Music Composition DUMmIES

from one movement to the next, almost as though he was presenting an

entirely different song. These lurches from one symphonic movement to the

next were incredibly disorienting to 19th-century audiences, who were used

to being gently and harmoniously led through a composition from the begin-

ning to the end.

The binding energy of his orchestral compositions is much more rhythmic

than harmonic, and the driving pulsations of The Rite of Springmarked a

crucial change in the nature of Western music. Stravinsky, however, left it

to others to use that change, for after completing his Chinese opera The

Nightingale, he turned aside from writing large orchestral pieces to concen-

trate on small chamber orchestra music and piano compositions.

Aaron Copland, 1900–1990 ..........................................................................

If ever a classical composer could be said to have defined the sound of

“American” music, Aaron Copland has to be at the top of the list. His music

was the aural equivalent of the movie western: big, bold, short on subtlety

and long on orchestral exclamation points. He was a true pioneer of American

music and showed the world how to write classical music in an American

way. He was an American composer in a time when Americans were rarely

recognized as composers in the music world.

Although his earliest work was heavily influenced by the French impression-

ists, he soon began to develop a personalized style. After experimenting with

jazz rhythms in such works as Music for the Theater(1925) and the Piano

Concerto (1927), Copland turned to more austere and dissonant composi-

tions. Concert pieces such as the Piano Variations (1930) and Statements

(1933-1935) rely on nervous, irregular rhythms, angular melodies, and highly

dissonant harmonies.

Copland’s immense output of Americana-inspired classical music, such as

Fanfare for the Common Man, Rodeo, Billy the Kid, Appalachian Spring, The

Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson, and El Salon Mexico showed other American

composers that they didn’t have to pretend to be European to be taken seri-

ously. Like many composers of his time, he drew heavily on the folk music of

his country, bringing the sound of the Old West into the classical arena. Many

of his compositions, especially Billy the Kid, Fanfare for the Common Man,

and Appalachian Spring, have been used in many movie westerns and, most

recently, parodies of movie westerns. You might think you don’t know

Copland, but you’d have to have been living under a rock for the past 40 years

to have completely missed his music.

Copland’s work had (and still has) a universal appeal that seemed to fit into

anything American. His compositions Hoe-Downand Fanfare for the Common

Manwere reworked in the 1970s by Emerson, Lake & Palmer. In the 1990s, the

Chapter 20: Ten Composers You Should Know About 259