today.” The central drama arrives in the “Fear in the Night” episode, when the Fugitive enters and brings with him all the pain and fear of the Civil War. Once the struggle is over, the music subsides toward a final Sabbath scene” (232). This piece, like many other Copland works, “[offered] images of an ideal nation, the America that could have been or might still be” (232). Beginning with fifty bars in A major, or white-key music, which meant that if it were transposed to the key of C only the white keys of the piano would be played, there are hints of dissonance as one “simple strand is interwoven with another” (232). The piece goes on to play “a string of bucolic sketches [that] culminates in variations on the Shaker hymn ‘Simple Gifts,’ whose words spell out Copland’s aesthetic in brief: ‘When true simplicity is gained / To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed’” (233). Copland’s obsession with the American frontier and its simplicity seems to lend an air of American sentiment which proved crucial to his development of the “American sound”.
The quintessential “American sound” that Copland developed had some key characteristics. Copland incorporated jazz idioms as well as folk tunes that, “curiously [brought] out in the melodic patterns a broader essence of Americanism than the tunes originally conveyed” (Berger 442). Copland’s compositions and other music of the twenties had utilized an assembly of dissonances to produce on recurring effect: a jarring sound. However, newer methods, “combinations through free association of the seven tones of any mode; through superposition of tones borrowed from another key on a basically diatonic chord; through new doublings within traditional harmonies … ,” that Copland developed produced subtle nuances of beauty (438). Copland, along with Stravinsky, was one of the major contributors to the technique of chord spacing. While other composers felt the need to produce a big sound at almost every moment, Copland used this technique to achieve a more refined and varied beauty by withholding tones (438). Copland’s influences from Stravinsky were so pronounced that “if you were to take a Stravinsky score such as the Octet or the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, loosen up the tightly controlled structure, and insert a few melodies of the New England hymnal or urban-jazzy type, you would have the beginnings of a Copland work such as Billy the Kid or Applachian Spring” (Ross 206). Another major tenet of Copland’s compositions was the “presence of polyrhythms” and the “fondness for percussion” as shown in Billy the Kid (Pollack 530).
Copland’s obsession with developing an American sound was “symptomatic of the period (Copland “Composer from Brooklyn: An Autobiographical Sketch” xxv). He wanted to incorporate the jazz idiom and adapt it to a symphony, which he did through his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (xxv). This attempt did not succeed in that form as George Gershwin and Maurice Ravel had done. He recognized the limitations of such a form as he said “with the [Piano] Concerto I felt I had done all I could with the idiom, considering its limited emotional scope. True, it was an easy way to be American in musical terms, but all American music could not possibly be confined to two dominant jazz moods – the blues and the snappy number” (Pollack 115). Despite this failed attempt, Copland continued to subtly use this jazz idiom in future works. However, it was ultimately the amalgamation of influences and convictions that defined the “American sound” for Copland. He summed up the character of his “American sound” as having “[an] optimistic tone,” “certain directness in expression of sentiment,” and “certain songfulness” (503).
Copland met with fellow composers such as Roy Harris at the MacDowell Colony which led him to take an active interest in the welfare of American composers in general (Copland “Composer from Brooklyn: An Autobiographical Sketch” xxv). He also met Koussevitzky, a famed Russian-born conductor who thoroughly enjoyed Copland’s work and agreed to conduct a chamber orchestra in an all-modern concert for the League of Composers (xxiv). Throughout his long tenure at the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Koussevitzky “championed young American music while continuing to introduce novelties from Europe” (xxiv). This not only qualified Copland’s work, but also it introduced his music to a greater audience, much to the delight of the populist composer. This helped pave the way for Copland to take up conducting.