Aaron Copland: The Sound of America

00:00:00

Speaker 1: I'm John Banther, and this is Classical Breakdown. From WETA Classical in Washington, we are your guide to classical music. In this episode, I'm joined by WETA Classical's Evan Keely, and we are diving into the life and music of one of the most iconic American composers, Aaron Copland.

We look at his early life and experiences, how the Great Depression affected his outlook, his rise to fame, and his intentional pursuit of an American sound. We also look at why he was questioned for hours in a Senate subcommittee hearing in 1953, and which American composers we can look towards today.

" The artist should feel himself buoyed up by his community. In other words, art and the life of art must mean something in the deepest sense to the everyday citizen. When that happens, America will have achieved a maturity to which every sincere artist will have contributed."

That is a quote from Aaron Copland, and a quote and a sentiment that I fully agree with, and one that we've unfortunately still not yet achieved, in part, because, as we know of our own failures over the last century, but I do see optimism on this front with a living composer that we'll mention towards the end.

Now Evan, I can't think of another composer who has really helped define the American sound with all the populist works he wrote with the American stories, legends, and folk tales.

00:01:22

Speaker 2: Aaron Copland is a composer, who is throughout his life really thinking about the role of music in public life, music as an expression of a national culture, a communal culture.

00:01:36

Speaker 1: And we have things like Billy the Kid, Rodeo, Appalachian Spring, Tender Land, and so on. These American stories are brought in, plenty are left out, as we know, but he's not just writing music about pretty mountains.

Now before we jump into it, I think many might not know that there is another side to Copland, that they may have not heard before. Did you know these works were written by Copland?

00:02:20

MUSIC: ( instrumental music)

00:02:26

Speaker 1: And Evan, these aren't even isolated to a couple of years like, " Oh, maybe he was in this place, and he did this for a little bit." No. These were over 50 years apart.

00:02:33

Speaker 2: There's a lot of pieces by Copland that get a lot of attention, as well they should. You mentioned Appalachian Spring, and Billy the Kid, and so forth. They are fantastic masterpieces.

Copland was actually a very versatile composer who spoke in a variety of voices, and as we look into his music, we really discover the breadth of his expression.

00:02:54

Speaker 1: Let's go right to his birth. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, November 14th, 1900. The youngest of five. His mother Sarah taught the children to play piano, and it seems that young Aaron might have gotten his first lessons from his sister, Laurine, who is someone who also supported his career. Also reminds me of Mozart a little bit, taking lessons with his sister.

And then when he's 16 years old, Evan, he gets to study with a well- known composition teacher at the time, Rubin Goldmark, who also taught Gershwin a little, and this was an important moment for Copland as he also wrote, " This was a stroke of luck for me. I was spared the floundering that so many musicians have suffered through incompetent teaching."

And that's something we face. Right? When you're in your late teens, early twenties, and you're studying with other teachers, you have to start undoing some of those bad habits.

00:03:45

Speaker 2: He really was exposed to just the right influences at just the right time early on.

00:03:50

Speaker 1: And he was also staying in New York studying with this teacher. So, he was exposed to a bunch of music. I think the New York Symphony, as it was called at the time, Chicago, Philadelphia orchestras, Prokofiev, he even saw him. I can't even imagine that.

00:04:06

Speaker 2: This is New York City shortly after World War I, a pretty exciting time in American music and life.

00:04:12

Speaker 1: And it makes me wonder a little bit now as we enter ... Or we're really in the mid- twenties now, what that means 100 years later. Maybe nothing, maybe something, but I find myself thinking about that as we get into these '20s.

He continued studying with Goldmark until he was 21 years old, and that's when he wrote his piano sonata, and it's one that we heard a little bit of before. It's his Piano Sonata in G Major, and, Evan, this is something I wish we had a little bit more from Copland, maybe it's a little surface level, but you can really ... I don't know. There is something here. You can tell.

00:04:47

Speaker 2: There is something there, and I think what it is, it doesn't sound like Copland. You listen to this music. You might think, " This is very nice." You would never guess who the composer is, and it shows at the age of in his early twenties, he's already got a technical mastery. It's not a particularly original piece. He's borrowing this late Romantic style.

But he shows that he really has the technical aspects of crafting a musical composition down very solidly for such a young man.

00:05:16

Speaker 1: And that's something that we recognize in musicians too, there will be ... Sometimes you have a teacher, and they will accept a student into a conservatory, and some might say, " Well, wait, they're not playing at that exact same level," but then the teacher might say, " You do not see what the rest of us see," and then we all know how that stuff plays out.

It's also a reason that maybe Nadia Boulanger said, " One could tell his talent immediately." And we know he studied with Nadia Boulanger. In fact, he just meant to go for a year. Right, Evan? And then he switched from one teacher to Boulanger, maybe he was a little hesitant from what I read, but this was a big change for him, staying not just one year, but now three, and studying with Boulanger. And this was a critical point for him.

