Judge Dennis Davis
Aaron Copland: The American Composer Whom Leonard Bernstein Said is the Best We Have

Judge Dennis Davis - Aaron Copland: The American Composer Whom Leonard Bernstein Said is the Best We Have

- Let me firstly say hello to everybody and I hope everybody has a wonderful 2024. This is the first opportunity I’ve had to speak to you in the new year. Of course, if you cynical, you probably say it can’t be worse than 2023, but who knows and lots of worrying signs. But tonight, perhaps we can take a break from all of the extraordinary pressures. And I assure you that being a South African lawyer, the last few days have not exactly been easy, but I suppose more about that on a separate occasion. Let us take a break from that and look at the life and work of Aaron Copland, who Leonard Bernstein, as I indicated in the title said, was probably our greatest, meaning America’s greatest, composer. It is interesting that Copland born in 1900 died in 1990, probably famous for six works, wrote a lot more, but six works were absolutely crucial. The dance hall music called a “Salon Mexico”, the “Cowboy Ballets”, “Billy the Kid”, and the “Rodeo”, the “Lincoln Portrait”, the “Appalachian Spring”, and which was of course a ballet which was also orchestrally produced and the “Third Symphony” are perhaps he’s most famous works. And yet when you think about Copland, it’s perhaps the following which I’m about to play, for which in many ways he’s best known. And if we could have the first clip, therefore, Lauren? Thanks, Lauren. If we can stop that. Lauren, we can cut that off.

Thanks, well, of course you’re absolutely right all of you who would know that this was the, “Fanfare for the Common Man”. But it’s fascinating to think about the background to that, which perhaps says quite a lot about Aaron Copland. Turns out, of course, this was composed in ‘42 and what had happened was that this particular piece must be seen in the context of the politics of the time. Because between 1941 and 1945, January '45, Henry Wallace served as the vice president to President Roosevelt. And he was certainly of the left, I suppose you could say in some ways he was an older version of Bernie Sanders. And in November '42, he addressed the Congress of American Soviet Friendship, his parent organisation, Aaron Copland, had been involved. And he was particularly concerned that as Wallace, between the political or the Bill of Rights democracy and the question of economic democracy, which he and others illadvisedly sourced in the Soviet Union of the time. And on May 8th of that particular year, 1942, he delivered a widely publicised speech in which he criticised America’s wartime mood of triumphalism and argued in an article which certainly was covered widely in both “Time” and “Life” magazines that the American century was not in fact what they should be looking for, but rather it was an age not of American domination, but the century quotes of the common man. And a whole lot of left wing intellectuals were particularly taken by this famous speech, including Orson Wells, Paul Robeson, Thomas Mun, and Aaron Copland.

And it so turned out that in 1942, Copland had been invited by the English born composer of the Cincinnati Orchestra, Eugene Goossens, sorry, to actually provide some new music. And therefore, Goossens commissioned Copland accordingly. And he therefore wrote this little piece called the “Fanfare for the Common Man”. Goossens was under the impression that this was a humorous tribute to the hardworking American taxpayer. And he programmed the premier for March 15, which was tax day at the time. Copland then wrote to him saying quote, “The title was not meant to be funny. I got the idea from Vice President Wallace’s speech in which he talked about the next century being the century of the common man. Even so, I think it was a swell idea to have played it around March 15. But the point about it was that it was really a political statement by Copland endorsing a speech by Wallace, which he had so been taken up with at the time. And that says a lot about Copland, of course got himself into some trouble with the McCarthy Commission some years later. If you look at the piece musically for a moment, and we are going to come back to that piece for a reason, I shall articulate you presently. It’s really interesting 'cause it starts, if you just think about the three odd minutes, slowly expanding arches of broths, and then you have the kettle drums at full blast. But in response to the broth,. And this in a sense connotes in many ways the lonely soldier, the sort of one person standing up if you wish the common man until the music continues, expands to be joined by repeated richer harmonies, which essentially are seeking to suggest that the common man is not on his own. And it’s really become a very, very famous piece.

