Aaron Copland
Symphony No. 3
Aaron Copland was born in Brooklyn
in 1900 and died in Peekskill, New York in 1990. He composed this work
between 1944 and 1946 on a commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation
using themes he had collected over a period of years. It was first performed
in 1946 by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Serge Koussevitzky.
The score calls for 4 flutes, piccolo, 3 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets,
bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones,
tuba, timpani, percussion, 2 harps, celeste, piano, and strings. Duration
is approximately 38 minutes.
*****
In the twentieth century, the stately
evolution of musical styles accelerated into a full-fledged revolution.
Stravinsky, the century’s greatest master, coursed from Expressionism
to Neoclassicism to Serialism without waiting for his audience to catch
up, and it was a dizzying ride.
Aaron Copland, dean of American composers,
went through stylistic changes of equal magnitude. As a young man he wrote
brash, dissonant, jazz-tinged works. But he came to believe that the relentlessly
increasing complexity of music was alienating listeners, so he performed
a musical about-face: “I felt that it was worth it to see if I couldn’t
say what I had to say in the simplest terms possible.” From the mid-1930s
to the mid-1940s he composed his most famous pieces in this simpler vein,
culminating with Appalachian Spring in 1944.
It was at the end of this period that
the Koussevitzky Foundation commissioned Copland to compose his Third Symphony,
and he took the opportunity to look ahead again. For a decade he had been
composing music for the theater, the ballet, and film scores: music that
told a story. Now he was to compose in an abstract form, and it was time
to move beyond the Americana that had made him so popular.
Copland had composed his Fanfare
for the Common Man in 1942 as part of a wartime project. Its premiere
had caused barely a ripple of interest (its immense popularity would come
years later) but it contained several motivic elements that Copland wanted
to explore further in his Third Symphony. He quotes the Fanfare
note-for-note at the beginning of the symphony’s fourth movement, but
close examination reveals that its melodic and rhythmic motives can be
found in the first three movements, too. In a way, the symphony is a theme-and-variations
where the theme is not heard until late in the piece.
The dramatic first movement is in three
parts: two broad, hymn-like sections using the same material surround a
more animated and brassy section. The second movement is a rather traditional
scherzo with a pastoral Trio. The scherzo sections are restless
and spiky, while the Trio recalls the cowboy music of Copland’s recent
past. The third movement is in the form of a long arch, ABCBA, but it sounds
more like a free-form work because each section seems to evolve organically
from the last. The Finale begins with a soft anticipation of the Fanfare
For the Common Man, followed by the Fanfare itself in its original
scoring for brass and percussion. This serves as an introduction to a sonata
form of terrific invention and buoyant rhythms. In the coda the newer themes
are met with a massive statement of the theme that began the symphony.
Copland said that the work had no story
or program: “I suppose if I forced myself I could invent an ideological
basis for the Third Symphony. But if I did, I’d be bluffing—or at any
rate, adding something ex post facto, something that might or might
not be true but that played no role at the moment of creation.” He did
admit that since it was completed just as World War II was won, it might
“reflect the euphoric spirit of the country at the time.”
No doubt Copland’s new compositional
turn left behind some listeners who expected another Lincoln Portrait
or Rodeo. Such is always the case when a composer feels he has “played
out” a given style. One thing clearly did not change, however: the spirit
of affirmation Copland brought to every work.
—Mark
Rohr, mrohr@comcast.net
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