00:06:01

Speaker 2: And many years later in 1950, he's in his last forties, early fifties, he writes to her, and he says, " It's almost 30 years, hard to believe, since we met, and I shall count our meeting the most important of my musical life. What you did for me at exactly the period I most needed it is unforgettable. Whatever I have accomplished is intimately associated in my mind with those early years, and with what you have since been as inspiration and example. All my gratitude and thanks go to you, dear Nadia."

Now John, you and I had a conversation in an earlier episode of Classical Breakdown about the extraordinary Nadia Boulanger, and the immense influence that she had on 20th Century music, especially as a composition teacher, and, wow, we sure see that in the music of Aaron Copland.

00:06:53

Speaker 1: And speaking of, " Oh, you wouldn't guess this was Copland," he writes another work, a Passacaglia when he was studying with Boulanger, and I think she had all of her students I think maybe write a Passacaglia, but you hear an immediate jump I think in the depth of what he's writing. Not so surface level of that piano sonata. Now he's really thinking about every decision I think because Nadia Boulanger was making you think about every decision that you made in your music.

00:07:17

MUSIC: (instrumental music)

00:07:24

Speaker 1: After three years in Paris, he comes back to New York. It's 1924, and he's 24 years old, but he has a little bit of a rough go at it. He has a hard time making money playing in a dance band. He moves back in with his sister.

But then he's playing the piano trying to compose, and the neighbors are complaining, " This is annoying. Don't do this." He gets his own little private studio, fails to get any students at first, but, thankfully, he made some connections at the right time, got his music in front of some people, and he got some support through a patron, and then the Guggenheim Foundation. And that allowed him to survive for the next three years.

Another work he wrote at this time, and one that's probably still unfamiliar, but a little more familiar than maybe that Passacaglia is that Symphony For Organ and Orchestra, and we heard a little bit of it earlier. It sounds like audiences, Evan, didn't quite know what to make of this at the premiere.

00:08:18

Speaker 2: And he later reorchestrated it without the organ, and replaced that with brass, calling it a Symphony No. 1.

00:08:24

MUSIC: (instrumental music)

00:08:31

Speaker 1: One thing I read that was, well, just interesting in that we see his life as it's moving forward, it's a little bit slow. He writes slow. I read that it could take him a year to finish a composition, especially, something like that symphony, and then the pain of it maybe not premiering as you want, and then having to rewrite it. It's a lot of work for a time in which he's not necessarily thriving.

But starting in the '30s, that's when we start to see some examples of his populist style, works like El Salón México, and especially Billy the Kid. I think that's one that really set the tone for how we approach American music, or how the west was depicted.

And then in the '40s, Evan, everything that we come to know that we mentioned-

00:09:18

Speaker 2: Quiet City, Lincoln Portrait is from that period, the Rodeo, Appalachian Spring, and I think Billy the Kid is really a moment where he's solidifying that, what we think of as the Copland voice, that American sound.

00:09:31

MUSIC: ( instrumental music)

00:09:48

Speaker 1: So, our big question right now is, well, how did Copland write for the American audience? Why was this important, creating an American sound, and was it intentional on Copland's part?

Part of this is the environment that Copland is living and observing in the late 1920s into the '30s. A lot of us have grandparents who lived through the Depression, and the stories that they'd tell us of just surviving this, and Copland was greatly affected when he saw the working class surviving, or not surviving during the Depression.

And he felt that artists have a responsibility to the masses.

00:10:24

Speaker 2: And this is a period of time in music, in general, you think of earlier generations, a composer like Béla Bartók, or Ralph Vaughan Williams, and their respective settings. They're really taking an interest in folk music, and incorporating that into this, what we think of as classical music.

00:10:49

MUSIC: (Foreign language) .

00:10:49

Speaker 2: This is also around the time the Library of Congress is making these folk music recordings in the United States, so there's this recognition of there's a musical voice of the people, and Copland is really interested in this trend, and he's incorporating it into his compositions.

00:11:05

Speaker 1: That's important to remember, a good point, that this was a wider thing too in the early 20th Century, this reaching back into folk music. We find these simple folk- inspired melodies in his music, open intervals that you find on the guitar, or the banjo. There's less emphasis on melodic development, and this was something that Copland was seeking out to create intentionally.

We have two examples we can listen to real quick, Evan, that show this I think. Here is a little bit of a folk song, a cowboy song I think called Great Granddad, and then a moment that follows in Billy the Kid.

00:11:42

MUSIC: 21 boys and not one lad.

Never got fresh with Great Granddad. For if they had, it would have been right bad.

(inaudible) to the hickory jab.

00:11:48

MUSIC: (instrumental music)

00:12:00

Speaker 1: Now even for us today, Evan, I don't have any real identity, or understanding of the Great Granddad tune, but you understand those sentiments and intervals, and it's right there in Copland's music.

