Appalachian Spring

Today in Music History: October 30, 1944

The film industry yields entertainment by bringing stories to life on the silver screen: intriguing, mysterious, adventurous, romantic, futuristic, historical - war and peace, family, drama, comedy, even horror. Each different genre demands its own kind of music accompaniment to make it complete. Otherwise, we would still be reigning in the days of silent films! The same goes for Broadway and the ballet. Each performance is accompanied by appropriate orchestral arrangements. Today's spotlight shines on a visionary composer from the 40s often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers."

Aaron Copeland: an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music

Aaron Copeland was a music natural. He studied piano and composition both in the United States and Europe later influencing many other great orchestral leaders. He became one of America's foremost composers of the 20th century whose influential music had a distinctive blend of classical, folk and jazz. Aaron Copeland died in 1990 at the age of 90 years old.

Copland was a renowned composer of film scores as well, working on Of Mice and Men (1939), Our Town (1940) and The North Star (1943)—receiving Academy Award nominations for all three projects. He eventually won an Oscar for The Heiress (1949). And more than a decade later, Copland composed a stark, unsettling score for the controversial Something Wild (1961). Selections from his various works would be used in TV series and commercials over the years, as well as films like Spike Lee’s He Got Game (1998). Source: Aaron Copeland Biography

Geoffrey Moull conducts members of the CBC Radio Orchestra
in a live performance of Aaron Copland's 'Appalachian Spring'
(the original chamber orchestra version for 13 instruments composed in 1944)

1944 Music that brilliantly evoked the rural American heartland made Aaron Copland famous. One such work—arguably his greatest—was the score for the ballet Appalachian Spring, which became one of the most recognizable and beloved pieces of American music ever written almost immediately following its world premiere on this day in 1944.

Though written expressly for the ballet and for only 13 instrumentalists—a limitation dictated by the size of the orchestra pit at the Library of Congress—Appalachian Spring was soon adapted into an orchestral suite, which is the form in which it became widely popular. Appalachian Spring was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1945.

"The fullest, loveliest and most deeply poetical of all his theater scores....It is, as the saying goes, a natural." ~New York Times review on Aaron Copeland's Appalachian Spring (1944)

And the music goes on beating to the rhythm of the changing times...