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":

#ClassicArtsShowcase clip on subliminal influence of Aaron Copland music

A clip from documentary "Aaron Copland: A Self-Portrait"(1985)
Aaron Copland, composer (1900-1990)
His film scores ('The Heiress', 'Of Mice and Men') & 'Lincoln Portrait' (Leonard Bernstein, cond.)
Commentary by composers Jacob Druckman, Lukas Foss, David Diamond & William Schuman
Directed by Allan Miller
Films for the Humanities & Sciences

Narrator; Copland's interest in reaching the American public also extended to the movies.

Copland: "The Heiress", I'm happy to say, won my an Academy Award for the score.










Copland: There was a scene where she was supposed to be taken very seriously by the audience and to the dismay of the producer and director of the film [ William Wyler ], when they tried it out, as they always do in some little theater outside Hollywood, the audience laughed at her when she was stood up.  And the producer came to me and said, 'Copland, you've got to do something to save this scene. If the laugh at her at that moment, we're finished!' So I completely threw out the music I had written for the scene and wrote a much more dissonant sounding music than would be normal in a music house. [I saw a documentary that illustrated this precise fact, showing how using alternative music to "The Heiress" evinces different emotions, but I don't remember the name of said documentary] By golly, when they got to that scene, there wasn't a sound in the house.  Same scene, and, of course, I'm sure the audience didn't know music was being played, they were so involved. But there was something about the tenseness of the music that didn't suggest anything funny.  And it worked!

Narrator: In 1940, Copland's music for "Of Mice and Men" was central to the film's emotional impact. Although Copland never held a regular university position, he loved teaching. At the Tanglewood Music Center, Copland taught for twenty-five summers.

Narrator:  If you were a young composer, Tanglewood was the Mecca

Narrator: Copland helped launch the careers of several generations of composers. Many of today's major figures came under his influence.

Jacob Druckman: Tanglewood, in those years, was one of the most glamorous places ever. Just coming down from the top people closest to me, my immediate predecessors, were Lenny Bernstein and Lukas Foss who were outdoing themselves in talent and glamour and generally just radiating excitement. And of course, right in the middle of all of this was Aaron.

Narrator: Compose/conductor Lukas Foss

Foss: Aaron was in his advice to a young composer always very functional.  He never made prophecies, big statements.  He would say, 'What about this note? What about this instrument? I don't think that that combination of instruments is right for what you're saying in that bar.'

Leonard Bernstein:  When I would come with my new piece, or half of a new piece, or an idea for a new piece, and he'd say, 'Throw away it's warmed over [Alexander] Scriabin

Copland: [laughs]

Bernstein: Just start all over again! Forget it!

Bernstein: Or, he'd say, 'That's good! That bar - those two bars are good. Throw everything else away and do something about that.'

David Diamond: When he would look at my music, play it through, or when I would play it through with him. He'd say, 'Now, David Diamond,  I want you to be more [ soucieux ?]. You've got to be more self critical. You write too much.'

William Schuman: He didn't want to turn you into another little Aaron Copland. He wanted to try and help you achieve whatever it was he thought you were about. And that was extraordinary.

Narrator: Now the central figure in America's music, Copland made his patriotic contribution his own way with "Lincoln Portrait." It's narration was drawn from the own words of Abraham Lincoln.  And literally hundreds of distinguished Americans have narrated "Lincoln Portrait" since its premiere in 1942.

Copland [reciting "Lincoln Portrait"] Abe Lincoln was a quiet and a melancholy man.  But when he spoke of democracy, this is what he said. He said [from August 1, 1858: On Slavery] , 'As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is not democracy.'

Narrator: Despite this overt patriotism, [Copland] was accused of disloyalty by Senator Joseph's McCarthy's House on UnAmerican Activities Committee.

[As a youtuber noted, this makes no sense. McCarthy was a senator and didn't served on HUAC]

Foss: To cast doubt on the Americanism of the composer of "Lincoln Portrait" is really extremely foolish. But you couldn't laugh about that.  Nobody could.

Copland: I just felt like kind of a pawn in his machinations, I'd call them. How he happened to arrive at me I don't have any idea.  But uhm it wasn't a very pleasant thing to go through.  However, one goes through it and lives on. So that was that.

Copland [continuing reciting "Lincoln Portrait"] [from the "Gettysburg Address"] And that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Virtual Aaron Copland Concert

After I read the dead tree version of William Robin's April 12, 2016 "New York Times" article "Asking Whether Copland’s Abstruse Works are the Exception or the Rule," I wanted to hear the musical pieces referenced. In counterpoint to Ms. Baum's lament:

So many websites are becoming unreadable, w/ pop-up ads, spontaneous videos & now embedded tweets. Maybe newspapers will make a comeback.

— Caroline Baum (@cabaum1) March 30, 2016

I found it convenient that the online version hyperlinks most of the pieces referenced in  the article. I decided to create my own virtual concert and chose to embed different artist versions from ubiquitous youtube selections.

"When Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic visited 'The Late Show With Stephen Colbert' last month, it was only natural that they performed Aaron Copland’s 'Fanfare for the Common Man'” (1942)'"

Fanfare for the Common Man, New York Philharmonic, James Levine standard orchestral version:







Emerson, Lake and Palmer aka ELP electronic version:

"But when Copland’s music graced a CBS broadcast a half-century ago, it was in an entirely different idiom. For the 1962 televised gala celebrating the opening of the Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center — now David Geffen Hall — the composer provided his first 12-tone piece for orchestra, the snarling and cacophonous 'Connotations.'"