00:12:12

Speaker 2: And it sounds American.

00:12:13

Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:12:14

Speaker 2: Even if you and I didn't grow up with this music in the same way that earlier generations of Americans did, we hear this sound, and it resonates with us as Americans I think.

00:12:23

Speaker 1: Here's another example. This is McLeod's Reel, and then a moment from Hoe Down in Rodeo.

00:12:29

MUSIC: ( instrumental music)

00:12:44

Speaker 1: A couple things here, Evan. Again, we hear that clearly, and also that is a tune I think a lot of people might recognize if you were alive in the '90s.

00:12:53

Speaker 5: Beef, it's what's for dinner.

00:12:57

Speaker 1: One, do you have to advertise to the United States beef?

00:13:00

Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:13:01

Speaker 1: If your music is used to sell an entire country that already eats all the beef, selling them on beef, I don't know how more American you get.

00:13:10

Speaker 2: I quite agree, John. And it's also interesting to notice the ways in which Copland, if he does incorporate an actual folk melody, he doesn't necessarily quote it note for note.

00:13:20

Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:13:20

Speaker 2: There's almost an homage rather than, " Okay. I'm now going to quote this folk tune pitch for pitch and rhythm for rhythm."

00:13:29

Speaker 1: And I think that's why his music has endured more, because it's capturing all those characteristics, and elements of those folk tunes, but bringing it into something more that will last longer, because, again, we don't have that same identity with these folk tunes. But we do with this music of Copland.

00:13:47

Speaker 2: And this is coming out of a lot of these avant- garde things that are happening. This is the '20s, the '30s, the '40s, you think about the Second Viennese School among German- speaking composers, and so forth.

Copland's not quite in that vein, but he's not without some influence. That has some influence on him as well, but as you were saying, John, there's really no mistaking this for European music, and you're talking too about Copland composing slowly, and the way he crafts these different sections together.

He once remarked, " I don't compose. I assemble materials." Maybe that's a little false modesty, but as you listen to his music, you really get a sense that that is his working style.

00:14:28

MUSIC: (instrumental music)

00:14:28

Speaker 1: A lot of transitions don't feel necessarily fully prepared, but are often quite abrupt, and that makes me think of, yeah, he's assembling these things together.

Another point, and I know someone's eye twitched when I said rodeo instead of rodeo, you hear rodeo everywhere, but I'm sorry. It's Copland-

00:14:58

Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:14:58

Speaker 1: ... we have rodeos not too far from where I live.

00:15:02

Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:15:02

Speaker 1: I wouldn't call it a, " Let's go to the rodeo."

00:15:04

Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:15:04

MUSIC: ( instrumental music)

00:15:12

Speaker 1: There's a great biography on Aaron Copland by Howard Pollack, and I think he describes really what Copland's doing quite succinctly. I'll read from his book, " In discussing what made Copland's music recognizably American, critics typically mentioned the allusions to and quotations of American popular folk musics, the jazzy polyrhythms, and irregular meters, the vigor and angularity of some melodies, the lean and bare textures, and the favorite extremes of closely- knit harmonies and widely spaced sonorities, and the distinctively brittle piano writing, and brassy percussive orchestrations.

Two things that stick out there for me, Evan, are the vigor and angularity of some melodies. I think that's an important part of this American difference in the music, and you hear it in Copland, and then those widely spaced sonorities.

00:16:04

MUSIC: ( instrumental music)

00:16:10

Speaker 2: One of the most famous pieces by Copland, and we'll talk a little bit more about this is the Fanfare For The Common Man, which has these weird dah, dah, dah, these fourths that it's not a melodic line that you hear in Mozart, or Haydn where the music is so triadic, and it's the core of western music.

Copland's not completely divorced from that tradition, but he's perfectly going to write these melodies that defy the norms, and yet they sound right, and they sound American somehow.

00:16:40

Speaker 1: And going back to Billy the Kid we see these two things, specifically, the Open Prairie is the first number and the ballet. And there is this very strong, song- like melody that is introduced, and, although, it's song- like, it's also very angular, and then those widely spaced sonorities, they feel like those blocks just shifting underneath. Also, heavy downbeats, a marching forward I hear in his music.

00:17:03

Speaker 2: And the very first thing we hear in Billy the Kid is these parallel fifths. You have these woodwinds playing this little duet, this very angular melody, and they're playing in parallels fifths, which in European music, that's, like, the great no- no.

00:17:19

Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:17:20

Speaker 2: After the Middle Ages. Just completely getting rid of this whole sound, and he just jumps right back into it, and it sounds right. It doesn't sound like, " Oh, this is wrong. My theory teacher will give me a bad grade on this exercise."

So, there's, again, that sense of defying old norms, and creating something new that sounds whole, it sounds natural, it doesn't sound forced, it doesn't sound contrived, and it gives it that natural sound.

