The American Sound: Colorado at 150

O Beautiful Unity was commissioned to recognize the 150th anniversary of Colorado and the 250th anniversary of the US.  The piece has two primary musical materials.  The first is a lyrical eight-note melody inspired by the lyricism often found in early 20th-century American orchestral music (such as that by Aaron Copland and his contemporaries).  The second set of material is drawn from “America the Beautiful,” in honor of the fact that Katherine Lee Bates wrote its text inspired by a trip to Colorado.  Throughout the piece, strands of both melodies arise in different key areas and tempos, at times in coordination with one another, and at times in greater conflict.  Partway through the piece, the lowest voices of the orchestra enter with an incredibly slow rendition of the “America the Beautiful” melody in its original key of F major, gradually increasing in tempo as the upper voices of the orchestra continue with their previous material.  As this melody reaches its peak, the upper voices reach a compromise.  The lyrical melody and a second rendition of “America the Beautiful” (in C major) coexist with the F major rendition, along with additional harmonic and melodic material.  Despite their differences, they arrive in a harmonic space that is primarily concordant, representing the hope of healthy compromise and collaboration. 

In 1947 after conducting a performance of the original version of Copland’s Third Symphony, Leonard Bernstein wrote to Copland to say “Sweetie, the end is a sin.  You’ve got to change.”  Perhaps Bernstein took issue with the intensity and length of what Copland expressed, and preferred a piece that was slightly more measured and less effusive.  After reading Bernstein’s quote, I found myself reflecting on what kind of ending felt appropriate in 2026.  Since we find ourselves in a different time than Bernstein and Copland did, it is my hope that the piece can acknowledge the tension that many Americans are currently experiencing while still looking to the future with hope, energy, and optimism. 

Tchaikovsky’s last three symphonies, two of his solo concertos, Romeo and Juliet, and Swan Lake are surely mainstays of the traditional and popular symphonic repertoire, whose inimitable melodies no doubt most come to mind to music lovers everywhere.  To this must be added the American contemporary mania for his ballet, The Nutcracker, at Christmastime and the potboiler 1812 Overture on Independence Day.  Notwithstanding the depth and breadth of his large oeuvre—including chamber music, songs, operas, other overtures, ballets, and concertos, solo piano works, and more–his evergreen Serenade for Strings, too, takes a secure place with the aforementioned popular audience favorites.  It’s an eternal favorite, and is perhaps best known for its use by the great choreographer George Balanchine in his ballet, Serenade (1934). 

Tchaikovsky’s first mature compositions stem from 1867, with his initial widespread recognition coming with Romeo and Juliet in 1869.  The 1870s were years of great fecundity, and saw such masterpieces as the ballet Swan Lake, the first piano concerto and his violin concerto, Eugene Onegin, and his fourth symphony.  And more.  

After all of this success, in the Fall of 1880 he started sketching out rough designs for a multi-movement work—in his mind not clearly a string quartet or a symphony—and working quickly he soon finished what had become a serenade for string orchestra.   

In a letter to his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, he wrote that he “. . . composed from an innate impulse; that is something which arises from having freedom to think, and is not devoid of true worth.”  Cast in four movements, it received its première later that fall at the Moscow Conservatory, in a private performance as a surprise for the visiting composer.  It soon enjoyed widespread performance, making its way to New York by 1885. The composer himself conducted it at a performance in Baltimore in 1891.  Its popularity and reputation has remained ensconced in the repertoire. 

The first of its four movements, Pezzo in forma di sonatina, was conceived as a conscious reflection of the style of Mozart in the form of a classical sonatina, including a slow introduction.  Mozart was Tchaikovsky’s favorite composer and he penned this pastiche in his honor.  The Serenade may be scored for strings alone, but the introductory andante begins with a muscular, powerful mien, with rich, full scoring for the strings, including double stops galore.  Tchaikovsky loved a big, full string sound, and in this case averred that the more the better!  The simple opening motif is repeated several times, each in a nuanced different scoring in the best Tchaikovsky manner, before the thirty-seven bars come to a pianissimo end. 

The fast movement proper ensues immediately, and the first theme, while not a waltz per se, displays the familiar Tchaikovsky mastery of its pulsing compound meter.  After some forays into darker keys, the second theme (in G Major) clearly is arrived at, and in this case is a scampering affair in fast, repeated notes.   As is often common in a sonatina, there no development and after the second theme has had its due, the first theme returns, followed by the second theme, this time in the textbook main key.  An abbreviated return of the opening andante concludes the work, but notice the sly chromatic allusion to darker matters just before the end. 

The second movement is a charming little waltz, a dance style in which Tchaikovsky was sans pareil.   The simple tune, mostly just a scale, shows how much the composer could do with the simplest of materials—not unlike a great chef.  After the usual diversion in the middle of the movement, the main theme returns and cadences gently.  Throughout, the composer makes frequent and enchanting use of the little hesitations and stop times so typical of the graceful choreography of the waltz. 

élégie is perhaps the most substantive of the four movements, and opens with more of Tchaikovsky’s adroit use of simple scales as melodic material.  Its lush, close voicing, and somewhat ambiguous tonality gives it a rather antique aura.  It soon seems to settle on the relative minor key, but then quickly moves to D Major for the following animato section.  There, the winsome tune (again, a simple scale) is nothing so much as an implied vocal “serenade” with triplet pizzicatos in the rest of the orchestra evoking a “singer’s” guitar accompaniment.  Various other sections take up the tune in artful variations, with beguiling counterpoint, until a little cadenza-like passage in the first violins takes us to the recap of the slow introduction.  But Tchaikovsky is not finished yet.  In a manner so familiar from his symphonies, he extends the passage, and introduces his familiar “throbbing” cross-rhythms over a sustained bass.  Then, everyone ascends into the acoustic stratosphere to end as high and soft as possible on harmonics. 

