Aaron Copland versus Kurt Weill

Documentary


"The American Way" (Made in America)
'A look at two composers of American music: Aaron Copland and Kurt Weill'
Hosted and conducted by Simon Rattle
Anthony Rolfe Johnson, tenor ('Lonely House')
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
"The Music of the 20th Century: Leaving Home"
Arthaus Musik

From Rattle, Simon, Peter West, Deborah May, Barrie Gavin, Hilary Chadwick, and Sue Knussen. Leaving Home: Orchestral Music in the 20th Century. Princeton, N.J: Films for the Humanities & Sciences, 1997.






In case above youtube link breaks, here are kludgy phone recordings:

Documentary starts with a clip of the Martha Graham Dance Company production of Copland's "Appalachian Spring"

Here's a clip of Copland's music without the documentary's narrator talking over it:





Rattle: A significant characteristic of American music is its involvement with other art forms [I'm not certain how that makes American music substantially different from most other music from around the world] : dance, theater, poetry, painting, popular music, and film.

Rattle: Aaron Copland wrote music that ranged in style from the open, simple music which inspired generations of Western film scores to the most complicated intellectual art music always refracted from a particularly American camera.

Rattle: Copland's work was the first American music to enter the mainstream repertoire of symphony orchestras and you can hear why, easily. He uses the instruments to make a sweeping, open, confident sound which is truly orchestral and truly recognizable as American.  Copland's presence in the scene was also important for the American arts, in general.

Rattle: It heralds the coming of age of American culture just as the nation was beginning to take a central place on the stage of world politics.

Rattle: When we think of Kurt Weill we immediately think of his work with Brecht, we think of Berlin in the 1920, we think of the "Three Penny Opera"

Rattle: "Mack the Knife"

Rattle: a whole era in which you could smell decay.  But when you listen to the works that he produced in America, particularly "Street Scene"

Rattle: which is probably the masterpiece of all of them.  You can still hear the slight twang of the accent.  You can still feel a nostalgia for something gone.  

lyrics

At night when everything is quiet 

This old house seems to breathe a sigh 

Sometimes I hear a neighbor snoring 

Sometimes I hear a baby cry 

Sometimes I hear a staircase creaking 

Sometimes a distant telephone 

Then the night settles down again 

The house and I are all alone

Lonely house, 

lonely me 

Funny with so many neighbors 

How lonely it can be

Lonely street, lonely town 

Funny you can be so lonely 

With all these folks around

I guess there must be something 

I don't comprehend 

Sparrows have companions 

Even stray dogs find a friend

The night for me is not romantic 

Unhook the stars and take them down 

I'm lonely in this lonely house 

In this lonely town

The Empire Diner made a cameo in this above music video:

Most of Weill's music is depressing and morose, as the above documentary asserts. However, one of his songs, "September Song", is slightly less miserable than most and was a perennial favorite on the penultimate corny kitschy "The Lawrence Welk Show":