If anyone wants to…

I’ve been meaning to start this ever since tinners half-suggested the idea a while ago. Now, I know he induces very mixed feelings, but for me Copland is an important composer; not in the sense of having moved musical frontiers any great distance, but in terms

1) of a great clarity of vision of what he wanted to say, and having said it with rare wit, harmonic and rhythmic sophistication and verve, and

2) of a no doubt dubious but nonetheless real cultural importance which has been largely retrospectively ascribed to the ‘Americaness’ of his music, by his own design or otherwise, and with a tangible and lasting influence.

What position does he now occupy, relative to other mid-20thC composers here discussed? Is his undoubted unevenness any more overt than, say, Poulenc’s?

I’d be really interested to hear from our US pals about this, especially. We have these guys like RVW who apparently ‘represent’ Britishness; you have AC. (That’s Copland, not Cassidy.) Is that a fair comparison at all? Others would certainly make it.

And finally, by way of nailing my own colours to the mast, do not his 12 Poems of Emily Dickinson stand comparison with any 20thC song cycle, favourably on the whole? And why aren’t they performed more often? (I personally think it's just about his finest work.)

Interesting, Mart! - My feelings about Copland mirror yours about Poulenc, which makes me wonder if it is something in our responses to the languages themselves rather than a quality issue, if I can put it like that.

I love the opening of Appalachian Spring, and that particular face of Copland is the one I respond to most positively - see also the first part of the Clarinet Concerto and parts of the Duo for Flute and Piano. It's the bouncy 'Americanised Stravinsky' that I don't like - either in the Wild West ballets or the Latin pieces, or indeed in the latter part of the Clarinet Concerto. It's a long time since I heard the symphonies or any of the later pieces, but his virtues (clarity above all) are outweighed for me by my personal negative feelings about - well, I suppose it is a combination of the harmonic language and the quirky rhythms (which doesn't leave much! ) My loss, I suppose. I only know a few of the Emily Dickinson settings, and only from listening rather than performing them - I'll have another look at them and report back! (An aside - any thoughts on why Barber's songs are so much widely performed over here than Copland's?)

I've just looked at the Wiki worklist and realised that there is a lot I have only heard once or twice - maybe some of you can point me in the direction of the most worthwhile pieces?

At least your father's favourite composer wasn't named Butch.

I wasn't named after Messiaen by the way.

Yes, it's true, my dad's favorite composer is Brahms.

 

Well, while I'm sharing weird and slightly embarrassing stories of myself ...

I grew up listening to William Warfield (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Warfield) sing, and I have particularly strong memories of him singing that tune (which, as well, I've sung dozens of times w/ various choirs in various contexts).  Warfield was a member of my childhood church, and made a huge impression on my father.  My dad used to do his impersonation of Warfield getting up in church on Sunday mornings and singing, but for whatever reason, I have this strongly imprinted memory of the imitation of that particular Copland setting (though, surely, it wasn't actually in a church service .... either that or I've conflated two memories).

And then, as it turned out, I ended up at Northwestern Univ. as an undergraduate, and Warfield had just been named to the faculty there the year I started as a freshman.  I remember being utterly moved and excited that on the first day of the year in the faculty musicale, he stood up and sang "I Bought Me A Cat" (he later sang "Old Man River," which is what everyone was there to hear him sing, I suppose).  I remember approaching him later and telling him how many stories I'd heard about his singing from my father and how excited I was that he was now on the faculty at Northwestern ...


Anyhow, .... thanks, Colin, for that trip down memory lane.

I'd lke to suggest that Copland is one of the most misrepresented composers so far as British Radio audiences are concerned: his most played works by far are Rodeo (quite often just a single movement, which is roughly analogous to having Britten represented mainly by his Simple Symphony, and just the Playful Pizzicato movement at that) and Fanfare for the Coommon Man, which has become anthemic. There are many styles of work in his output, from the early ballet Grohg to the later, sparer, more modernist works such as Connotations and Inscape which we hardly hear at all, and even his more approachable film scores (which contain some gorgeous music) are virtually overlooked. The big, bombastic Copland is something of a construct: there's a far more sensitive, almost sentimental side to his psyche which is revealed in the music which we hear less often.

He's had a huge influence on a couple of generations of American composers* because he found a way of encapsulating something of the American soul and landscape in music in much the same way as did RVW here: in precisely the same way that language has been appropriated by others for film scores and other lighter music, but there is a secret Copland out there, from the nervously pulsating Short Symphony (also existing in very reduced instrumentation as the Sextet), the student operas The Tender Land and The Second Hurricane as well as the Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson which, along with the early and late works already mentioned, really need to be taken into consideration if we are to take an overall view of his abilities.

From a trivia point of view, did you know that he, Britten and Pears shared a house in the States? And even if you did, do you know how the building they lived in reached wider public knowledge later on?

* And at least one British composer not so very far from here, too, I rather think......

Ron, you must mean Elizabeth Mayer's house at Amityville on Long Island - but I don't know why it should be famous now...

Well stone me! I never knew that.
Here it is. These people are not composers or tenors, however.