Copland's Appalachian Spring

MAGAZINE ARTICLE

There’s no piece that recalls the vastness of the American prairie more readily than Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, but what exactly is ‘American’ about it? And did Copland really invent the American sound? The following piece was published in Limelight Magazine’s June 2014 edition.

You’d be hard-pressed to name a piece of music more quintessentially “American” than Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring. Since its Washington première in 1944, Copland’s balletic collaboration with choreographer, Martha Graham has come to embody the American spirit, arguably, more than any other work in classical music history. Music historians frequently laud it for its critical role in defining the American style and, along with a handful of his other “patriotic” works, it’s earned the composer an oft-repeated, and rather enviable epithet: “dean of American composers”. At a time of global conflict, its straight-forward and light-hearted aesthetic gave people much-needed respite from the bleak reality of war, and reason to hope in a better future. Yet what exactly about this enduringly popular work is American? True, its open textures might recall the never-ending expanse of the American prairie, and its energetic rhythms may capture the giddy optimism of the American dream, but – really – what is specifically American about suspended harmonies and robust rhythms? Considering many of his contemporaries were also penning emblematically American works at that time, could Copland’s masterly chamber work have been solely responsible for the development of the American sound? And why has Appalachian Spring in particular endured, while so many other “Americanist” works of that time have fallen into relative obscurity?

Aaron Copland was born in Brooklyn on November 14, 1900, into a family of Jewish migrants from Russia. Music seems to have been present in Copland’s life from very early on. His brother was proficient on the violin and his mother, an avid amateur pianist and singer, saw to it that Aaron had his first piano lessons. As a young man, Copland allegedly declared that his goal as a composer was to write music that would “make you feel like you were alive on the streets of Brooklyn” – how ironic, then, that his music would instead mainly be remembered for its vivid evocation of America’s rural heartland. After a period of formal lessons with Rubin Goldmark, a local music pedagogue noted for his conservative inclinations (Copland would later say of him, “his list of approved composers ended with Richard Strauss”), the 21-year-old Copland made perhaps the most decisive move in his budding compositional career: he packed his bags and left for Paris. The city of lights was, in the ‘20s, the world’s undisputed arts capital, and exerted an irresistible pull on artistic and intellectual luminaries the world over. Paris would prove formative for Copland. He mingled with some of the generation’s most brilliant writers, composers and artists – many of them expat Americans – and took lessons with much sought-after composition teacher Nadia Boulanger.

By the time he began work on Appalachian Spring, Copland had already cemented his reputation as a leading composer in the US. He’d written widely-appealing orchestral works like the upbeat El Salón de Mexico (1936), two successful ballet scores (Billy The Kid, 1938 and Rodeo, 1942), as well as the iconic Fanfare for the Common Man (1942). He was also gaining ground as a film composer and, to the general public, may have been best-known for his recent Hollywood scores, Of Mice and Men (1939), and Our Town (1940). Copland was, in fact, working on a third film project, The North Star (for which he received an Academy award nomination), when he was approached with a new ballet commission by American heiress, socialite and amateur pianist, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, who was known for her zealous patronage of new chamber music. The ballet would tell the simple story of a wedding in rural Pennsylvania, and the brilliant and influential choreographer, Martha Graham would bring the music to life on stage with her highly communicative and idiomatic style.

Once the venue had been selected, the score completed, and the choreography finalised, all that remained to be settled was the pesky matter of a title. Copland, rather more skilled at conceiving music than naming it, had thitherto referred to the work by a dryly prosaic working title: “Ballet for Martha”. And if, a few days before the first performance, Graham hadn’t chanced upon The Dance by Ohio poet Hart Crane (in whose ninth stanza, we read: O Appalachian Spring!), that’s what we might have called the work today – and you’d be forgiven for doubting anyone would have cared for it at all. Admittedly, Copland can’t be held entirely to blame for his lack of inspiration – all the information he initially had to go on was the frustratingly vague stipulation that the ballet should have “some sort of frontier theme”.  The Pennsylvania setting was decided upon only after he’d finished the score and, well after the work had entered the standard repertoire, Copland would reportedly smile in silent amusement whenever anyone complimented his accurate depiction of the Appalachian mountains. On October 30, 1944, in the Coolidge Auditorium at the Library of Congress in Washington DC, in its original chamber version for 13 instruments, Appalachian Spring had its world première, with Graham in the lead role, Erick Hawkins as the husbandman, Merce Cunningham as the revivalist, and May O’Donnell as the pioneering woman.