We were talking about Howard Pollack and he remarks about Copland's music, " If there's a school of American composers, optimism is certainly its keynote." Now I'm not 100% sure I agree with that, in general, about American composers, but, certainly, in Copland's music, there's that strain of optimism we were talking about, Fanfare For The Common Man and Billy the Kid, and so forth. You definitely hear this sense of possibility, this openness, this sense of a world to be explored and embraced, and this naturalness and wholeness that really comes out in this music.

00:18:26

Speaker 1: Also in Billy the Kid, Street and A Frontier Town also demonstrates his music is, one, it has a drive. Sometimes it's a slow burn, or headed towards one direction, and it's often singular, and it's focused, a single idea that's being worked through rather than several ideas at once, like in that symphony we talked about a couple of weeks ago.

00:18:44

Speaker 2: The Pejačević. Yeah.

00:18:47

Speaker 1: Also, we can't forget about film scores with Aaron Copland.

00:18:51

Speaker 2: Absolutely.

00:18:51

Speaker 1: Of Mice and Men, Red Pony, Our Town, and some of these have been made into suites that are still played on the concert stage.

00:18:59

Speaker 2: Absolutely.

00:18:59

MUSIC: ( instrumental music)

00:19:01

Speaker 1: One thing that he did that I understand was a bit different at this time was Copland when he was writing for film scores, he often used silence for intense, or very intimate moments. I think he said he wanted to let the music acknowledge rather than dictate the emotion onscreen.

00:19:17

Speaker 2: And you and I talked about Korngold a couple of episodes ago, who was a very successful film composer, and I think he had a very different approach, which was to create this emotional palette. He wrote great music for films. Absolutely, Korngold was a wonderful composer.

And I think Copland has this very different approach, which it reflects his sense of, again, these use of silences, this use of openness, these techniques, like, we were talking about parallel fifths, and so forth that are part of maybe a more restrained approach, but it's, certainly, that distinctive Copland voice comes through.

00:19:55

Speaker 1: And here is something that Copland also does so well I think, and that is writing for voice and piano. His songs, I think it took a while for American composers to really learn how to, or just whatever, figure out how to write art song in English, but Copland I think really did a great job.

00:20:13

MUSIC: (Foreign language) .

00:20:21

Speaker 2: Yeah. Charles Ives I think laid the groundwork for a lot of that in terms of American song. Copland didn't write a huge body of this genre of music. 12 Poems of Emily Dickinson is the work that's I think best remembered in terms of Copland's songs. He completed it in 1950.

And each of the 12 songs is dedicated to another composer. Some of the dedicatees include Elliott Carter, David Diamond, Irving Fine, Lukas Foss, Alberto Ginastera, these are some of the composers he pays tribute to. And then later on he orchestrated eight of those 12 songs, and he completed that orchestral version in 1970.

The 12 Poems of Emily Dickinson is Copland's longest work for the solo voice, and it's typical of his vocal writing. It's very syllabic. You don't have these long runs with the voice. It's almost like this declamatory manner of setting texts very much following natural rhythms of spoken American English.

And Copland even said about this, " The poems themselves gave me direction. One that I hoped would be appropriate to Miss Dickinson's lyrical expressive language."

He was really involved in this too. He really immersed himself in this project. He read biographies about Emily Dickinson. Of course, he read a lot of her poetry. She was very prolific.

He even went to her house in Amherst, Massachusetts. He's trying to get into her spirit, and seeking insight into her genius. And we should also recognize that in 1950 when he completed this, the editions of Dickinson's poetry that were available to the public were heavily edited, and then years after that, people went back to her original texts-

00:22:02

Speaker 1: That's right.

00:22:02

Speaker 2: ... with words had been changed in these earlier editions. They took out her ... She had this very idiosyncratic use of punctuation, especially dashes, and this is not what Copland is working with. So, if you know Emily Dickinson's poetry, and you listen to this Copland song cycle, you may feel a little cheated. But that's what he had to work with. That's what everybody had to work with at that point.

And, unfortunately, initially, this song cycle was not well- received. Critics panned it. So much so, he wrote a letter to his good friend Leonard Bernstein that, " Reviews were so bad, that I decided I must have written a better cycle than I had realized."

00:22:41

Speaker 1: I love that.

00:22:42

Speaker 2: But, of course, we now recognize this as some of the finest compositions in the American song literature, and there are core components of the art song repertoire, especially in America, especially in English language singing.

Again, the influence of Charles Ives is hard to miss. He wrote a lot of songs, but they have a decidedly Copland- esque sound, and I really hear them, as among other thins, this American composer paying tribute in a very reverent way to a great American poet.

00:23:11

Speaker 1: Aaron Copland really showed that you can write beautiful art song in English, and I'm going to have to go back now and listen to some more Charles Ives, because I can't remember the last time I heard an Ives song, but in just the few songs that Copland wrote, he really cemented something.