And it’s not been regarded as kitch at all. And I was thinking, but I probably don’t have enough time to do this, but it’s interesting how many people have used that. So give you one example, the Rock Group "Queen” actually incorporated part of this melody and the rhythm of it, of the “Fanfare” into the 1977 music, “We will Rock You” and you can go listen to that and you’ll see to some extent the borrowings of Copland. Copland of course, is particularly influential in many other ways. So who was Copland then? If we can just talk a little about him before we get on to some of his other glorious music. He was born in Brooklyn above a departmental store on Washington Avenue. The store is of course owned by his parents, Harris and Sarah Copland, who had immigrated from Lithuania in the decades after the Civil War. So many ways he was a good Litvac. As a youngster, he apparently had to man the cash register of the departmental store and fed in his auto biography, I might add that this gave him quite a lot of knowledge about money. Copland was particularly parsimonious when it came to money. Bernstein, for example, could never understand why Copland dressed as such a schlump and had no real idea of fashion and so on and so forth. And of course, Copland never really made a huge sum of money because he really never had a permanent job.

Made most, I suppose, of his money through film schools. His mother, Sarah, was apparently a very quiet person of great preserve, to some extent reflected Copland too. His father was apparently slightly different. And almost like Leonard Bernstein’s father viewed with considerable dismay, the idea that his son Aaron wanted to be a musician will come back to the strange relationship between Leonard Bernstein and his father at a subsequent lecture that I’m going to give. But it’s interesting that Copland’s father too didn’t think that his boy should go into the music business as it were. He first took formal music lessons as a teenager. At 17 years old he became a student of one Robert Goldmark, who was the nephew of the Viennese composer, Karl Goldmark. And that was not unimportant because of the fact that Goldmark really was trained in the German tradition of music. And Copland often spoke about the fact that unlike, as it were European composers, there was no long tradition which he could draw upon in order to write his music as an American composer, which to some extent is one of the reasons why some of the, you know, the American experts in this particular regard. And I cite Bernstein is one, and his mentor, Michael Tilson Thomas as another. Leonard Slatkin is the third, by the way, all Jewish interesting enough, all of whom have regarded Copland as absolutely the key American composer carving out a new tradition of music.

And we’ll get back to that in a moment. What happened was in 1920, Copland won a scholarship to go to Paris. And it was there that he was extraordinarily lucky to have contact with a young musical pedago called Nadia Boulanger, who essentially then became a mentor to Copland. And you must remember that she herself drew a whole lot of other later famous musicians Darius Miller, Francis Poulenc into her sort of group of mentees and including Eric Sartie. And it was here in Paris during that particular time that Copland essentially discovered both the character of being an American and in a sense the grand European tradition of music. And he composed a lot in that particular period. But given time, I want to move to a piece, which perhaps in many ways is one of these most famous and which was composed again just a year after “Fanfare”. And that of course is the “Appalachian Spring”. And this is particularly interesting for all sorts of reasons because it started as ballet music, which he was asked to write by the choreographer Martha Graham. And the original idea, which essentially was central to this particular music, was that it was to be set ballet in Western Pennsylvania. But before and during the Civil War. It’s cast of characters populated with nameless American archetypes. The mother embodied the purity of the pre-industrial American.

So the daughter was the plucky pioneer type, the citizen who marries the daughter and carries her across the threshold with his newly built farmers is a fighter for civil rights, if you wish, having the intellectual kind of vision of being an abolitionist. The fugitive represents the slaves and the younger sister suggests today. The central drama arrives in the fair of the night episode where the fugitive enters and brings with him all the pain and fear of the Civil War. Once the struggle is over, the music subsides towards final Sabbath scene, which according to Graham would’ve had the feeling either of a shaker meeting, and that’s rather important for a reason I want to come to, where the movement is a strange and ordered and possessed or it could have had the feeling of an African American church music with a lyric ecstasy of the spiritual. The title comes from Hart Crane’s poetic cycle, “The Bridge” and the following passage in particular, O Appalachian Spring, I gained the ledge; Steep, inaccessible smile that eastward bends and northward reaches in that violet wedge Of Adirondacks! And this was the title which was given to it. Now it’s a particularly beautiful piece of music for all sorts of reasons. I’m going to play it for you, the really most famous part towards the end.