By most accounts, Appalachian Spring was a smash hit. In a review of the première performance, New York Times critic John Martin (November, 1944) praised the ballet for its “shining and joyous” tone and called Copland’s work “the fullest, loveliest and most deeply poetical of all his theater scores.” Similarly enthusiastic, Dance Observer’s Robert Stabin (December, 1944) remarked, “Appalachian Spring works outward into the basic experiences of people living together, love, religious belief, marriage, children, work and human society." Once Copland had made an arrangement of the score for full orchestra, the work really took off, gaining popularity and critical praise to the point of winning him a Pulitzer Prize in 1945. People instantly connected with its largely accessible style and, in a world battered by five years of global warfare, its cheerful musical ideas provided solace and comfort.  As an American writer once put it, “It captured the imagination of Americans who were beginning to believe in a more prosperous future.” Appalachian Spring’s appeal has endured to the present day, having long consolidated its status as an undisputed classic. Its influence on younger generations of American composers has been considerable, and its part in creating an iconic American musical idiom has been almost universally recognised. Australian conductor, Benjamin Northey, who, at the time of writing, was performing it with WASO, reaffirms the conventional narrative: “Appalachian Spring is the beginning of the national sound of America - it’s become the sound of America. And it’s inspired so many composers working in this form.”

But can the story really be this simple? Did the American style suddenly materialize out of thin air at Appalachian Spring’s première in October, 1944? Sure we can accept the vital role played in America’s musical history by its “dean of composers”, but was Copland solely responsible for the creation of the Americanist aesthetic? We’ll tackle these questions in a minute, but first, let’s take a brief step back in time, and delve through – yes – American TV archives to try to find an answer to the question, “What is ‘American’ about the American sound?”

On the evening of Feb 1, 1958, hundreds of thousands of American families gathered around their TV screens, hushed and excited, to watch a handsomely coiffed Leonard Bernstein conduct the New York Phil (Skeptical? Don’t be – people actually cared about classical music back then). It was the latest installment of a series of popular televised educational programs called “Young People’s Concerts” and tonight, Bernstein would tackle the elusive question, “What is American Music?” After purveying circa 50 years of American music history, from its shaky beginnings in Eurocentric late-romanticism to the proudly robust open sound of the ‘30s and ‘40s, Lennie finally comes to rest upon none-other-than our dear Copland, whose music he describes as perfectly typifying many of the characteristics of the true American style: “syncopations, wide-open spaces, simplicity and the sentimentality.” Add to this otherwise adequate list of musical attributes the use of American folk tunes, a strong preference for diatonicism, and a peculiar kind of wildly adventurous and high-spirited melody – I like to call it the “pioneer” melody – and we pretty much have all bases covered.

Leaving aside the philosophically troublesome question of whether musical signifiers (pitches, rhythms) can ever genuinely and meaningfully connote non-musical ideas (beauty, love, strawberry ice-cream or, in this case, “Americanness”), or whether it’s all really in our heads, let’s concentrate on working out how many of these American traits Appalachian Spring contains and, critically, why exactly they’re considered American. We might want to get the easy one out of the way first: folk tunes. The piece famously ends with an arrangement of the Shaker melody, Simple Gifts, which Copland stole from nineteenth-century preacher Joseph Brakett. The tune was a relatively well-known one, and few who heard it would have had trouble accepting it as American. Even some of the material Copland didn’t copy directly – for example, the rambunctious melodic figure of first Allegro section– sounds suspiciously like revamped American country dance music. Use of American folk tunes: check.

Diatonicism? Well, its harmonies may not be classically diatonic, but make no mistake, Copland’s work contains key signatures, major and minor pitch collections, and triadic verticalities that would have been as familiar to Beethoven as Bratwurst – he just mixes them up in unconventional ways. And how is diatonicism specifically American? Plainly put, it’s not. But if we really tried, we could argue that Copland’s motivation to write diatonically was American in nature. You see, diatonic harmonies and melodies have been in our musical genetic code for at least four hundred years; they fall very naturally on our ears, and speak to us like no other tonal system can. By writing with a musical vocabulary that many avant-garde composers of the time (Schönberg, Stravinsky, Varèse) would have considered, at best, quaint and, at worst, irrelevant, Copland may have run the risk of appearing reactionary, but there’s no doubt he was intentionally writing music that people of all types would intuitively understand. And, in a politically tumultuous time, who didn’t need a populist voice telling them – clearly and loudly – that everything would be ok? And what could be more American than to address the common man in plain, simple language? That settles that, right? Kinda. Sorta. Admittedly, some Europeans were also writing diatonic music at that time but, with the possible exception of Hindemith, most were either doing it under threat of government censure or prosecution (Shostakovich and Prokofiev), or to screw the establishment (Poulenc and Les Six). Diatonicism: check.