He also has an opera in English called The Tender Land, which he wrote in 1952. It was inspired by pictures taken by Walter Evans that appeared in the book Let Us Praise Now Famous Men by James Agee, which profiled American sharecroppers in the Great Depression, which Copland was empathetic towards.

This seems important, Evan, this tragic, horrible time in history, and it's just 20 years later, and Copland is going back, and writing music for it. That's, like, if we went back 20 years now writing something about 9/ 11 victims, or 9/ 11 first responders, for example.

00:24:01

Speaker 2: Yeah. It was fresh in the national consciousness, and this farm opera. It's taking this farming community, the central character is an 18 year old woman who has just graduated high school. So, it's a coming- of- age story, but it's set in this very particular cultural context, and the music really reflects that.

It wasn't a great success initially. It's the only full- length opera that Copland wrote.

00:24:28

Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:24:29

Speaker 2: But it has endured. It still gets performed today. There's a particular number at the end of the first act, The Promise of Living, and we often hear that in a concert setting. It's actually very moving, this musical tribute to this idea of living in that kind of a setting, and the hope and the possibility, and the struggle that that represents.

It's really quite a touching musical number.

00:24:53

MUSIC: (Foreign language) .

00:25:01

Speaker 1: And we will put a link on the show notes page at www. ClassicalBreakdown. org for that one. I hope there's a more modern commercial recording made at some point, because a lot of the recordings are very ... It is of its time and place in the 1950s. " Oh, gee willikers, mister."

00:25:18

Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:25:18

Speaker 1: In some of the delivery. It's worth listening to.

00:25:23

Speaker 2: Copland, himself, remarked about this. He said, " I wanted simple rhetoric, and a musical style to match. The result was closer to musical comedy than grand opera. The music is very plain with a colloquial flavor. I think of The Tender Land as being related to the mood of Appalachian Spring, both the ballet and the opera take place in rural America, both make use of folk materials to evoke a particular landscape in a real way."

So, that's Copland's own remarks about The Tender Land, and as you listen to it, you really hear that's the effect that he's achieved.

00:25:55

Speaker 1: Now this also ties into another aspect of Aaron Copland's life in that he didn't marry, and he never came out publicly. This was also the time of things like The Hays Code, but he was out as gay to people who were closer to him. He had a few long relationships, including one with Erik Johns, who wrote the libretto for The Tender Land. He also traveled publicly with these people.

00:26:16

Speaker 2: Yeah. Erik Johns is a long relationship, a complicated relationship. The two of them for many years had various permutations of their togetherness. Erik Johns did, as you said, John, write the libretto for The Tender Land. He was a dancer and a choreographer.

So, you have this creative partnership as well, and it gives you a sense of the kind of circles in which Copland moved. He was drawn to very creative people, and they to him, and the kinds of relationships that he had, which in that era, as you said, were not necessarily openly talked about.

He and Leonard Bernstein were very close for many, many years, and other very famous people, famous choreographers and composers, and conductors, and musicians that were a part of his life.

And he had this real charisma I think personally that really drew people to him, and he also ... You get a sense of him as someone who is comfortable with himself, and you certainly see that in the kinds of political situations that he found himself in.

00:27:21

Speaker 1: Yes. All of this, it sounds like Copland was very open and understanding of other people.

00:27:26

Speaker 2: Yes. I think so.

00:27:28

Speaker 1: And we will get into why he was questioned in a McCarthy Senate subcommittee hearing right after this.

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Now if you can imagine it, in the 1920s, in the 1930s, just having jazz idioms, or Black idioms in your music, that was enough to be labeled as a communist.

00:28:13

Speaker 2: Sure. There was definitely a racist overtone to a lot of the anti- communist fervor in the United States in this era.

00:28:21

Speaker 1: And Copland, he was very affected by world events, as we know with the Great Depression, but also more largely in the world, and he was always very up- to- date, well- read on current events. He obsessively read newspapers, he read progressive writers like Upton Sinclair, and in times of turmoil, he found himself unable to focus on composing. Even I think he said to Bernstein, " Congrats you can compose during this. I can't."

00:28:46

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. He never separates himself from the world, and as we began the episode, we began this conversation, John, we were talking about the ways in which he sees art as being a part of public life.

00:28:59

Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:28:59

Speaker 2: So, he's immersing himself as a citizen of the country, and of the world, and he's really connecting that with his creative output.

00:29:08

Speaker 1: Now he was never, technically, affiliated with a, or the Communist Party in the United States, which was also not an uncommon position for artists to have.

But in 1934, he wrote a song Into The Streets, and he submitted it to a contest for the magazine New Masses, and then he ended up winning. I almost think he thought he wasn't going to win. Maybe he was surprised. And it was performed at the Second Annual American Workers Music Olympiad, and this and some other aspects of his life give for an easy read between the lines.

