Jump to content
This Site Uses Cookies. If You Want to Disable Cookies, Please See Your Browser Documentation. ×

Copland's Appalachian Spring


Recommended Posts

glebb, you've quite likely seen this, but the Winter 1999 issue of Ballet Review includes essays about the commissioning of Appalachian Spring and the creation of that ballet and Jeux de Printemps and Heodiade, that are very heavily interspersed with letters from the principals: Graham, Hawkins, Copland, and others.

Link to comment

Just a brief note on the score which may interest.

Copland's Appalachian Spring in its original form for Graham was scored for 13 instruments. A year later (1945) Copland rescored a suite from the work for full orchestra (it eliminates about a dozen minutes of the complete ballet score). It is the Full Orchestra suite that is usually found on recordings, although a few recordings of the original 13-instrument score have been issued. Finally, Copland scored the missing portions of the original score for full orchestra in the 1950's to enable the Graham company to perform the complete ballet with full orchestra. To my knowledge the only recording of this complete full orchestration was by Slatkin & St Louis Symphony.

Phenby

Link to comment

I've only seen Appalachian Spring (Graham company, long ago) and Billy the Kid (can't remember who). I felt I was missing something and should have been appreciating both more than I was. This might have been because I'm not that fond of Americana. But even now it's not music I find it possible to listen to for very long. :)

What are current thoughts about Copland as a composer for dance? Who, currently, is keeping these works alive?

Link to comment
Just a brief note on the score which may interest.

Copland's Appalachian Spring in its original form for Graham was scored for 13 instruments.

And the reason for this reportedly was that the theatre was so small that there wasn't room for a conventional ballet orchestra.

I personally like the music (then again, I also like Rodeo). I had a chance to hear the Colorado Symphony perform Appalachian Spring in its original 13 instrument form a few months ago (with Jeffrey Kahane both conducting and playing the piano parts).

The Colorado Ballet did Appalachian Spring several years ago, but it was probably a one-shot deal. Both of the male dancers (Gregory Gonzalez and Meelis Pakri) have since retired.

Link to comment

A question for those with access to the old Ballet Review editions: I am aware that Graham suggested the title... and that the piece was originally titled something like "ballet for Martha"?? I assumed the title came afterwards... is this a misunderstanding on my part? Did Graham suggest the subject and then Copeland write the music? Is there a connection between Appalachian folk music and the melodies of Appalachian Spring? I ask because in a recent NYer article on Pete Seeger, he suggests that his father might have influenced the composition, and to me this seems unlikely if the name came after the composition.

Link to comment

I heard Copland speak about his work with Graham at a lecture in the late 1970's. I got the impression that he'd told many of these stories before, but he said that although he often used materials he'd already been working on for dance commissions, he started from scratch with Appalachian Spring, which I think was originally just called ballet for Martha. His comment was that she was "so marked" that he couldn't just stitch together existing materials -- he had to make something as specific as she was.

I don't know anything about a Seeger connection, but all these artists were in and out of each others lives all the time -- no one was hermetically sealed.

Link to comment
n a recent NYer article on Pete Seeger, he suggests that his father might have influenced the composition, and to me this seems unlikely if the name came after the composition.

As Sandy notes, the musicians were in a close-knit circle, particularly if Copland was seeking out folk melodies, especially if Graham had such a firm idea of the ballet she was about to make. No reason I can see why the title had to arrive early. After all, newspaper headlines are almost always the last part of the article to be written.

Link to comment

Here are a few highlights from Wayne D. Shirley's Ballet Review article:

Erick Hawkins suggested commissioning Copland. Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge wrote Copland but didn’t mention a subject or title. The commission was to be performed in Pittsfield, Mass. Copland wrote back that before definitely committing himself, he “ought to know the subject matter of the dance piece, how long it should be, set for how many instruments, how soon it must be ready, etc.” Sprague wrote Graham saying that because other pieces would be on the program, the work should be not longer than a half an hour, and she wanted it to be “true chamber music,” for at most 10 or 12 instruments. She recommended “a small orchestra with one instrument of each kind, both wind and string, with piano.”

Graham’s script bore no title except “NAME?.” and differed somewhat in plot and characterization from its final form. Shirley writes: “But . . the note the script sounds is the note that Copand was to catch.” Copland suggested a few changes which Graham made. When Graham received Copland’s score she described it in a letter to Coolidge as “Clear, open, and essentially Copland.” According a letter written by Erick Hawkins, “Ballet for Martha” – Copland’s working title – became "Appalachian Spring" when Graham read Hart Crane’s poem, “The Dance.”

“O Appalachian Spring!”

The program was switched to the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Auditorium in D.C., where the score of Apollon Musagete had first been performed, because wartime gas rationing had hurt recent atttendance in Pittsfield.

There is more information at the bottom of this page.

Link to comment
Just a gorgeous score!

Yes, I have always thought so; and I have felt that Copland is too underrated as a ballet composer. For the best scores written especially for dance, Tchaikovsky is my first choice and Copland follows as a close second. I hear the score often over the radio.

A quote from Graham's autobiography "Blood Memory";

"When Aaron first presented me with the music its title was 'Ballet for Martha'--simple, and as direct as the Shaker theme that runs through it. I took some words from the poetry of Hart Crane and retitled it 'Appalachian Spring'. When Aaron appeared inWashington for a rehearsal, before the October 30, 1944 premiere, he said to me, "Martha, what have you named the ballet?' And when I told him he asked, Does it have anything to do with the ballet?' 'No,' I said, 'I just like the title".

Link to comment

Regarding the query of Amy Reusch concerning the use of folk material in Appalachian Spring only the Shaker melody 'Tis the gift to be simple' was employed.

