Ever since we realized my iPod was in the middle of the wash machine cycle earlier this week, I've returned to listening to my legacy CDs. I continue to be impressed by how good the music of Aaron Copland sounds when transcribed for piano. Maybe it's the mixture of astringency and warmth.
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Spoken text from The Second Hurricane, Aaron Copland's opera for high-school students:
But nobody wants to help anybody. See, when people are scared, they act tough and try to be bossy. Nothing ever gets done that way. That's the trouble with our heroes at this moment. It's everyone for himself instead of everyone cooperating and sticking together and doing something. So with this big storm coming on, they get scared, and they get bossy. Each one thinks he knows what is best to do so they all separate.
Tim Page has his list of 25 recordings to represent 20th century classical music.
Orlan Charles plays the ELP interpretation of Aaron Copland's Hoedown on YouTube:
Pilgrimage to Parnassus asks if WGHB in Boston is fulfilling Aaron Copland's mandate:
WGBH is currently airing self-congratulatory spots, playing clips of an address Aaron Copland gave on its inaugural broadcast. To paraphrase, Copland says that 'GBH should particularly focus on music of our own time and place, to the point that contemporary American music is as well known as that of the classical masters. It's great talk, and I absolutely agree with the sentiment, but it made me consider; does WGBH actually do that?
He also points out the WGBH-run Art of the States site. From Art of the States, a Real streaming version of Aaron Copland's Sextet here although for some reason, I get no audio...
Via Avant Music News, a concert with music by Eric Dolphy and Aaron Copland as well as others:
In fact the program is a study in contrast. Music from the early 20th century as well as very recent works; Mayer's 80th year and the young Lefkowitz at the beginning his career; and a contrast of styles with very free jazz and more regimented, composed music. But isn't America, also, a study in contrasts?
In reality it may not work, but this kind of concert fascinates me.
By the way, Wikipedia says Eric Dolphy recorded Varèse's Density 21.5.
program: god bless the child dolphy. suite for piano lefkowitz. vitebsk piano trio copland. dream's end mayer.
Continuing with California-themed articles in the journal American Music, Sally Bick writes Of Mice and Men: Copland, Hollywood, and American Musical Modernism. Copland wrote the score for the film of John Steinbeck's novel even though at that point, at least in Hollywood, he was seen as a "modernist art music composer." Copland:
It seems to me that what I was trying for in the simpler works was only partly the writing of compositions that might speak to a broader audience. More than that they gave me an opportunity to try for a more homespun musical idiom not so different in intention from what attracted me in more hectic fashion in my jazz-influenced works of the twenties. In other words it was not only musical functionalism that was in question but also musical language.
Bick goes on to suggest that in a quest for realism in the film, Copland effectively uses dissonance, "unusual rhythms and melodic structures," and novel timbres in the context of an overall simplified musical approach, resulting in the marriage of the pastoral with the contemporary.
You probably scoff at classical music adaptations like techno remixes, jazz arrangements, weird electric guitar improvisations etc. Well, I'll suggest an instance where the remix improves on the original, namely the Baker Bros' Copland Died on December 4th, a remix of Aaron Copland's Danzón Cubano combined with Jay-Z's December 4th from The Black Album. MP3 page here (Soundclick registration required).
After listening to the remix, the original sounds lifeless and bland. But when Copland's melody and orchestration is combined with spirited (and sometimes reflective) vocals, the track is more than the sum of its parts. The effect is compounded when comparing it to the tediously slow recording conducted by Copland himself.
Note that Aaron Copland actually died on a December 2nd. I remember reading about it in the next day's NY Times while waiting for Caltrain on a cold morning in Palo Alto. From his obituary by John Rockwell:
Of many notable achievements, Mr. Copland's greatest gift was his ability to be both serious and popular, to adhere to the formal integrity and moral earnestness of modernism and also to espouse the generous accessibility of the dominant political mores of the 1930's and 40's.
rgable:
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