Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
Rodeo
Composed in 1942
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y. to immigrant parents, Aaron Copland became one of America’s most famous 20th-century composers, creating a uniquely American sound.
After Copland’s success in composing the ballet Billy the Kid, he was hesitant to write yet another “cowboy” ballet. However, Agnes de Mille of the Ballet Russe de Monte convinced him to write Rodeo. She said, “I dug in my heels and said I wanted the best American composer for the music, Aaron Copland.”
Rodeo is set in the Old West, telling the tale of a cowgirl trying to find love at Burnt Ranch. The love story unfolds through four movements, including Buckaroo Holiday when we meet all the characters, Corral Nocturne, Saturday Night Waltz and the foot-tapping Hoe-Down. Copland wove traditional songs through the ballet including “Bonaparte’s Retreat,” “McLeod’s Reel” and “Gilderoy.”
The ballet premiered at the Metropolitan Opera House on October 16, 1942. It was an overwhelming success. De Mille said, “I gave the performance of my life and got twenty-two curtain calls.”
The next year, Copland made a symphonic arrangement from the ballet, the Four Dance Episodes. He removed Ranch House Party and made other subtle changes to the final two movements.
The premiere of the concert suite took place in 1943 with the Boston Pops.
George Gershwin (1898-1937)
Rhapsody in Blue
Composed in 1924
The iconic solo clarinet opening of Rhapsody in Blue is now a beloved part of American culture, but when it first premiered, it came as a complete shock to listeners. It debuted during a concert titled “An Experiment in Modern Music” on February 12, 1924, in Aeolian Hall, New York. Bandleader Paul Whiteman commissioned the piece.
Gershwin said later, “it was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattle-ty bang, that is so often so stimulating to a composer … I frequently hear music in the very heart of the noise. And there I suddenly heard—and even saw on paper—the complete construction of the rhapsody, from beginning to end.”
After composing Rhapsody in Blue, Gershwin gave the work to Ferde Grofé, Whiteman’s arranger. Grofé finished orchestrating the piece within a week of the premiere.
Born in New York City, the young Gershwin dropped out of school at 15 to work as a song plugger in Tin Pan Alley. But he soon had ambitions to compose larger works. Rhapsody in Blue made him famous.
Gershwin described the piece as “a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America—of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our metropolitan madness.” Rhapsody in Blue serves as a musical biography for Gershwin. In this piece, you hear the combination of his Tin Pan Alley experiences, musical theater, and jazz influences.
George Gershwin died at age 38, leaving a musical legacy of more than 500 songs, an opera, and works for orchestra and piano. He is considered one of America’s greatest composers and was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his musical contributions.
Today, the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song is the nation’s highest award for achievement in the field of popular song. Recipients have included Elton John, Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell and Paul McCartney.
Randall Thompson (1889-1984)
Symphony No. 2
Composed in 1931
In the 1920s and 1930s, as composers like Gershwin and Copland were crystallizing what it meant to create truly American works within the European traditions of art music in theaters and concert halls, their contemporary Randall Thompson led the way in crafting a new American canon of choral music. His emphasis on singable melodies and forthright emotions placed him out of step with the musical avant-garde, but ordinary folks in amateur choirs and glee clubs around the country never stopped singing his scores, and his concert works have always had their ardent champions, including Thompson’s former student Leonard Bernstein, who conducted the benchmark recording of Thompson’s Symphony No. 2.
In many ways, this charming symphony from 1931 foreshadows the homespun, optimistic sound that Copland reached a few years later in the period of Rodeo and Appalachian Spring. The first movement brings the symphony’s weightiest music, which works through jagged rhythms and heavy, minor-key harmonies with neoclassical efficiency and clarity. The Largo takes on a more overtly American tone with a crooning melody fit for a Broadway show and a smattering of “blue” notes borrowed from jazz. In the scherzo, syncopated rhythms draw from the language of cakewalk and ragtime—those hybrids of European theater music and Black dance styles that coalesced in the late 1800s and served as the wellspring of all the popular American music that followed. After a serene chorale over walking bass that serves as an introduction to the finale, the body of the movement uses the neoclassical playbook to manipulate material steeped in the twang of American folk tunes. – Aaron Grad
