Americans in Paris

1
Americans in Paris

• American Musical Life
• Greater musical inventiveness of France and
  Russia
• Les Six
• Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Arthur Honegger,
  Georges Auric, Louis Durey and Germaine
  Tailleferre
• Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Hindemith, Bartok,
  Prokofiev, Koussevitzky
• A music school for Americans est. in the palace
  at Fontainebleau

2
THE BOULANGER CONNECTION

• Walter Piston (1894 - 1976)
• Virgil Thomson (1896 - 1989)
• Roy Harris (1898 - 1979)
• Aaron Copland (1900 - 1990)
• Marc Blitzstein (1905 - 1964)
• William Schuman (1910 -
• Vincent Persichetti (1915 -
• Philip Glass (1937 -
• Jon Polifrone (1937 -

PARIS
3
AARON COPLAND1900 - 1990

• parents were from Poland and Lithuania
• born in Brooklyn
• studied harmony, counterpoint and sonata form
  under Goldmark
• saw Ivess Concord Sonata at Goldmarks studio
  but was not allowed to become contaminated by
  it
• went to the new American Conservatory at
  Fontainebleau in 1920
• studied with Boulanger until 1924

4
AARON COPLAND1900 - 1990

• met Roussel, Prokofiev, Milhaud and Koussevitzky
• heard the premiere of Ravels orchestration of
  Mussorgskys Pictures at an Exhibition
• spent his summers in Berlin
• interested in jazz
• 1924 - began as a private teacher
• music began to attract the attention of the BSO
  under K., the MacDowell Colony and the Guggenheim
  Foundation

5
AARON COPLAND1900 - 1990

• 1928-1931 - sponsored a series of new music
  concerts with Roger Sessions
• helped found the Arrow Music Press, the Yaddo
  Festivals and taught at the New School for Social
  Research
• 1935 1944 taught at Harvard (Piston)
• first American composer to hold the Norton
  Professor of Poetics at Harvard - lectures
  published as Music and Imagination
• 1940 - teacher and advisor at the Berkshire Music
  Center (est.. by K)

6
AARON COPLANDHonors and Awards

• 1945 - Pulitzer Prize
• 1945 - New York Music Critics Circle Award
• 1950 - Oscar
• 1956 - Gold Medal from the National Institute of
  Arts and Letters
• 1956 - honorary degree from Princeton
• 1964 - Presidential Medal of Freedom
• 1970 - Commanders Cross of the Order of Merit of
  the Federal Republic of Germany
• 1970 - Howland Prize of Yale University

7
AARON COPLAND

• Some of his Compositions
• 1920-1921 - Three Moods Embittered, Wistful,
  Jazzy
• 1925 - The House on the Hill (Womens U. Glee
  Club)
• 1930 - Piano Variations
• 1933-1936 El salon Mexico led to his permanent
  contract with Boosey Hawkes as his publisher
• 1936 - his social concerns resulted in his opera
  for children, with a chorus of parents, The
  Second Hurricane
• 1939 - Quiet City
• 1942 - Fanfare for the Common Man Lincoln
  Portrait
• 1944-1945 - 12 Poems of Emily Dickinson
• Old American Songs
• Old American Songs, set 2
• 1947,1934,1948,1926 - 4 Piano Blues
• 1947-1948 - Clarinet Concerto for Benny Goodman
• 1955 - Canticle of Freedom (MIT)
• 1977 - Midsummer Nocturne (his last composition)

8
AARON COPLAND

• 8 Film Scores including
• 1939 - Of Mice and Men
• 1940 - Our Town
• 1948 - The Red Pony
• 6 Ballets including
• 1938 - Billy the Kid comm. by Lincoln Kirstein
  for Eugene Loring
• 1942 - Rodeo for Agnes de Mille
• 1943-1944 - Appalachian Spring for Martha Graham

9
Fanfare for the Common Man

• Commissioned by Eugene Goosens, conductor of the
  Cincinnati Symphony, in August, 1942
• Goosens asked a number of American composers to
  write a short patriotic fanfare
• Scored for brass and percussion

10
AARON COPLANDSAppalachian Spring

• written in 1943-1944 for Martha Graham
• scored for fl, cl, bn, pf, 4 vn, 2 va, 2vc, db
• Premiere in Wash., DC Oct. 30, 1944
• full orch. suite - 1945
• Copland orchestral know-how consists in keeping
  instruments out of each others way
• never conventional
• uses irregular rhythms (5/8 and 7/8) but never
  for an entire movement
• Shaker Tune is unusual in that it is not
  modified and it is the only borrowed tune with
  variations
• The Shaker Tune Simple Gifts (after Copland) was
  adopted into the repertory of schools, churches
  and by folksingers
• the music always turns to simplicity
• Commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge
• title is from a poem by Hart Crane