Quiet City (1940). Aaron Copland /new york and new orleans/

For today, Copland's Quiet City sounds apt, and the play may have more depth than I realized. Harold Clurman wrote about Irwin Shaw's work:

It's theme, the recurrent one of the troubled conscience of the middle class that cannot quite reconcile itself to its life in a distraught world -- which, when it retains its honesty and sensitivity, it identifies with a life of sin -- was here given full orchestration.

A brief search indicates the play includes a character who abandons his artistic aspirations and his Jewishness in order to achieve material success, but is reminded of what he has done via his brother's trumpet playing.

rgable: aworks great depression/wwii era copland: aworks del.icio.us wikipedia google news yahoo audio singingfish copland's music as uniter after hurricane hugo

Comments

[John G. Scott]

I performed Quiet City many years ago and, to this day, consider that performance one of the artistic highlights of my musical life. To construe the piece as a "tribute to an American city" is, I believe, to totally miss the deeper meaning of the music. The piece is about reflecting on the meaning of life in an atmosphere of solitude, and to come to the poignant realization that ones's choices in life have been irreparably compromised.