Music for the Common Man: Aaron Copland during the Depression and War

266 Pages·2009·2.45 MB·English

by  Elizabeth Bergman Crist

Music for the Common Man
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Music
for the
Aaron Copland
Common
during the
Depression
Man
and War
Elizabeth B. Crist
3
3
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Copyright © 2005 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Crist, Elizabeth Bergman.
Music for the common man : Aaron Copland during the
depression and war / Elizabeth B. Crist
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN ----
1. Copland, Aaron, 1900– 2. Composers—United States—
Biography. I. Title.
ML410.C756C75 2005
78o'.92—dc22 2004029062
Epigraph source: Carl Sandburg, Th e People, Yes
(New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1936), 44.
Publication of this book was supported by the H. Earle Johnson Fund
of the Society for American Music.
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
for Harris, always
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Who shall speak for the people?
who has the answers?
where is the sure interpreter?
who knows what to say?
Who can write the music jazz-classical
smokestacks-geraniums hyacinths-biscuits
now whispering easy
now boom doom crashing angular
now tough monotonous tom tom
Who has enough split-seconds and slow sea-tides?
Carl Sandburg, Th e People, Yes (1936)
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Acknowledgments
although it is typical to begin by extending professional thanks before
moving on to more personal expressions of gratitude, I fi nd it diffi cult to
separate the two, so fortunate am I to have had a host of supportive fac-
ulty, institutions, colleagues, and friends. First and foremost, I am grateful to
a long list of extraordinary teachers, including Daniel R. Melamed, Robert
P. Morgan, and J. Peter Burkholder as well as Rosemary Crawford, Walter
Frisch, Cynthia Gessele, Leon Plantinga, Ellen Rosand, Elaine Sisman, and
the late Mark Tucker.
My work has been funded by the Dena Epstein Award from the Music
Library Association, a yearlong fellowship from the National Endowment
for the Humanities, and various awards from the School of Music, Graduate
School, College of Fine Arts, Vice President for Research, and Vice President
and Provost at the University of Texas at Austin. I thank especially Direc-
tor B. Glenn Chandler, Associate Dean Doug Dempster, Dean Robert Free-
man, and Provost Sheldon Eckland-Olson. Some of these grants enabled me
to spend summers working in the Aaron Copland Collection at the Library
of Congress, where the librarians, particularly Wilda Heiss and Stephanie
Poxon, were unfailingly patient and helpful. At the University of Texas, music
librarian David Hunter has been a pleasure to work with, and Dell A. Hol-
lingsworth of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center has given gen-
erously of her time and expertise.
For permissions to reproduce Copland’s words and music, I thank James
M. Kendrick of the Aaron Copland Fund for Music; Alexis Hart of Brown
Raysman Millstein Felder & Steiner LLP; as well as Jennifer Bilfi eld, Caro-
lyn Kalett, and Frank Korach of Boosey & Hawkes. Anderson Ferrell kindly
granted me access to materials and Jonathan Prude allowed me to quote from
sources in the Agnes de Mille Collection at the New York Public Library for
the Performing Arts. Passages of this book have previously appeared (in dif-
ferent form) in Th e Journal of Th e American Musicological Society 2003, vol.