This is my WHY I LOVE AARON COPLAND post

[kate]

I love Aaron Copland. Besides the fact that he is the first American composer most people can name, he was a shameless self-promoter, and probably would have loved the fact that his music was used for the "Beef. It's what's for dinner." commercials.

He was also homosexual. He was tight-lipped about it, but he was out, and it's kind of brilliant that a gay man's music is known as some of the most recognizably American music of all time.

Appalachian Spring was a ballet written for another American great - choreographer Martha Graham. It was originally written for 13 instruments, and it is just so eerie and beautiful with this sparse instrumentation. The full orchestral suite is lovely too, but the original ballet music? Gorgeous.

So here, Appalachian Spring Suite, ballet music for 13 players.

This is my orchestral conductor from grad school, Keith Clark, with an orchestra basically made up of the ridiculously talented studio musicians in LA, who are hired for their ability to sightread anything (they generally do movie scores), the Pacific Symphony Orchestra. If you like it, the album includes An Outdoor Overture (a more mature and complex work) and Eight Poems of Emily Dickinson, a beautifully haunting song cycle sung by Marni Nixon.

Comments

[zana16]

Ooooh, thank you!

[kate]

You're welcome! I hope you like it, it's one of my very favorite pieces, bar none.

[gblvr]

Thank you! (yes, I know I'm supposed to be sleeping.)

[kate]

Put this on while you sleep. It is lovely and soothing.

And go sleep! Good luck tomorrow!

[fyrefly101]

Oo thank you.

[erda]

This, with the original instrumentation, is one of my all time favorite non-opera pieces of music, and I don't actually have it on my lapatop, so thank you very, very much!

[kate]

:D

You're very welcome. <3

[kate]

I'm sorry to say I'm not a huge opera fan (though I'm playing in a concert of opera pieces + the Gounod Mass this weekend), so this is right up there for me. (I do like symphonic works though, so perhaps I could say it's one of my favorite non-symphonic works...)


Anyway, you are very welcome!

[spillingvelvet]

<3!

[kate]

♥

[spillingvelvet]

did i ever tell you that my sister's wedding march was Simple Gifts? Played on Banjo, Guitar, and Mandolin.

:D

[kate]

Yeah, I love that section (and not just because it's the big clarinet solo). I love Copland and his use of American folk music. That's a beautiful thing to use in a wedding ceremony. I wish more people would go for that instead of annoying Pachelbel's Canon. ARG.

[anatsuno]

*dips toe in music* I'm not a big listener but I'll give it a try! :D thank you.

[kate]

I hope you like it! It's really quite accessible, for classical music. (And really, no big deal if you don't, variety is the spice of life, right?)

I have a pretty good ear for picking classical (and especially 20th century/contemporary) music that most people enjoy, or at least can listen to without gouging their eyes out. I think I'll probably post a beginner's guide sometime.

[anatsuno]

Oh it's not the classical thing that scares me. I have very eclectic tastes and love lots of various stuffs, Philip Glass next to Mozart next to Lou Reed, etc - but I'm not a big music person at all: every time a music person would be listening to music, I'm probably listening to podfic or a podcast or using a movie as background sound. Music is ... harder for me to get used to, I guess. Still, it's never too late to discover new things, even slowly... :))

[kate]

Oh, hey, see, that's cool! Because I'm like that too! I know, it probably seems weird that someone with three degrees in music doesn't listen to it much, but it's just the way I've always been. I have a sort of internal monologue going on all the time, and music interrupts that. If I'm concentrating on work, music breaks it. I only listen to music when it's completely boring and background, when I need to shut off my brain - often when driving, or when I can actively listen to it. It's very cerebral for me.

Well, let me know how this works for you. If you like it, I can recommend other things. If not, oh well - I'll just have to record some podfic!

[anatsuno]

pls record podfic, yes! :D
though I still might come back for recs too, who knows. :))

[kate]

Well, I did buy a microphone for just that purpose! I just need the time to use it. Probably after this weekend's concert, I think. :D

This original version rocks!

[peoppenheimer]

I cannot stop listening to this chamber orchestra original version. I love it! Thank you so much for introducing me to this version. The full orchestral suite was getting a little too familiar. This spare original scoring has made the whole piece new for me again. Have you seen any revivals of the ballet? I've seen excerpts on video, but I have never seen it performed. I definitely want to hear the other two pieces. A Dickinson song cycle: I don't think I am aware of any, before you just told me about this one. I have to hear it. Thank you so much for this.