Copland: Connotations For Orchestra : Intenso - Drammatico · New York Philharmonic Orchestra · Leonard Bernstein

"At intermission, the first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, approached him. Stunned, she simply said: 'Oh, Mr. Copland. Oh, Mr. Copland.' A nationwide audience of millions watched the broadcast, and both the orchestra and the network were subsequently inundated with letters from viewers outraged by this densely avant-garde music."

I'm afraid I share the outraged viewers Philistinism at Copland's avant-garde-ism.

"The question will be raised once more on Wednesday, when Michael Tilson Thomas leads the San Francisco Symphony at Carnegie Hall in a triptych of Copland’s thornier works: the Piano Concerto (1926)"

Aaron Copland: "Piano Concerto" Bennett Lerner, pianist Zubin Mehta, conductor New York Philharmonic





Aaron Copland: the Orchestral Variations (1957) Michael Tilson Thomas San Francisco Symphony:




an arrangement of the Copland’s 1930 Piano Variations Boston Symphony Chamber Players





the serial “Inscape” (1967), Copland’s last major piece - The American Symphony Orchestra diretta da Leon Botstein






I agree with Stephen Jablonsky youtube comment:

"A much more user-friendly piece than 'Connotations'. It uses the modern idioms in very Coplandesque ways. For me it is as if 'Billy the Kid' were translated into another language. The sadness and the longing is still there but the landscape has changed and we find ourselves in an alien land."

Going off a tangent from the "New York Times" article in case you want to comapre and contrast "Connotations" with "Billy the Kid" "Listening Guide: Copland's Billy the Kid" Philharmonia Orchestra (London, UK)





Copland: Billy the Kid - Ballet Suite Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra




Back to 'Inscape', from Barry Gurley youtube comment:

"I love how Copland's lyricism comes through no matter what idiom he employs. Even in the 12-tone style, you hear is essential personality-traits: declamation, tenderness and a pared-down simplicity. Beautiful."

The "New York Times" also discusses Copland's shift to the 12-tone system:

"Copland first began exploring 12-tone writing in 1950, in the shadow of Cold War paranoia and after the New Deal-era Americana of his score for 'Billy the Kid,' like the New Deal itself, had fallen out of favor. Never mind that music in that vein is now a shorthand for a patriotism as blameless as a bald eagle and has been paraphrased for campaign ads for Ronald Reagan and Rick Perry (incongruous, given Copland’s political proclivities)."

In case you wondered what is the 12 tone system, I don't really know. My guess was that it was a shift from standard major and minor scales that encompassed 7 tones of "The Sound of Music" 'Do-Re-Mi" fame:




Hence, the simplest example, playing C Major on the keyboard, just requires playing all the ivory keys from C (Do/Doe) to B (Ti/Tea) = 7



I then figured 12 tones would entail playing all the ivory keys (7) plus + all the sharp/flat ebony keys (5) = 12 tones, but not certain how this Common Core math translates musically, except as an homage to Stevie Wonder and Sir Paul McCartney 1980s collaboration:




The Encyclopedia Britannica article just made me more confused:

The new unifying principle in composition would then arise from the particular order given to a collection of the 12 tones, an order that would be different for each composition. The basic order for any one composition came to be known as its basic set, its 12-tone row, or its 12-tone series, all of which terms are synonymous. The basic set for Schoenberg’s Wind Quintet (1924) is E♭–G–A–B–C♯–C–B♭–D–E–F♯–A♭–F; for his String Quartet No. 4 (1936) it is D–C♯–A–B♭–F–E♭–E–C–A♭–G–F♯–B.

The basic set is not a theme, for it has no specific shape, rhythm, or loudness. It is a backbone, a musical idea that permeates the composition in which it is used. Because of the various principles of composing and manipulating the basic set recognized by Schoenberg and others, it is not often possible nor even desirable to hear the basic set when the composition is performed. This situation has led many people to attack Schoenberg’s method as unmusical and as mathematical madness. Such views seem unjustifiable, because, as Schoenberg pointed out, his method specifies only a tiny fraction of the total nature of a composition—certainly no more than composing with tonality specifies.

As far as I can tell, Copland's new musical style is being equated to abstract modern painting to avoid anti-Communist censors:

"Copland’s history as a leftist intellectual — in the heady years of the 1930s, he once wrote a song titled 'Into the Streets May First'"

 — brought him to Senator McCarthy’s attention. In 1953 a performance of his 'Lincoln Portrait,' in honor of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s inauguration, was canceled when a congressman declared it Communist propaganda. 

Leonard Bernstein conducts the National Symphony (Washington, D.C.) in a concert celebrating Aaron Copland's 80th birthday (1980) featuring Copland's "Lincoln Portrait", with Copland as the narrator.

Soon afterward, Copland was summoned to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. The fraught political climate may have pushed him toward an abstract language distant from one marked by populist (and potentially Communist) sentiment.

Simultaneously, Modernism was on the rise. Copland was not one to fall behind the musical curve, and in 1949 he visited Paris to witness the radical avant-gardism of the youthful Mr. Boulez firsthand.  At a party, Mr. Boulez played his fiery, atomized Second Sonata; Copland responded by performing the severe Piano Variations, then two decades old, as if to declare that he had done that kind of thing first.

"The San Francisco Symphony concert juxtaposes Copland’s early and late experiments with Modernism. In this presentation, the sound that made Copland famous — the open-prairie simplicity of 'Billy the Kid' and 'Appalachian Spring' — might represent a blip in the composer’s artistic development. 'You could look at the music for which he is best known as an interlude in the middle,' Mr. Thomas said."

Appalachian Spring, Orchestral Suite, written in 1944-1945 Composer: Aaron Copland - Orchestra: Ulster Orchestra - Conductor: Thierry Fischer