I agree with atm711 regarding Copland's scores for the ballet, they're terrifically entertaining, at least the three hits: Billy the Kid (1938), Rodeo (1942), and Appalachian Spring (1944). His three other original ballet scores rather missed the mark: Grogh (1924), Hear Ye! Hear Ye! (1934), and Dance Panels (1963). Three out of six isn't bad. Of course many of his concert scores have been used for ballet purposes, some famously so like Robbins' Clarinet Concerto.

I'm surprised no one brought up the specter of Nureyev vis-a-vis Appalachian Spring. The last time I remember the Graham/Copland ballet receiving much press was when Rudolph visited. I had the impression he wasn't well received.

Shameful confession. In the late 1970's Aaron Copland came to the Music Department of my University to be Artist-in-Residence for a few weeks. As I was then considered one of the more talented conposition students in the music department (where my dance classes were considered at best a waste, at worst heresy) I was given the honor of escorting him around the campus during his stay. At that time his music was in very low esteem among aspiring composers. We all aspired to become another Boulez, Stockhausen, or Xenakis. Dissonance or Nothing! Every faculty and student performer was to play Copland's music for his stay. I was distinctly aloof from all this focus. So I spent all my time in converation with Copland asking him about long-dead composers he had encountered early in his career. Even after his visit I wrote with more questions which he kindly answered. Thirty years later I'm sorry I didn't ask him about his own career and show a little interest. Today I have so many questions for Aaron.

Ah, youth!

PHENBY

Link to comment

I don't have the NYer article in hand, but in it Pete Seeger suggested that his father, with his interest in Appalachian folk music, had perhaps influenced Copeland in his composition of Appalachian Spring. If Copeland didn't know of the "Appalachian" in the title until just before it opened, then it seems the connection between Copeland's composition and Appalachian folk music is slight. The shaker tune isn't considered Appalachian, is it?

I'm almost sorry Graham choreographed the piece, because I think it makes it difficult for anyone else to use it for dance. Why I don't feel this about Swan Lake, I don't know... perhaps because there have been many variations of Swan Lake? And I guess Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux isn't Swan Lake... Of course, a Graham piece to Tchaikovsky seems very very very wrong...

Link to comment

Here is a map of the Appalachians. As you can see, it encompasses parts of Pennsylvania and Ohio, states where the Shakers had settlements.

Now as for the folks in the ballet, they sure as heck were NOT Shakers. Shakers didn't have weddings. Men and women lived separately. As beautiful a melody as Simple Gifts is, it doesn't belong here. It is the demographic equivalent of an anachronism.

I like Appalachian Spring (and will seek it out in the chamber arrangement), Copland's "greatest hits" ballets and his other music with which I'm familiar. I don't know the works phenby mentions as "missing the mark." Do you think they work as independent scores, phenby?

Link to comment

Grogh was Copland's apprentice work, intended for the Swedish Ballet. Never produced as a ballet, Copland recycled most of the music in a concert work entitled Dance Symphony. It doesn't sound a lot like the Copland we all know (very French in harmony) but I like the music just the same. It might have played well in its time and place (Paris 1924) but the ballet libretto was so corny it's no wonder the score had to be shelved.

Hear Ye Hear Ye was choreographed by Ruth Page. I don't think its production (1934) ran more than one season, but I don't have the impression many ballets of Page ever did. Critical reception was poor. Copland never allowed the work to be published or performed in his lifetime. The music sounds like Copland, some jazz influence. Least interesting of his ballet scores.

Dance Panels was an abstract score commissioned by Robbins, who rejected the result. I'm not sure if it was ever used for it's intended balletic purposes. It's undoubtedly one of Copland's least performed works. Sounds like Copland (late Copland; more dissonant than his mid-life works) in every measure but nothing really sticks. Not bad, just not memorable.

You can talk miles around the topic of what makes a work of art great, be it ballet, music, literature, graphic arts, etc. I have read many scholarly disserations, sat through way too many interminable lectures. This one's use of forced perspective, that one's harmony, another's narrative technique. For me, what it comes down to is this; some few special works have a way of finding a permanent presence in the memory, a presence that compells re-experiencing. Returning to Copland, I could recall parts of the three famous ballets after I first heard each. I've listened to the above scores more than once in my life (though none too recently). I can't remember a single note.

PHENBY

Link to comment

The exact quote from Alec Wilkinson's profile on Pete Seeger in the 17 April 2006 issue of The New Yorker is "Charles [seeger's father] liked Appalachian music--Seeger said that he may have inspired Copland to write "Appalachian Spring."

Link to comment
I'm almost sorry Graham choreographed the piece, because I think it makes it difficult for anyone else to use it for dance.

I have wished that a REAL ballet choreographer would use the score; I would have loved to see what a Robbins, Loring, Kidd or deMille would do with the music.

Link to comment
Now as for the folks in the ballet, they sure as heck were NOT Shakers. Shakers didn't have weddings. Men and women lived separately. As beautiful a melody as Simple Gifts is, it doesn't belong here. It is the demographic equivalent of an anachronism.

.... I'm just wondering, did Shaker melodies travel out beyond the Shaker communes? It is a nice tune. For some reason, at some time in my life I was taught different lyrics to the melody ("Dance then, wherever you may be for I am the Lord of the Dance said He and I'll lead you all, wherever you may be and I'll lead you all in the Dance said He" is about all I remember)[since having made this post, I've discovered those lyrics came about circa 1963, but my question still stands.] Is it remotely concievable that the tune might have been used by non Shakers at a wedding?

Link to comment
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...