The last movement has a rather slow introduction, too, starting in the high, soft vein as the previous ending—this time with mutes.  After some brief musical musing in a rather subdued mood, the “spirited” movement proper begins. Both slow introduction and the following allegro are based upon Russian traditional melodies. The first fast tune is a rather simple little one, whose dance-like character is worked through thoroughly before yielding to the second idea– a somewhat more lyrical one.  Tchaikovsky wrings a lot out of these two little melodies, adding some gracious countermelodies along the way, before a return to the rich, full slow introduction to the first movement rounds the whole thing off.  After which a scampering coda based on the first Russian tune races to the end, with the usual Tchaikovsky mastery of a scintillating dash to the conclusion.  

–Wm. E. Runyan 

Aaron Copland is generally considered America’s greatest composer.  That is, it is he, through his compositions and through his essays, books, lectures, and other thoughts on music, who has done more than any other individual to establish a corpus of “serious” music in this country that has largely defined an “American Sound.”  He lived a long life; influenced generations of young composers; advanced the cause of art music in this country; and composed music that has delighted millions in the audiences of ballet, chamber music, symphonic music, radio, television, and the movies.  The son of Jewish immigrants, he lived for most of his life in New York City—or close by—but assimilated so much of the disparate elements of our culture that he came to be considered as representative of all of it.  In his music one finds jazz, ethnic, western, folk, intellectual, and populist elements and references—and much more: Cuban, Mexican, and European Continental.  But his wide-ranging intellect easily synthesized it all into an inimitable style (or small group of stylistic voices) with which his music spoke with a clear and unified expression.  

His greatest musical influence was undoubtedly the grande dame of teachers, Mme. Nadia Boulanger, with whom he studied in Paris during the early 1920s.   Teacher of generations of distinguished performers and composers, she counted Copland as her greatest pupil.   Of course, while spending those years in Paris—along with the so-called “lost” generation (Copland was assuredly not part of it)—he was exposed to a wealth of musical styles and composers.   Of them, Stravinsky was the other great influence upon Copland.  Upon his return to the USA his early dalliance with jazz and “symphonic jazz” was more or less replaced by a severe, often dissonant style—one not often associated with Copland by much of today’s audiences, but definitely a life-long option for him in his compositions.  During the 1930s his interest in socialist perspectives crystallized for him and he turned to a more accessible, populist style that has come to be his hallmark for mainstream America.  His ballets, Billy the Kid, Rodeo, and Appalachian Spring, as well as his music for the films, Of Mice and Men and Our Town and other works all endeared him to a wide audience and made his reputation as composer of “American” music.  He continued that trend with the Lincoln Portrait, music for the film adaptation of Steinbeck’s Red Pony, and even wrote a clarinet concerto for the great Benny Goodman.  How mainstream American can you get?   But about 1950 both Copland’s musical style and his popular place in society took a distinct turn.  His earlier support of socialist causes (he supported the American Communist Party in the election of 1936) made him a target of Red Hysteria and Senator McCarthy.   The Republican Party cancelled a performance of his Lincoln Portrait for Ike’s inauguration, and other indignities followed him for a few years.  His music began—but not completely—to return to the severe and dissonant basis that informed his early work, and he occasionally disappointed those who commissioned works thinking they were going to get another Appalachian Spring.  By 1972, in his own words, it was “as if someone had simply turned off a faucet,” and he gave up composition completely.   He died in 1990 of Alzheimer’s disease. 

His Third Symphony is his largest and grandest symphonic work (the other works called “symphony” are either not actual symphonies, or else smaller in concept or differ in design).  It has been called the most significant symphony written by an American in the twentieth century.  He started writing it in 1944 and finished it in 1946, and its mood clearly reflects the confidence, optimism, and sense of destiny that pervaded much of the American ethos at that time.   Copland, himself, characterized it as “fat” rather than his usual “lean.”  It’s a big, serious work that is largely based upon his immortal Fanfare for the Common Man, one of a number of wartime fanfares from a variety of composers commissioned by Eugene Goossens of the Cincinnati Symphonic in 1942.  Only his has survived on concert programs—and everywhere else.   It is cast in the traditional four movements, with the fast scherzo movement coming second, and the slow movement third.  It is an intriguing and pleasant game to listen from the very beginning of the symphony for bits and snatches of the iconic melodic intervals of the Fanfare for the Common Man that pervade the work.  Copland is most clever in obscuring the source of the intervals, and the way in which he manipulates them, to create a fabulous artistic unity in all four movements.  One is hardly aware of them—unless listening for them—until one hears the pianissimo flutes and clarinets at the beginning of the last movement.  The brass then play the familiar fanfare and a full-blown development follows in which various derivative themes are heard—some from earlier in other movements.  Finally, the whole work closes with a glorious execution of the fanfare in the full orchestra, carried by the brass.  It’s hard not to thrill to this work.  One ascribes to it feelings that are shared, but inevitably personal, as well.  Leonard Bernstein said it best, perhaps: “The symphony has become an American monument, like the Washington Monument or the Lincoln Memorial.”  

–Wm. E. Runyan