But I want to say something when you listen to it, and particularly when you’ve also listened to “Fanfare”, it’s probably fair to say the following, that Copland really had two different, as it were, paradigms within which his music can be located. There’s the exuberant Copland, that is the “Cowboys Song”, which is reconfigured with dance rhythms and there’s a sense of exuberant as it were, discovery of the new America. And then there is the kind of elegy type music. There’s a forlornness to the music. And so in a sense, it’s almost located in the contrast between the grand open spaces which are now being discovered and the rapidly increasing industrial complexes of the US and the kind of that forlorn parts and the exuberant part lives sort of side by side with each other. And so what I wanted to do was to play for you the last sort of part of the “Appalachian Spring”. Now this part is drawn from a particular melody called “Simple Gifts” written in 1848 by elder Joseph Brackett, who was part of the shaker community in Maine. And this is drawn on by Copland. He takes this particular music of Brackett and he transposes it into orchestral music. So let us first listen to it, it is absolutely magnificent, starting with that clarinet and the oboe, sorry. And moving through the orchestra.

This piece conducted by Leonard Bernstein, who of course was a great friend of Copland. Those of you seen “Maestro” know that he sort of has a guest appearance there and much more important than that, as I shall indicate in a moment, Bernstein drew heavily on Copland in all sorts of ways. But let’s listen to the last bit of “Appalachian Spring”. Absolutely gorgeous as it starts hesitantly and then moves into the full orchestral zone. And in a way, you could probably see now that we’ve just, even just with “Fanfare” and “Appalachian Spring”, these two alternating paradigms of in which Copland’s music operated. So if we could get clip two, Lauren, that’d be fabulous. So just to take you through this. So of course this is gorgeous adaptation of “Simple Gifts”, which of course has been used by all sorts of people other than Copland. And I’m quite sure thatJoseph Brackett would’ve been absolutely amazed in 1848 when he wrote it after the Shaker community that’d be used by so many others. But what is so interesting is just then how the orchestration that beautifully risen part of the “Simple Gifts” and then the balance of it, which of course is the fact that the marriage has taken place and the bride, as it were, is saying goodbye to her neighbours. And at last the couple have left the neighbours, have celebrated their wedding and he can carry her across this threshold into their newly constructed home. And in so many ways it sort of encapsulates what is particularly special about Copland. His ability as it were to have captured that particular spirit, the exploratory spirit of the United States, at a particular point.

Always, I think even though he denied it from a particular political context, which I think I’ve made quite clear by the reference to “Fanfare”. Moving on in our just engagement with the Copland music. And again, I’ve had to be very selective, he produced two symphonies, first for orchestra with organ, had been introduced in '24 and was premiered in a revised version of art an organ in 1928. And then what was called the Short Symphony, number two in 1934. We’re not going to play those but in '30, sorry, yes, in '44, Serge Koussevitzky, who of course was the legendary conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and who himself had a huge influence on Bernstein, wanted to commission a major orchestral work from Copland for the 1946 season. In his autobiography with Vivian Perlis, which was a two volume series. If you want to read a biography of Copland, I think the Pollack one is probably the best. But let me just read you a passage from the autobiography in which he’s talking about the symphony. While in Bernardsville in the summer of '45, he wrote, “I felt my "Third Symphony” finally taking shape. I’ve been working on various sections whenever I could find time during the past few years. My colleagues had been urging me to compose a major orchestral work.

Elliot Carter, David Diamond, Arthur Berger reminded me about it whenever they had the opportunity. They had no way of knowing that I’d really been working on the composition for some time. I did not want to announce my intentions until it was clear in my own mind what the piece would become. At one time it looked more like a pene concerto, he said than a symphony. The commission from Koussevitzky stimulated me to focus my ideas and arrange the material I’ve collected in a semblance of order. And that order ultimately gave rise to symphony number three and which was effectively played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and its premier and was championed to a considerable extent by Serge Koussevitzky.“ It is the longest work which he produced around about 40 minutes and it is scored for a big orchestra. Many felt that this was Copland’s attempt to write that sort of really major piece of music, which would mark him out as a great composer. "It’s interesting, it contains no focal popular material, any reference to either folk material or jazz was purely unconscious,” he said. “I did borrow from myself”, and we’ll see that, “by using 'Fanfare for the Common Man” in an expanded and reshaped form in the final movement. I used this opportunity to carry the 'Fanfare’ material further and to satisfy my desire", he wrote, “to give the ‘Third Symphony’ an affirmative tone. After all, it was a wartime piece or more accurately an end of the war piece intended to reflect the euphoric spirit of the country at the time. It’s an ambition score.”

