American composer Aaron Copland was born in Brooklyn on November 14 in 1900. Although he began his music education in Paris in the 1920s with a strong avante-garde influence on his early works, his compositions starting in the 1930s — including Billy The Kid (1938), Rodeo (1942), Fanfare For The Common Man (1942) — used traditional American sounds to create popular compositions.
After I got my first CD player and began the process of switching from records and cassettes to the new format, I made my first CD purchase. I bought three of my favorite works that included one by Bruce Springsteen and one by Ludwig van Beethoven. The other CD in my first purchase was Aaron Copeland’s Appalachian Spring (1944). I have since added to my collection other versions of the composition, including one using only the thirteen instruments
for which it was written.
Copland wrote Appalachian Spring as a ballet, with the original working title of Ballet for Martha. Dancer Martha Graham was commissioned to create the choreography and star in the performance (see video above).
While writing the music, Copland was not thinking about Appalachia. The Appalachian title was added after Graham suggested it after hearing some of the score.
The story of the ballet follows two newlyweds in the western hills of Pennsylvania in the early 1800s. The music captures their enthusiasm, happiness and anxiety, while also reflecting warnings about life from neighbors and revivalists.
As the Pulitzer-Prize winning composition ends with quiet notes, the couple settle into their new home.
Copland once commented on how one could not predict the fate of a composition, and that was true for Appalachian Spring. Audiences connected with the music and its sounds of America, including Copland’s use of tunes like the Shaker song “Simple Gifts” (which plays at the start of part 3 above as well as at other points).
Yet, maybe one should not be surprised at the popularity of a composition written and released during World War II that evoked and paid tribute to living and surviving in America’s past. NPR calls Appalachian Spring “one of the most inspiring and symbolic works of the century,” noting it “captures the essence of an ideal America, one of open fields and endless possibilities.”
I have played Appalachian Spring in my car while driving through the Appalachian mountains, and I have played it as a soundtrack while driving open roads out West. But I also can play it in my bedroom or my office and immediately feel the open expanse and history of a country in a simpler time, recalling that the gift to be simple is the gift to be free.
What is your favorite part of “Appalachian Spring”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
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