APPALACHIAN SPRING

Paris Puuri

Music History 3

April 19, 2017

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Aaron Copland was born on November 14, 1900, to a Jewish immigrant family in Brooklyn, New

York. The youngest of five children, Copland went on to develop an interest in the piano. Copland was

exposed to ragtime and popular music from a young age. He later studied under Rubin Goldmark, a

respected private music instructor who taught Copland the fundamentals of counterpoint and

composition. At age 20, Copland was the first of many composers to study in France with Nadia

Boulanger. During these early years, he immersed himself in contemporary classical music by attending

performances at the New York Symphony and Brooklyn Academy of Music. He became one of the

century’s foremost composers with highly influential music that had a distinctive blend of classical, folk,

and jazz idioms. Copland became one of the most important American composers of his generation

through his compositions and work for the cause of American music.1

Copland was concerned with crafting sounds that would be seen as “American” in scope;

incorporating a range of styles in his work that included jazz, folk and connections to Latin America. In

some works, he borrowed traditional songs to suggest place and atmosphere. He incorporated Mexican

folk songs in in the orchestral suite El Salon Mexico and cowboy songs in the ballets Billy the Kid and

Rodeo. Some of his most well-known pieces include Piano Variations (1930), The Dance

Symphony (1930), El Salon Mexico (1935), A Lincoln Portrait (1942) and Fanfare for the Common

Man (1942).2

In 1943, Copland traveled to Hollywood to write the music for North Star, based on a story by

Lillian Hellman. While there, the ballet suite Appalachian Spring was commissioned by the Elizabeth

Sprague Coolidge Foundation. Copland received the commission to write a ballet for modern dancer and

choreographer Martha Graham. Graham used Copland’s dissonant and rhythmically complex Piano

Variations (1930) as the music for a solo dance in 1931, and the result was so successful that the

1
Burkholder, J. Peter, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude Palisca. A History of Western Music (New York: W.W.
Norton and Company, 2014), 898.
2
Ibid, 899.
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composer and choreographer looked for an opportunity to collaborate.3 Their chance came in 1942,

when the ballet was commissioned from Copland. The first sketches were made in June 1943 and the

score was completed in the following year in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was teaching at

Harvard University. The ballet Appalachian Spring, with its original scoring for thirteen instruments, was

first produced in the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. on October 30,

1944.4 The title Appalachian Spring from a poem “The Dance” by Hart Crane was given to the work the

day before the first performance. Copland was often amused when people told him he captured the

beauty of the Appalachians in his music. The ballet was a great success, and the music won Copland the

Pulitzer Prize and the New York Music Critic’s Circle Award. He later arranged the piece as a suite for full

orchestra, premiered on October 4. 1945, in New York, and in that form it has become his most widely

known work.

The quiet opening of the ballet presents violins and winds. The closely-knit triads within widely

spaced textures in the beginning invokes the Westward expansion and the vastness of the American

West. The ballet depicts the day of a wedding celebration at a Pennsylvania farmhouse in the early 20th

century. There is a lively general dance, then a prayer scene, and then a pas de deux danced by the

young couple.5 The sweet interlude erupts into joyous dancing as the wedding is celebrated. A fast

allegro begins with a sudden burst of unison strings in A major arpeggios. A lively dance in A Major

recalls fiddle music. Against this, the composer introduces a four-note motto in longer notation derived

from the introduction. Still, the couple remain apprehensive about their new life, and the music carries a

somber undertone.

3
Burkholder, J. Peter and Claude Palisca. Norton Anthology of Western Music, (New York: W.W. Norton
and Company, 2014), 525.
4
Butterworth, Neil. The Music of Aaron Copland. (London: Toccata Press, 1985), 100.
5
Schwarm, Betsy. “Encyclopedia Britannica.” Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. March 16, 2016.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Appalachian-Spring.
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The Moderato section of the piece presents a slower dance for the bride and the groom, and

then goes into another fast section that suggests square dances and country fiddlers. In the Ballet, the

preacher and his congregation join the couple in a barn dance. The Subito allegro section is a solo dance

for the bride and is derived from the music of the allegro section heard earlier in the piece. The piece

then slows down to return to music reminiscent of the introduction.6

An emotional highpoint of the score is a melody based on a traditional Shaker song, “Simple

