ASPECTS OF AMERICA
Grace” comprises celebratory brass fanfares, beneath which the broad phrases of the hymn unfold in the orchestra. In 2006, Hailstork arranged the Fanfare for organ and brass quintet, and five years later orchestrated it for the Virginia Symphony Orchestra conducted by JoAnn Falletta, who premiered and recorded it in May 2011. Ten years later, the Fanfare on“ Amazing Grace” was arranged by Master Gunnery Sergeant Don Patterson for“ The President’ s Own” United States Marine Band and broadcast worldwide on January 20, 2021 as part of the music for the Inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, and cymbals( pair).
RICHARD E. RODDA, a former faculty member at Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Institute of Music, provides program notes for many American orchestras, concert series, and festivals.
Aaron Copland
Born November 14, 1900, in New York City, New York Died December 2, 1990, in North Tarrytown, New York
MVT. IV FROM SYMPHONY NO. 3 [ 1944 – 1946 ]
Aaron Copland’ s music reflected his own personality: plain, straightforward, honest and idealistic. Born in Brooklyn, he was a true product of the American melting pot. His parents, Russian Jews, had emigrated from Eastern Europe. His mother, Sarah Mittenthal, who had grown up in Peoria, IL and Dallas, TX, probably first inspired his fascination with the great American open spaces. In his early 20s, Copland traveled to France to receive a European grounding in composition from the renowned pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. Upon returning to America, he was initially lured by the modernist international style inspired by Stravinsky.
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The coming of the Depression, however, ignited Copland’ s sense of musical mission. He became part of the group of“ New Deal” artists clustered around the photographer Alfred Stieglitz( including Georgia O’ Keefe, Ansel Adams, and Hart Crane) who, taking their motto“ Affirm America” as their credo, sought to express the American democratic ideal in their art. Copland decided to address his music not to the elite few but to the general music-lover and“ to see if I couldn’ t say what I had to say in the simplest possible terms.”
Early in 1944, his devoted supporter Serge Koussevitzky, music director of the Boston Symphony, extended a commission for a major orchestral work. Always a slow and painstaking craftsman, Copland barely finished the Symphony No. 3 in time for its premiere by that other BSO on October 18, 1946. Born during World War II, it arrived in time to celebrate the Allied victory, and its heroic, affirmative tone ensured its success. Adding to the Symphony’ s grandeur was his incorporation of his Fanfare for the Common Man in the finale.
The finale is blazed forth by brass and percussion, serving as dynamic preparation for the work’ s longest and most dramatic movement. A quick swirling theme grows
out of it and generates a dancing fugato. Eventually the Fanfare joins in the dance. This music grows in frenzy until stopped dead in its tracks by loud, harshly dissonant chords. Tentatively, the woodwinds resume the dance, which gradually builds to a powerful restatement of the Fanfare. And near the end, we hear again, in the strings, the simple theme with which the symphony began. Shedding his usual love of understatement, Copland closes his victory symphony with a grandeur that must have delighted Koussevitzky, just as it still delights audiences today.
Instrumentation: Three flutes( third doubling piccolo), piccolo, three oboes( third doubling English horn), two clarinets, E- flat clarinet, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, tenor drum, ratchet, suspended cymbal, anvil, bass drum, glockenspiel, claves, cymbals( pair), wood block, xylophone, chimes, snare drum, tam tam, two harps, piano, celeste, and strings.
JANET E. BEDELL is a program annotator and feature writer who writes for Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Caramoor Festival of the Arts, and other musical organizations.
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