On the one hand is the puppet-like bassoon of folklore, the Petrushka connection, and on the other, the racy wood-block and xylophone-spiked world of Poulenc. This is X-rated Petrushka.Īnd, of course, the close proximity of Stravinsky can be felt in more than just the motoric rhythmic gyrations of the scene-setting 'Dance of the Servitors'. The dead dance to his tunes, for his pleasure. Grohg is a kind of necrophile Svengali of the dance. But only superficially, only in the sense that it alludes to silent-film melodrama of the macabre. Its inspiration was Nosferatu, as portrayed in the 1921 German horror film. Grohg was the most ambitious undertaking of Copland's Paris years, the Nadia Boulanger years, and is an important piece of the Copland jigsaw. The full, revised score of Copland's first ballet Grohg lay miscatalogued, thought lost, in the Library of Congress until the late 1980s. Sometimes we will feature the same piece interpreted by two different orchestras/conductors. Ocassionally we will hear the same piece in different instrumentation.

These will include orchestral, chamber, and vocal/choral pieces (many lesser-known compositions will be included).

A systematic survey of Copland's complete oeuvre will not be conducted but a generous cross-section of his work will be posted. We will instead deal with the glorious music composed by Mr. His influence on two generations of composers in North America (and worldwide) is considerable and the Coplandisms depicting 'Americana' he created in his beloved ballet scores and in his globally famous Fanfare For The Common Man are still heard today in film and television music (even in TV commercials!).īiographical information on Copland is readily available from other sources (see links) so I will not address this on Fanfare For Aaron Copland. Copland cannot be considered one of the major contributors to American music because Aaron Copland IS American music. Aaron Copland has always been one of my personal musical heroes.

Aaron copland at the river lyrics