Pioneer melodies? Look no further than the fast section about 8 minutes into the piece. The unmistakable um-pah accompaniment, energetic melodic leaps and semiquaver-semiquaver-quaver rhythms have the American pioneer spirit written all over them. Check. Simplicity and sentimentality? Well I wouldn’t call Appalachian Spring technically simple, but – as we’ve mentioned – it speaks plainly and directly. And, with its sweetly dissonant harmonies and wistful diatonic melodies, its sentimental “squidginess” is quite apparent – at least in its slow sections. What’s American about simplicity and sentimentality? Beats me. Check? Yeah, why not.

When Lennie mentioned syncopations, he was referring to a specific kind: those American classical music had inherited from jazz. These syncopations – or musical accents falling on weak beats – had begun with Jazz, but had, over time, become so entrenched in America’s musical psyche, that they’d detached themselves from their original musical context to become generically American. However, while it’s true that Appalachian Spring is full of rhythmic quirks (which include bold rhythmic displacements and additive figures), its metric complexity owes more to the continental tradition of Stravinsky than American Jazz. Sorry, Lady Liberty. Syncopations: uncheck. 

And what about wide-open spaces? You need only listen to the first minute of the piece to realise this one’s a no-brainer. The opening slow section of Appalachian Spring is, in fact, the best-known example of what music writer Alex Ross dubbed the “open-prairie” sound – slow-moving textures and unresolved harmonies used to create a sense of wholesome American optimism, and capture the vastness of American wilderness. Northey puts it much better than I do, “The open sound is the endlessness of the two chords – A and E major – that begin the piece, superimposed on each other. The tonic is A, but the chord sounds like it has no root, and so it feels like it floats.” Openness: double check.

Clearly, Copland uses many musical devices in Appalachian Spring that are seen as emblematically American, but a quick look at some of the music he’d been writing during the previous decade (in particular, his ballet scores) reveals he’d test-run this musical idiom many times before. What’s more, three of his contemporaries – Virgil Thomson, Roy Harris and William Schumann – had been similarly preoccupied with the development of an American Sound, and had themselves produced work exhibiting Americanist features in abundance – pioneer melodies, diatonicism, folk music, optimistic openness. So quite evidently, far from appearing suddenly from the pen of a single composer, the Americanist style slowly gestated, and was the result of a collaborative effort between like-minded artists. That’s easy enough to grasp, right? But then why did Appalachian Spring endure, while Thomson’s The River suite (1937) didn’t? Why do we often hear Appalachian Spring in our concert halls, while Bill Schumann’s American Festival Overture (1939) hardly ever makes it into a concert program? Aside from the obvious argument of differing compositional quality, there might be another, more subtle explanation. And to get to the bottom of this, it may be helpful to draw a few comparisons between Appalachian Spring and a masterpiece composed just three years earlier by one of Copland’s most brilliant transatlantic colleagues: Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time.

Quartet for the End of Time is, in many ways, the anti-Appalachian Spring. Both works were written during war years, and are attempts to come to grips with existential questions raised by war, but their aesthetic vantage points are diametrically opposed. They are both prophetic in scope, but where Messiaen’s quartet is grim and apocalyptic, Appalachian Spring shines with a hopeful belief in a brighter future. In a world teetering on the edge of self-destruction, Europeans like Messiaen surrendered to the seemingly inevitable darkness, while Copland and fellow Americans drew strength from their faith in human resilience to steer clear of it. This philosophical divergence would prove critical historically, foreshadowing a major geo-political transition. While Europe collapsed, America would spring energetically from the rubble, brimming with self-confidence. New-World outward-looking optimism would triumph over Old-world melancholic introspection, bringing an era of European colonial power to an end, and ushering in a new age of American cultural and political hegemony. Appalachian Spring, more than any other musical work of that time, may have captured the essence of this global shift, and the new world order it brought about. In the words of music critic Terry Teachout, Copland’s Appalachian Spring was “the right piece at the time”. That could well be why it lived on, and the other stuff didn’t.