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.
Comments