And he writes this a significant, “Often compared to Mahler, Shostakovich and sometimes to Prokofiev, particularly the second movement. As a longtime admirer of Mahler, some of my music ma show his influences in a general way, but I was not aware of being directly influenced by other composers when writing the work.” I want if I may because it’s difficult to as it were, play for you the whole 40 minutes. I was going to play last part of the third movement of the symphony leading in to his adaptation of the “Fanfare for the Common Man”, ‘cause it’s really quite interesting. The third movement is a particularly free movement. Some of the writing is for high strings and piccolo, no brass except a single horn and a trumpet. But it then leads directly into the final and longest movement, the fourth, which is perhaps in the form of a sonata allegro. And here you will see an adaptation or hear adaptation of the “Fanfare” again. So what I want to do is pick up Leonard Bernstein conducting the last parts of the third movement leading into the beginning of the fourth, to give you a feel of a major piece of music which Copland wrote. And as indicated one in which I think he felt that he wanted to move into the same league as Shastakovich and and Mahler. So here we are. If we can get the next, oh here we go. Sorry, I somehow cut off rather short before wanted to, because that was just about to lead into “Fanfare”. I do apologise somehow I must have got that wrong or somehow we didn’t manage to transcribe sufficient. But let me leave that. I wonder, let me say a little bit more before we come to the last piece about Copland and his politics, it’s very interesting. In 1949, He Attended The Cultural and Scientific conference for World Peace at the World of Astoria in New York.

Those of you in the many of course who know lots about music will know that was the famous event with Shostakovich, came to New York and read in a particularly as an automaton a 5,000 word speech in which he said very little of any consequence other than sort of criticising some of the great composers who had taken a slightly different view as it were to the Stalinist approach to music in particular Stravinsky. And at that very conference, Copland spoke and he said, a couple of things that I’d like to share with you. He said, “I’m going to start by saying that I wrote this paper myself. Nobody told me what to say and if anybody had tried to tell me what to say, I wouldn’t be here.” He then said this, and I think this is really important, “I’ve been thinking that the Cold war’s almost worse for art than the real thing. For it permeates the atmosphere with fear and anxiety. An artist can function at his best only in a vital and healthy environment for the simple reason that the very act of creation is an affirmative gesture. An artist fighting in a war for a cause he holds, just has something affirmative he can believe in. The artist if he can stay alive, can create art, but throw him into a mood of suspicion, ill will and dread that typifies the Cold War attitude and he’ll create nothing.” And of course that was a complete robust, a repost to Shostakovich at that particular point in time.

Of course, as I’ve indicated in the previous lecture about Shostakovich, there was all sorts of explanation about this, but I can’t go there now. It’s interesting then following this, in 1951, in '52 Copland delivered the Charles Elliot Norton lectures at Harvard in which he sketched his particular view of the ideological divide in postwar music. On the one hand he said, “You have the 12 tone composer, Schoenberg, for example. He is no longer writing music to satisfy himself, but instead is writing it against a vocal and militant opposition of socialist realist composers. On the other 12 tone music has been politicised. And on the other hand you have the composer of communist persuasion who runs the risk of abandoning artistic quality for popular appeal.” If you read this three carefully, of course Copland himself was battling with how to respond to the 12 tone approach and whether he was going to become atonal. And it is very interesting that in 1962, at the commission of the Lincoln Centre, when he was asked to compose a piece, he composed a piece called “Connotations”. And it opened with shrieking brass chords that were actually, as one of the music critics said, quote “Was murder to listen to in the acoustically unfriendly setting.” And then proceeded with grim insistence through many pages of a braise of variations. Apparently Jackie Kennedy bumped into Copland at the end when the audience had been particularly and showing antipathy to the . All she said was, “Oh, Mr. Copland, oh.” In fact that’s summarised in a way and that’s why to a large degree, a lot of the last parts of Coplands were not really as great as the early parts.

