MASTERWORKS CONCERT III: Appalachian Spring

Standing as we do at the close of the American century, the hundred-year period during which the United States was for the first time a major power and contributor to the world economically, politically, and culturally, the question that composer Antonín Dvořák posed almost a century ago still remains for us: what is “American” music?

Ralph Vaughan Williams, the grand old man of English music, declared that music, above all other arts, is “the expression of the soul of a nation.”  Today, Aaron Copland’s name is synonymous with “American music” more than any other composer, even more than George Gershwin or Leonard Bernstein.

With the musical world still quivering from the impact of Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (1913), Copland sought to recapture an America before the world wars; before its loss of innocence. By comparison, Leonard Bernstein depicted a postwar America, one increasingly divided along racial, religious, and political lines.

After studying with Rubin Goldmark (who studied with Dvořák) and Nadia Boulanger (a student of Gabriel Fauré), Copland learned, and eventually preached, the importance of finding one’s own musical voice.  Like most composers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Copland composed initially with little or no regard for the listener – composed for the sake of composing.

However, technological advances, such as the ability to permanently record live sound or broadcast it over airwaves, changed Copland’s way of listening to and ultimately composing music.  Copland is, perhaps, the first major composer who finally realized and appreciated the importance of the listener beyond the concert hall.  “I have every reason to be particularly grateful to the creator of the phonograph,” he said.  “We composers owe a profound debt to Thomas Edison!”

This son of Russian Jewish immigrants quickly began to lead many of his fellow American artists in a commitment to capturing a wider audience and speaking to the concerns of the average citizen, the everyday American caught up in the dramas of the Great Depression and the Second World War.        Copland responded to America’s calling for culture, pride, and patriotism.  Though he represented the pinnacle of an intense mid-century Americanism, Copland was not an insular nationalist; on the contrary, he was acutely interested in world politics and in how the United States fit into the larger sphere.

On May 8, 1945 the headlines of the New York Times read: THE WAR IN EUROPE IS ENDED!  America celebrated its military triumph over totalitarianism.  It simultaneously emerged as a “super power” in the world along with the Soviet Union.  Technology, weapons, and the will to go to war determined who was more “super.”

Ironically, the caption underneath the headline listed the Pulitzer Prize Awards for 1944 and Aaron Copland received the prize in music for his ballet score Appalachian Spring – the work that became a hallmark of Copland’s artistry and musical vocabulary.  Appalachian Spring “has to do with the pioneer American spirit, with youth and spring, with optimism and hope,” said Copland.  It affirmed why America entered the War, and audiences knew immediately and are still reminded what the country fought for when they saw and heard Appalachian Spring, even though it had no explicit patriotic theme.   Copland’s collaborator, choreographer Martha Graham, not Copland, named the ballet Appalachian Spring after a line from a Hart Crane epic, The Bridge, declaring “O Appalachian Spring!”

In Paris, on 29 May 1913, the audience at a ballet rioted, stormed the stage, and prevented the performance from finishing.

Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) is remembered not only because of it riotous opening night, but also because it single-handedly altered the course of Western music.

Because of works like Le Sacre, Stravinsky remains the most influential, most controversial, and most important composer (if perhaps not the most beloved) of twentieth century composers.

Educated at St. Petersburg’s University in criminal law and legal philosophy, this son of a prominent opera singer carved out his own unique path in music.  After privately studying with composer Rimsky-Korsakov (who advised him against becoming a composer), Stravinsky began collaborating with ballet impresario, Serge Diaghilev.  Between 1910 and 1913, Stravinsky composed three ballets that immediately ushered him to the forefront of modern music and made him the controversial crown prince of the avant-garde.  In these ballets (The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring) Stravinsky composed music that conveyed barbarism and primitivism.

The essence of Stravinsky’s early compositional style of Stravinsky was rhythmic exploration.  Using asymmetrical patterns and compound meters, the composer broke down traditional balanced phrasing.  The pulse of the music was often unwavering, but unevenly accented and articulated.

Just as The Rite of Spring in a sense predicted or at least foreshadowed the chaos of World War I, so did Stravinsky’s compositional style after the War reflect the time.  The end of World War I moved Stravinsky’s music into a sparer, pared-down style.   With works such as L’Historie du Soldat, Tango, Ragtime, Pulcinella, and his oratorio Oedipus Rex, Stravinsky’s neo-classical period first seemed like an element of parody, but scholars have found in it a tendency toward “objectification,” like a Cubist collage with everyday objects painted by Picasso.

Stravinsky influenced more composers during the period between the two Wars than any other period during his lifetime, especially in the United States and France.  He spent the last few years of his career experimenting with serialism (atonal music) inspired by composer Anton Webern, in such works as his Symphony in C and The Rake’s Progress.

In his last decade, Stravinsky achieved a surprising degree of celebrity, being feted by the Pope, the Kennedy’s, and, in a highly publicized return to Russia in 1962, by Nikita Khrushchev.  Stravinsky died in New York and was buried, at his own request, near his friend Diaghilev on Venice’s cemetery island of San Michele.