But he also tried to step away from this song too, a little bit saying, " Oh, it's the silliest little thing I ever did." He didn't even technically publish it I guess, or include it in his catalog.

Now as absurd as it should seem now, the federal government took a serious interest in people like Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, also Charlie Chaplin, and even Albert Einstein. They took interest in them as being subversive. They're lending their name and credibility to organizations that are, well, subversive, and they were labeled communists. Some people had issues getting passports, that was Copland, or visas, jail sentences, destroyed careers, and just compare that to how you think of Copland now.

00:30:22

Speaker 2: Yeah. We think of him as the quintessential patriot, and in his own lifetime, not necessarily was he viewed that way.

00:30:31

MUSIC: This is what he said.

He said, " As I would not be a slave, so, I would not be a master.

This expresses my idea of democracy.

Whatever differs from this to the extent of a difference is no democracy."

00:30:57

Speaker 1: And it all comes to a head in 1953, a performance of Lincoln Portrait was canceled for the Eisenhower inaugural concert when Fred Busby protested on the House floor on January 3rd of 1953.

And by May 25th, 1953, he was questioned by Senators McCarthy and Cohn for a couple of hours in a Senate subcommittee hearing, and it's all just because of they were asking him about three trips he made, and some lectures he made outside of the United States.

But apparently Copland was calm through this whole ordeal, and he just could not be pinned down. And we actually have some of an exchange here. I'll read the parts of the senators starting with Cohn who is asking Copland a question.

Cohn, " Do you feel communists should be allowed to teach in our schools?"

00:31:43

Speaker 2: " I haven't given the matter such thought as to come up with an answer."

00:31:48

Speaker 1: Cohn, " In other words, as of today, you don't have any firm thought?"

00:31:51

Speaker 2: " I would be inclined to allow the faculty of the university to decide that."

00:31:56

Speaker 1: McCarthy jumps in, " Let's say you were on the faculty, and you are making a designation, would you feel communists should be allowed to teach?"

00:32:03

Speaker 2: " I couldn't give you a blanket decision on that without knowing the case."

00:32:07

Speaker 1: McCarthy again, " Let's say the teacher is a communist period. Would you feel that is sufficient to bar that teacher from a job as a teacher?"

00:32:15

Speaker 2: " I certainly think it would be sufficient, if he were using his communist membership to angle his teaching to further the purposes of the Communist Party."

So, you hear these responses from Copland. He's aware that people's lives are being destroyed by some of these inquiries.

00:32:31

Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:32:31

Speaker 2: And, again, I don't think that he was a firmly committed communist in any meaningful sense. I think he had some sympathy to ... People threw around the word communist quite a lot. I'm certainly no fan of communism, but also no fan of destroying people's lives just because they have a political view, which might be subversive to some folks who are in positions of power.

And you see Copland really being very careful and thoughtful in his answers. As you said, John, he's calm, he's not getting inflamed. He's aware of the danger that he's in, and this could really ruin him professionally and personally.

But he also I think is responding with a clear conscience. He doesn't feel like he's subverting the ... He's not trying to destroy the United States. He's not a threat to national security.

And he has to go along with this, because that's the environment in which he's living, and I think he manages it with a great deal of finesse.

00:33:27

Speaker 1: And it shows the absurdity here almost, like, a charade, and I had the same sentiments on these topics as you, Evan, but I'm always curious why a word, or a thought gets such a reaction.

00:33:40

Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:33:41

Speaker 1: And Aaron Copland after this questioning said, " When he touches on his magic theme, the commies, or communism, his voice darkens like that of a minister. He is a plebeian Faustus, who has been given a magic wand by an invisible Mephisto. As long as the menace is there, the wand will work. The question is at what point his power grab will collide with the power drive of his own party?"

That's quite a final sentence there I think from Aaron Copland, and then thinking about, Evan, Copland being this patriot, how does he go from this to that? Pollack wrote in his book, " In November 1955, the State Department said there was insufficient evidence to warrant prosecution. Finally, Copland was luckier than most, whose lives and livelihoods were destroyed during the era.

It is rather astounding how Copland's official reputation survived, and thrived. His music graced the second inaugural of McCarthy colleague and Cold Warrior Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan gave him presidential awards and citations, and the House of Representatives, which called him un- American in 1953 gave him the Congressional Gold Medal, it's highest civilian honor in 1986."

What a change in 30 years.

00:34:57

Speaker 2: Well, certainly, there's changes in the country during that time, but it gives you a sense of a number of things, one of which is that Copland is able to navigate these crises with ... I think he was pretty savvy, and he's also unwilling to bend to the ...

You think about these comments he's making about McCarthy.