And of course, although he died in 1990, by the 1970s, he was really in a not a particularly healthy state. And almost like Sebelius who lived so many years without composing anything, Copland followed the same approach. One final point, in 1953 came the dreaded telegram that came to everybody; “You are hereby directed to appear before this committee on Monday, May 25th at 2:30 PM in the Senate office.” And of course this was from Joe McCarthy, the Chairman of the Senate, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Copland went there and said, interesting enough quote, he said, “My impression was that Mr. McCarthy had no idea who I was and what I did. He claimed ignorance of the communist affiliations of the organisations to which he’d been linked. Somehow he said his name had been used without his knowledge. In other cases associations was far too tenuous.” And he then went on to say that he wasn’t really treated all that terribly and in particularly he said, “It was probably 'cause of the incompetence of Roy Kahn’s investigators that very little was found upon him as a result of which he did not get affected like others were.” I want to end, if I may, well let me make one other rather important point, I suppose 'cause I was promising that which was to a considerable extent, of course Copland influenced all sorts of people and he certainly influenced if not his mentee, but certainly someone who did to some extent regard himself as an acolyte.

And that was Leonard Bernstein. And if you listen to “Fancy Free” “On the Town”, “West Side Story” and the film score for “On the Waterfront”, which we will talk about on a subsequent occasion, couple of weeks time, is no doubt about it that you can divine Copland’s influence in this not something that Bernstein necessarily denied. I wanted to end this this evening with just one final piece because as I’ve indicated to you continuously I think what is extraordinary about Copland, a gay, Jewish man of great deal of anxiety and retiring personality, that somehow he did capture sort of a fabric of American society, which I think does make him unique amongst American composers. And just to give you one final piece of evidence in this regard, let me play for you just a little bit from “Billy the Kid”, which he composed in the late 1930s, '38, which is a ballet. The score follows the life of the infamous outlaw. It begins with a sweeping song, the open prairie and shows many pioneers trekking westward. The action then shifts to a small frontier town, Billy’s mother’s killed by stray bullet during a gunfight. And Billy stabs her killer and then goes on the run. The next scene shows episodes in Billy’s later life, living in the desert, hunted and captured by a posse in which the ensuing gun battle features prominently with ways of various percussive effects in the music. And he’s taken to jail, managed to escape after stealing a gun from the warden during a game of cards and returns to his hideout where he thinks you’re safe. But Sheriff Pat Garrett catches up and shoots him to death. The ballet ends with the open prairie theme and pioneers are once again travelling west.

And I end with this because it seems to capture so much of the way in which Aaron Copland ultimately composed these music, these two competing paradigms, which since exist side by side, the exuberant and the forlorn in the music, of the best of the music, which you composed, which were the six pieces of music to which I made reference at the beginning of the lecture. So let’s have the last clip and then I’ll make one or two final comments before we end. Thanks very much, Lauren. In conclusion, let me just make two or three final points. As I say, I find it remarkable given, you know, here was this person who was came from a Litvac family who is so unbelievably perceptive in capturing the spirit of America. If you want to read more, I would highly recommend Howard Pollock’s biography called “Aaron Copland, an Uncommon Man,” which is probably the right title. I also wanted, if I may, to thank my friend Dr. Franzi Drowel, for giving me a wonderful article about Aaron Copland, which appeared in “The New Yorker”. Unfortunately, I can’t work out when it came from, she just gave me a copy. But it’s written by David Denby and I found it very useful. I should say, when I do Bernstein in a couple of weeks time, there are a couple of articles that I can make available to people from “The New Yorker”, which I found particularly useful in that particular regard. So let me see then what questions we have. And thank you very much for listening. I’m sorry I couldn’t get through all of the music.

Q&A and Comments:

Rita says, “I read this eloquently written comment regarding Aaron Copland especially has the rare illogical quality of making a nostalgic for a time you never knew. Thank you for presenting the genius.” I think there is quite a lot of genius in Copland. He may not have been a mahler or a Beethoven or a Bronze, but boy some of that music is fantastic.

David Sef, “I wish to emphasise”, oh yes, “your position in South African tragedy in the country responsible for malicious actions.” Look, let’s be honest about it without getting into the details of the case, it has been a very difficult time and I should say I think South African jury are feeling very vulnerable at this time for all sorts of reasons.

