Copland

[ardcarp]

The first programme gave a good overview of the 'phases' in Copland's career, showing how he arrived at a decision sometimes to adopt a simpler American-sounding style.

[richardfinegold]

I always find it ironic that the Composer whose style is the most recognizably American ran afoul of the HUAC

[DracoM]

[Serial_Apologist]

I always find it ironic that the Composer whose style is the most recognizably American ran afoul of the HUAC

I'm not a big fan, though there was a huge amount to admire about Copland: his support for Latin America and its fine composers, but by no means unconnected the political positions he took in the 30s and 40s, when it was, maybe? more possible to take such positions in the US - the 30s under the New Deal at any rate. There is probably some ironic tortuous nationalism in that musical route, one that mirrored the Soviet composers struggling to comply with the tortuous about-faces of Stalinism's aesthetic henchmen, whose creed had already turned Marxist internationalism into its Russian opposite, all in the name complied with by the western Communist Parties of "saving the Soviet Union", to be turned into "peaceful co-existence", and those same parties into reformist parties, eventually. I haven't worked it all out, honest yer honour - just thinking it through. America between the wars was in many ways still a new country; Russia comparatively an old civilisation carrying its own load, as it still is: there some of the differences lie, of course.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I always find it ironic that the Composer whose style is the most recognizably American ran afoul of the HUAC

Yes - in his own way really a patriot in the non-Trumpian sense of the word .But did he overdo those fourths and fifths?

[eighthobstruction]

....really enjoyed Mondays Piano Sonata, and Our Town (which I then watched on Utube....1940....simpler forerunner to It's a Wonderful Life 1946 ....)....

[cloughie]

I see Rodeo was down for today - at least they’re playing it complete! Mind you I’m probably the only Forum member that likes it!

[Ein Heldenleben]

I see Rodeo was down for today - at least they’re playing it complete! Mind you I’m probably the only Forum member that likes it!

No I like it . Even like the Lincoln Portrait...

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes - in his own way really a patriot in the non-Trumpian sense of the word .But did he overdo those fourths and fifths?

It's the corniness of the grandstanding, on the one hand, and the sentimentality, on the other, that also leaves me cold. My preference for a modernish American composer idiom is for Virgil Thompson, one of whose borrowed folk tunes - might have been from "Louisiana Story"? - was also used in Copland's Rodeo, heard today. All that said, Maya Angelou's rendition of "Lincoln Portrait" brought pleasure for the first time in hearing the work - my version having the male speaker competing for the very demagoguery she beautifully avoids against the orchestral grandiosity. I have managed to avoid the Thatcher version.

[Suffolkcoastal]

The folk tune you are thinking of S-A is 'Old-Paint'. Virgil Thomson used it before Copland for the film score for 'The Plough that broke the Plains'. Roy Harris also uses one of the folk tunes from Hoe-Down in his roughly contemporary 4th Symphony (Folksong Symphony). Many of the US composers who cam to prominance in the 1930s & 40's have either never featured as individual composers of the week or have not appeared for 15-20 years or more. Creston, Diamond, Hanson, Harris, Mennin, Persichetti, Piston, Schuman & Sessions just for starters.

[Bryn]

The folk tune you are thinking of S-A is 'Old-Paint'. Virgil Thomson used it before Copland for the film score for 'The Plough that broke the Plains'. Roy Harris also uses one of the folk tunes from Hoe-Down in his roughly contemporary 4th Symphony (Folksong Symphony). Many of the US composers who cam to prominance in the 1930s & 40's have either never featured as individual composers of the week or have not appeared for 15-20 years or more. Creston, Diamond, Hanson, Harris, Mennin, Persichetti, Piston, Schuman & Sessions just for starters.

I have not checked the others but Roy Harris has certainly been the subject of at least one CotW:

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio3/cotw/cotw.pdf

[Ein Heldenleben]

It's the corniness of the grandstanding, on the one hand, and the sentimentality, on the other, that also leaves me cold. My preference for a modernish American composer idiom is for Virgil Thompson, one of whose borrowed folk tunes - might have been from "Louisiana Story"? - was also used in Copland's Rodeo, heard today. All that said, Maya Angelou's rendition of "Lincoln Portrait" brought pleasure for the first time in hearing the work - my version having the male speaker competing for the very demagoguery she beautifully avoids against the orchestral grandiosity. I have managed to avoid the Thatcher version.

Is there really a Thatcher version ? Tell me it ain’t so. I was trying to work out who the narrator was this lunchtime , thinking what a sensitive job they were doing.

[Suffolkcoastal]

I have not checked the others but Roy Harris has certainly been the subject of at least one CotW:

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio3/cotw/cotw.pdf

If he has, it would have to be pre-1980s & I don't think there was enough of his works recorded to fill a complete COTW before the late 1980's, He was included within a collective COTW 'William Schuman & friends' (which I note isn't listed, about 20-25 years ago as were Piston & Hanson but not individually individually, some of them also appeared in: American Composers of Today: American Pupils of Nadia Boulanger, American Symphonists;
I think that some of the composers listed in the COTW figures have only appeared in this capacity too. Chavez & Reveultas for example were joint COTW not individually.

I don't think, like most data that R3 provide these days, that their list is particularly accurate.

[burning dog]

Is there really a Thatcher version ? Tell me it ain’t so. I .

I'm sure Mrs. Thatcher would have altered it!

Here's what she meant to say in 1979

"Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring error. Where there is faith, may we bring doubt. And where there is hope, may we bring despair."

[Serial_Apologist]

Is there really a Thatcher version ? Tell me it ain’t so. I was trying to work out who the narrator was this lunchtime , thinking what a sensitive job they were doing.

http://bufvc.ac.uk/tvandradio/lbc/index.php/segment/000370021201119723