00:35:17

Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:35:18

Speaker 2: As this Faustian evil wizard. So, he's, clearly, in his conscience, not willing to bend to these extremes, but at the same time, he's doing so I think because he's aware that, in fact, he's not a threat. He loves America, and he's expressing that love through his music, and through his professional activity, and he endures, he stays on the path, and in the 1980s, as he's, himself, in his mid to late eighties, there's more and more of a national recognition.

Like you said, the Congressional Gold Medal is awarded to him in 1986, and you really get a sense of his reputation just really being cemented at that point, as he's often called the dean of American composers. Again, that's an awkward thing to say about anybody, but there's no question that he really is a representation of I think the best of what America is in terms of the optimism, the hope, the possibility, and this sense of freedom that his music and his life express.

00:36:23

Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm moved by how compassionate he was, and unwilling to bend to what he knew was right as an artist. That hearing could have gone differently, and we may not have the same impression, or popularity of his music now. Maybe it would only be rediscovered now, if something worse had happened all those years ago.

But in the 1960s, he stopped composing, and I actually like his honesty on this subject. He said, " It was exactly as if someone had simply turned off a faucet." I love that. He's just being honest.

Some artists create until the very end, like Elliott Carter, like his music, or not, I bet he's still composing, I bet he's a ghost somewhere writing music down somewhere.

But for some, it's a natural end. For other writers too, I think Donald Hall, a poet, had the same thing. It just turned off.

00:37:15

Speaker 2: Yeah. Just reached a point of conclusion, and he stops.

00:37:19

Speaker 1: So, he conducts more actually. He recorded all of his works for orchestra with himself conducting. Was he the best conductor of his music? That's a debate, or whatever. But it's great that we do have him conducting.

And then his health declines in the '70s and '80s, and on December 2nd, 1990, he passes away. And then his ashes were scattered at Tanglewood, the summer home of the Bosto Symphony Orchestra.

Now Tanglewood is something that people might not know, but is so important I think when we look at his legacy, Evan, because Copland taught so many teachers, but he didn't teach at a conservatory at a university. Did he?

00:37:59

Speaker 2: Right. He didn't have a formal teaching position, but he has an influence not only just because of the popularity, and the success of his music, but he has these relationships with other composers.

Very often, he would just give three, or four lessons. He didn't have long- term students like someone like Nadia Boulanger did, but even there, you see his influence stretching beyond just the concert hall.

00:38:22

Speaker 1: And Tanglewood, the summer home of the BSO is one of the greatest musical places really, musical festivals that happen. If you ever get to go, you absolutely should try doing that. It's in western Mass, in Lennox, but he's there, and students are flocking to him in these summers to get some lessons, and he has such a profound effect, not on just the composers, but also the musicians, and the atmosphere at Tanglewood.

I think the opening to Fanfare For The Common Man is carved in stone at Tanglewood.

00:38:54

Speaker 2: We were talking about The Tender Land, which had its first performance at City Center in Manhattan, and then the version that we hear today was one that he had revised for a performance at Tanglewood.

So, there's this Copland music that's being performed there during his life, and as you said, John, his presence is really ... He's in the rocks, he's in the grass, he's in the lakes and the trees of Tanglewood. You and I, John, both have a Tanglewood connection. We both spent summers there.

I can certainly attest to his enduring presence. I was at Tanglewood during the summer of 1990, which was this last summer of his life. He didn't come out to see us there. He was in the final months of his life.

Also, the final summer of his close friend Leonard Bernstein, and I attended a concert at Tanglewood in August of 1990. Bernstein was conducting. He was visibly ailing. There were rumors about his health. In fact, he died in October of that year, about eight weeks after this concert that I saw, which was the second- to- last concert Bernstein ever conducted-

00:40:02

Speaker 1: Wow.

00:40:02

Speaker 2: ... and it was Aaron Copland's Symphony No. 3, which Copland completed in 1946, and Bernstein was dying at that point, but his power was certainly not diminished and this was one of the most memory, and magnificent concerts I have ever experienced. Clearly, you could just feel Bernstein knew, and loved his friend's music in a profound way, and, of course, he was such an incredible conductor. He could bring that out of the orchestra, which gave just a stunning performance of this piece.

The third symphony, we keep talking about the Fanfare For The Common Man, which he wrote in 1942, and then 1946, he finishes this symphony, which incorporates the fanfare into the third and fourth movements. And, in fact, the beginning of the fourth movement, you hear the fanfare in its entirety, and then the whole rest of the piece plays on it, and builds on it, and I had this experience of hearing this live with Leonard Bernstein conducting.

And for the first time in my life, I really understood that old story about the Handel's Messiah, and the king standing up during the Hallelujah chorus, because if you know the piece, if you know the third symphony, there's this hint of the fanfare, and then all of a sudden, it just bursts forth.

And I actually twitched in my chair, like, " Oh, it's time to stand up now."