Catherine Irvin Ford, “The Rolling Stones played "Fanfare for the Common Man” as a curtain raiser before their constant ills court in '76.“ Ah, it was '76. But certainly they and "Queen” definitely played it.

Herbert says, “I don’t dispute any Bernstein’s assessment of Copland, but I’d suggest a few other composers such as Gershwin and Barber.” Yes, I would not want to dismiss Gershwin and Barber and maybe we should talk about them too in the series on America. Of course, Copland being Jewish is particularly, as is Gershwin I suppose, particularly interesting to me. I do think in some ways that Copland captured something of the fabric of American society, which made him unique. But I would not want to discover. And then certainly Gershwin and Barber are both very, very fine composers and Gershwin in particular, I really love his music.

Q: Marty says, thank you for that I’m one of the top legal minds in South Africa and why was I not on the South African legal team?

A: I’m not going to comment about that Marty, but when you say were you perhaps Teegered, that of course is reference to Teeger the South African under 19 captain who has been, as it were removed with his captaincy. And I don’t know if everybody knows about that. Here’s a young man who made a statement at a prize giving in which he got a prize 'cause he’s an absolutely brilliant cricketer. And he said that the real achievement was the IDF soldiers, not himself. Shamefully the cricket South Africa then essentially sought to remove him. But they did make the sensible decision to get South Africa’s top lawyer, not one who appeared at Hague, but the really top lawyer, which is Wim Trengove SC who found that while some people might think that Mr. Teeger’s statements or objectional others certainly would support them and he has freedom of speech and shamefully now shamefully the cricket of South Africa has removed him as captain, although they’ve kept him on as a player in the World Cup. I find that disgracefully rational, to put it mildly, but let me not say more.

“The Lord of the Dance” was a shaker melody Margaret because so many borrowed from Bracketts statements previously.

Hillel, “Henry Wallace who gave the common man speech was a hero of the liberal left winging.” Yes, that’s right. “When he ran for president when I was six years old, I thought everyone was voting for him and remember his campaign.” Well certainly there’s a tradition of that and I think Bernie Sanders comes in that tradition.

“What is fascinating is that the son of the Lithuanian immigrant could say perfectly capture the essence of the vast American landscape”.

Richard, absolutely, it’s the point I’ve been hacking for quite a bit of this evening. And I agree with you Charles.

Thank you very much Diana for saying that I’m back. I quite happy and I’m fascinated when you say I was in the college and Ena Dance group, which featured Martha Graham’s “Appalachian Spring” in the late 1940s, how fascinating. It’s always so fascinating to have people on this particular lockdown university who have such vast knowledge about all sorts of topics. Thank you for sharing that with us. Yes, I agree with you, westside stories are indicated, many of the other Bernstein compositions were influenced by Copland.

To my knowledge, Barry, I don’t think “Chariots of Fire” does have any Copland music. I need to think about that again, but I don’t think so. Thank you Philip.

Carol says, “American Masters programme on US public division featured Aaron a year or so ago.” Well, I’m not surprised and there is quite a lot on, if you go onto Google where you can even see him conducting and being interviewed.

Soril says, “Wouldn’t you say that Copland born 19 far away from his father’s was influenced mostly not by the freedom of the Appalachians as much as the heady days of sexual literally musical and intellectual liberalism in post-war with priests and Gertrude Stein, modernist music reacting to the liberation of the construction, Malda Sea liberalised Paris, far from a regular conservative world in Brooklyn.”

I agree entirely with the Soril, and that’s why I mentioned Nadia Boulanger and the influence that she had played or many musicians including Copland when he went there in the 1920s, absolutely right.

Thank you very much, Rita.

Katherine, I’m happy to talk about the genocide case, but if they have all easier to talk about Copland, I can tell you that now.

Jackson, “I think 'Quiet City’ belongs with these greatest hits.” Yes, I agree, I just had to make some call about how many I could do because we’ve already gone past eight o'clock.

And thank you very much Miriam, and thank you Myra, and thank you Ruth. And thank you to all of you for listening.

And we’ll speak presently, I think in a week or two about another great Jewish musician, Leonard Bernstein. I hope by then you’ve all watched “Maestro”, so we can talk a little bit about that too at the same lecture, good evening to everybody.