Gifts.” Copland begins a set of variations on the shaker hymn ‘Tis the Gift to Be Simple, by Elder Joseph

Brackett. The Shakers were established in England, and its members fled to the American colonies in

1774 to escape religious persecution. They lived in communal groups according to strong ideals of hard

work, frugality, chastity, and separation from the world. The pervasive value of simplicity was reflected

in many aspects of their lives and in the large amount of music composed within their communities.7

Shaker hymns were used in religious services, sung in unaccompanied unison while most of the

congregation danced. Copland discovered the tune in a published collection of Shaker hymns and

though it ideally suited Graham’s scenario because of its links to dance and to rural America.8 The

Shaker melody first appears in the clarinet and is followed by four variations. The second variation is a

step lower with the melody in the oboe. The third variation gives the melody to trombones and violas.

The melody is half as fast and omits the second half of the tune. The melody passes to the trumpet in C

major in the fourth variation. The end of the section presents the entire orchestra playing the first half

of the theme over a slowly descending bass line. “All of the variations are so remarkably different, and

flow into one another with such straightforwardness that they never seem unoriginal or worn-out.”9

6
Butterworth, Neil, 101.
7
Moughalian, Sato. "Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring and the Traditional Music That Inspired It”
Perspectivesensemble.com. April 8, 2018.
8
Burkholder, J. Peter and Claude Palisca, 526.
9
Felsenfeld, Daniel. Charles Ives and Aaron Copland: A Listener’s Guide. (Cambridge: Amadeus Press,
2004), 70.
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The quiet ending presents muted strings in a hushed, prayer-like chorale passage. The ending is

reminiscent of the opening music. At last, taking courage from those around them, the bride and groom

stand in their new home. Copland’s score concludes as serenely as it began.

By the 1970’s, Copland completely stopped writing original music, with few exceptions. Most of

his time was spent conducting and reworking older compositions. In 1983, Copland conducted his last

symphony. He traveled the world in an attempt to elevate the status of American music abroad, and to

increase its popularity at home. He organized concerts series and composer groups and promoted works

of his predecessors, including Charles Ives, Chavez, and Virgil Thomas. His work as a teacher at

Tanglewood, Harvard, and the New School for Social Research gained him a following of devoted

musicians. He influenced many younger American composers, among them Leonard Bernstein, Elliott

Carter, and David Del Tredici. As a scholar, he wrote more than sixty articles and essays on music, as well

as five books. Aaron Copland become one of the most important figures in twentieth-century American

music. On December 20, 1990, Aaron Copland died less than a month after his ninetieth birthday in

North Tarrytown, New York.10

Long after its composition, Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring remains both the composer's

exemplary masterpiece and one of the definitive ballets of the twentieth century. Appalachian Spring

captures the essence of an ideal America. Copland’s use of transparent, widely spaced sonorities, empty

octaves, and fifths, and diatonic dissonances creates a distinctive sound that has been frequently

imitated and has become the quintessential musical emblem of America, used especially in music for

film and television.11 Copland’s Appalachian Spring gives listeners a sense of the optimism and courage,

the vigor and energy, and the deep wellspring of faith and hope that we like to regard as characteristic

of the American experience.

10
Felsenfeld, Daniel, 32.
11
Burkholder, J. Peter, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude Palisca, 899.
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Bibliography

Burkholder, J. Peter, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude Palisca. A History of Western Music, 9th ed. New York:
W.W. Norton and Company, 2014.

Burkholder, J. Peter, and Claude Palisca. Norton Anthology of Western Music, 7th ed. New York: W.W
Norton and Company, 2014.

Butterworth, Neil. The Music of Aaron Copland. London: Toccata Press, 1985.

Felsenfeld, Daniel. Charles Ives and Aaron Copland: A Listener’s Guide. Cambridge: Amadeus Press, 2004.

Moughalian, Sato. "Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring and the Traditional Music That Inspired It”
Perspectivesensemble.com. April 8 2018. http://perspectivesensemble.com/blog/perspectives-
ensemble-notes/aaron-coplands-appalachian-spring-and-the-traditional-music-that-inspired-it/.

Schwarm, Betsy. “Encyclopedia Britannica.” Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. March 16, 2016.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Appalachian-Spring