00:41:20

Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:41:20

Speaker 2: And I had to restrain myself, " No. No. We're actually not going to do that," but that sense of this affirmation of human dignity, that's in that music. 1942. What's happening in the world? What's happening in Europe? What horrors are unfolding with the Nazis and the Japanese empire in Asia?

And Copland writes this music to affirm the dignity of the human person. It's a defiant no to fascism, and to extremism of every kind, and then he creates this whole symphony around it.

And I'm hearing this piece, Leonard Bernstein is conducting it, and that sense of Copland just permeating Tanglewood forever and ever is a visceral experience for me as a young man in 1990.

00:42:07

Speaker 1: Well, I am very jealous that you got to be there in 1990, and it's funny, I'm 99.9% sure we had friends in common playing in that concert, or even there.

00:42:17

Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. Well, you went to New England Conservatory, I went to Boston University, lots of connections that you and I could enjoy.

00:42:27

Speaker 1: And you also have a video of Bernstein, a video of that I can put on the show notes page-

00:42:33

Speaker 2: Yes.

00:42:33

Speaker 1: ... or maybe a link.

00:42:34

Speaker 2: Yes. Yes. We'll put that on the show notes page. I think that emerged many years later this video got discovered, but it's so moving to see that.

00:42:43

Speaker 1: So, who is doing this today? Copland's mission of, " The artist should feel himself buoyed up by his community." In other words, art and the life of art must mean something in the deepest sense to the everyday citizen.

And I don't mean, like, who is exactly the next Copland, per se, but along these lines, the first person that popped into my head and someone else I asked about it too was Carlos Simon.

00:43:07

Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:43:08

Speaker 1: Maybe we're a little biased, we're in his hometown of Washington DC, he's still the composer- in- residence at The Kennedy Center. So, we're hearing his music pretty often in premieres too, but you look at his music, like, Tales of Folklore Symphony, which has a striking depiction of John Henry. It is so much fun to listen to, and I'll put a link up on the show notes page too.

Or his Requiem For The Enslaved, which brings together multiple styles of music in a tribute to the 272 men, women, and children that were sold in 1938 by Georgetown University.

So, he's telling the stories, he's telling the folk stories and legends of this country, and the people that have been, that we've cast aside, and through all of it what I hear in Simons' music is also the optimism.

00:43:56

Speaker 2: Yes. The sense of possibility-

00:43:58

Speaker 1: Yes.

00:43:58

Speaker 2: ... and hope and never giving up, even despite the horrors and the injustices.

00:44:03

Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:44:04

Speaker 2: And, again, Carlos Simon I think, like Copland, is a composer who is very much rooted in a sense of music, composition, performance as elements of public life, and it's not just this pedantic lecture about, " Oh, this is how our society should be." It's really an artistic exploration of the challenges, and the wrongs, and the hurt, but also the incredible possibility.

Yeah. I agree with you, John, Carlos Simon is a wonderful composer who really embodies that spirit.

Terence Blanchard is another one that I think of, Fire Shut Up In My Bones, the opera that he composed based on the memoir by Charles M. Blow. Very American story about this young man growing up in Louisiana, and going to college, and, of course, Terence Blanchard, a great jazz composer, and performer incorporates this very American sound into that music as well.

00:45:00

Speaker 1: So, that's Aaron Copland. Quite a life from 1900 to 1990, someone who really stood up for himself, and for those that he thought he should be standing up for too.

And he wrote in such a style that really defined how we were writing orchestral music here.

00:45:16

Speaker 2: And I want to end by reflecting on where he is in the course of history in terms of what came before him. You think about the so- called the Boston Six, American composers like John Knowles Paine and Amy Beach, who were trying to create a uniquely American voice. They were trying to show in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries that American composers had something to say that was just as worthwhile as European composers.

And they were wonderful composers, but they're writing in a very European style. Copland comes along, he's the next generation, or a couple of generations after that whole movement, and you can definitely see the ways in which ideologically, and in terms of a moral principle, a cultural principle, he's following in that vein.

But composers like Charles Ives, Aaron Copland are really trying to find a voice that's not only worthy of admiration in the context of the Euro- American tradition of music, but to write something that's really exceptionally and undeniably American.

And I think Copland is really a very, very important composer to think about in terms of the creation of an American sound.

00:46:29

Speaker 1: Beautifully said. And that's Aaron Copland. What a life from 1900 to 1990, and everything that he gave us, and everything that we are still building off on today.

Thank you so much, Evan.

00:46:40

Speaker 2: Thank you, John.

00:46:43

Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Classical Breakdown, your guide to classical music. For more information on this episode, visit the show notes page at www.ClassicalBreakdown.org. You can send me comments, and episode ideas to www. ClassicalBreakdown@WETA. org. And if you enjoyed this episode, leave a review in your podcast app.

I'm John Banther. Thanks for listening to Classical Breakdown from WETA Classical.