Word: copland
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Secure in his top rank among contemporary U.S. composers of symphonic music, Aaron Copland last week took the plunge into opera. Shy about his venture, Veteran (53) Composer Copland first thought of launching The Tender Land (a story of the rural Midwest) far from the calloused ears of Manhattan critics ("I thought maybe Canada"). Then came an irresistible offer to open it at the New York City Opera, and Copland gave...
...Composer Copland turned in a compact (95 minutes), clean-scrubbed score. The opera's melodic high point was an eight-minute love duet. Elsewhere, Copland managed to give a fairly musical lift to such prosy lines as "Not for me, Mrs. Moss. I've already had three helpings." By the supporting fullness of his orchestra, he also made the singers' voices sound warmer than they do in most contemporary opera. But his music slid too easily from one cool harmony to another, and on the whole, held as little punch as the libretto. When it was over...
Sere-Faced Farmers. Brooklyn-born Aaron Copland has no rural roots of his own (although his mother was raised in Peoria), but always knew he wanted to write an "American" opera. A dozen years ago, he read Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, a prose poem about the hardscrabble South by James Agee, with photographs by Walker Evans. Copland found it inspiring, afterward showed it to his librettist, Poet Horace Everett,* who was struck by the photographs of serefaced farmers and their families. Everett transferred the setting from the South to Kansas and finished the libretto two years...
Organ Music by Modern Composers (Richard Ellsasser; M-G-M). Some of the gaudiest organ sounds outside the Roxy are mixed with some in a more reposeful vein in these nine pieces. Among the best: Bartok's En Bateau, a flashy, seasick impression of a boatride; Copland's Episode, a neat vignette that builds from nearly nothing to a roiling climax; Milhaud's delicately tinted Pastorale; Messiaen's mystical Le Banquet Celeste...
...Douglas Copland, High Commissioner for Australia in Canada, will discuss "Second Thoughts on Full Employment," Thursday night in the Littauer Auditorium...