Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Bard Copland

To quote Chester Kallman's proposed last words, "I've never done this before." That is being here in England for the month but going to Annandale-on-Hudson for the weekend, to the Bard Festival, Copland and His World, where I was doing a talk. Even though it all had a certain dream-like quality as the result of perpetual jetlag, it was all great. It both took the music (by Copland and others with various kinds of connections) seriously and it had a lot of talking about the music, which was also taken seriously, was always relevant, and was done seriously and very well. It was under the artistic direction of Leon Botstein, Christopher Gibbs, and Robert Martin, and Carol Oja and Judith Tick were the Resident Scholars.

The weekend started with a symposium on Mid-Twentieth American Culture and Politics, consisting of two sessions: Copland and the Arts with papers by Rita Barnard (Modernism, Mass Culture, and the Folk in Thirties America), Brenda Murphy (American Theater in the Thirties), and Julia L. Foulkes (Ballets for Dancers: Copland and the World of Dance), and Copland and Cultural Politics with papers by Michael Kazin ("The People! Try and Lick That!" [a quotation from the script of a Capra movie, incidentally]), Ellen Schrecker (From Popular Front to Witchhunt: Copland and the American Left from the 1930's and 1950's), and Sean Wilentz (Copland's Ambiguous Fanfare). The papers and the discussion afterwards were serious and substative and really interesting. I was there to do a talk introducing a concert entitled "The Lure of Neoclassicism" (one of my main points was that it didn't have much for Copland). Although I can't, of course, make any statement about how good my talk was (except to say that I had a good time--probably a bad sign), I can say that the other talks by Elizabeth B. Crist (South of the Border), Michael Pisani (In Search of a New National Voice) and Amy C. Beal (Tanglewood and Postwar Tensions--I missed the last concert (The Triumph of the American Symphonic Tradition, introduced by Christopher H. Gibbs)--were all interesting, informative, and entertaining. (There were also for each concert, extensive program notes by Beth E. Levy, Larry Wallach, Kyle Gann, and Jennifer DeLapp). There was a panel, mainly reminescences, with David Del Tredici, Yehudi Wyner, and Harold Faberman, on Sunday morning, and a special concert by Mike and Peggy Seeger on Saturday morning. There was also lots of informal conversation the rest of the time. Judging from that, the hot Copland musicology topics at the moment are Copland and all the various ramifications of his politics, and Copland's gayness and it's various implications and meanings.

All of the programming of the concerts was provocative or, in one or two cases, a little puzzling, but great. There were many, many performances, all of them good, but for me the most memorable included, from the first concert, Alessios Bax's elegant performance of Nancarrow's Prelude and Blues (1935) and equally elegant playing, accompanying Lauren Skuce in Cinco canciones populare Argentinas of Ginestera, a take no prisoners performance by Blanca Uribe of Danzas Argentinas (which ended with a sort of high tension Cowboy Mambo), also by Ginestera, the Revueltas Third Quartet, played by the Daedalus String Quartet, which had a sensational first movement, and then got increasingly less interesting; from the Neoclassicism one the Fine and Carter Quintets and a very beautiful performance of the Copland Violin Sonata by Ani Kavafian and Diane Walsh; a majesterial performance of the Piano Fantasy of Copland (with a little too much talk about it) by Michael Boriskin on Saturday afternoon; from the orchestral concert which I heard, by Leon Botstein and the American Symphony, Copland's Statements (the first time I'd heard them live), Chavez's Sinfonia India, and Billy the Kid (which, golly gee, is just really great in every way, but is especially wonderfully orchestrated), just about everything about the Seegers, and from Tanglewood/Postwar concert Del Tredici's I Hear An Army, the Boulez Flute Sonatine, and, the last music I heard before I had to leave, The Copland Piano Quartet, which is a solemn and wonderful piece, I think. (If I had been able to stay, I would have heard the Sessions Second Symphony and the Copland Third.)

So it was all a lot to take in, but completely successfull and completely satisfying, even if a little tiring, as a total experience.

posted by Rodney Lister 8/23/2005