Aaron Copland's music for chorus reveals his stylistic range, from accessible to challenging, simple to grand, from student works to his mature style. Copland's only full-length opera, The Tender Land (1952-1954), tells the story of a young girl, Laurie Moss, who grows up on a Midwestern farm and is about to leave home. Two numbers from this opera have become choral favorites. In "The Promise of Living," at the close of the first act, three generations of the Moss family and their hired hands sing a hymn of gratitude for life, the land, and the spring harvest. "Stomp Your Foot" is a rousing square dance number sung by the entire cast at Laurie's high school graduation party. *
More than most twentieth-century American composers, Aaron Copland developed a musical style that seemed to capture the American essence. To be sure, he drew heavily on American folk themes and hymn tunes for many of his most famous works, but he created music that was distinctly and recognizably his own.
"He was born in New York City to Russian Jewish immigrants, was taught to play the piano by his older sister, and had determined to become a composer by the time he was 15. Like many young American artists, writers and musicians of the 1920s, Copland spent several years in Paris mastering his craft. He was the first American to study composition with Nadia Boulanger, and it was Boulanger who gave him his first major commission on his return to the States.
"After experimenting with a number of styles, from jazz to more abstract music, Copland came to believe that composers were in danger of losing their essential connection to the music-loving public, of writing only for themselves. He began working toward music that was at once new and accessible, producing his best-known and most frequently performed scores during a highly productive period from the mid 1930s through the 1940s. He developed and refined a distinctly American musical idiom, of which he later said, 'I no longer feel the need of seeking out conscious Americanism. Because we live here and work here, we can be certain that when our music is mature, it will also be American in quality.'” **
* Excerpts from the Aaron Copland Centennial Program Notes, by Jennifer DeLapp, Assistant Professor of Music, Musicology/Ethnomusicology Division, at the University of Maryland, College Park.
** From
Program Notes, The Providence Singers, 3 p.m. Sunday, February 29, 2004
