AARON COPLAND AND HIS WORLD OTHER PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS VOLUMES PUBLISHED IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE BARD MUSIC FESTIVAL Brahms and His World edited by Walter Frisch (1990) Mendelssohn and His World edited by R. Larry Todd (1991) Richard Strauss and His World edited by Bryan Gilliam (1992) Dvorak and His World edited by Michael Beckerman (1993) Schumann and His World edited by R. Larry Todd (1994) Bartók and His World edited by Peter Laki (1995) Charles Ives and His World edited by J. Peter Burkholder (1996) Haydn and His World edited by Elaine R. Sisman (1997) Tchaikovsky and His World edited by Leslie Kearney (1998) Schoenberg and His World edited by Walter Frisch (1999) Beethoven and His World edited by Scott Burnham and Michael P. Steinberg (2000) Debussy and His World edited by Jane F. Fulcher (2001) Mahler and His World edited by Karen Painter (2002) Janácek and His World edited by Michael Beckerman (2003) Shostakovich and His World edited by Laurel E. Fay (2004) AARON COPLAND AND HIS WORLD EDITED BY CAROL J. OJA AND JUDITH TICK PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON AND OXFORD Copyright © 2005 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 3 Market Place, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1SY All Rights Reserved For permissions information, see page xii. Library of Congress Control Number 2005927155 ISBN-13: 978-0-691-12470-4 (paperback) ISBN-10: 0-691-12470-1 (paperback) ISBN-13: 978-0-691-12469-8 (cloth) ISBN-10: 0-691-12469-8 (cloth) British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This publication has been produced by the Bard College Publications Office: Ginger Shore, Director Francie Soosman, Cover design Natalie Kelly, Design Text edited by Paul De Angelis and Erin Clermont Music typeset by Don Giller Printed on acid-free paper, ©o pup.princeton.edu Printed in the United States of America 1 3 5 79 10 8 6 42 To Vivian Fine, composer, and Minna Lederman, editor, music journalist, and cultural activist— two women of modern music who brought the editors close to Copland's world Contents Acknowledgments xi Permissions xii Between Memory and History: An Introduction XV CAROL J. OJA AND JUDITH TICK PART I SCANNING A LIFE Copland and the Prophetic Voice 1 HOWARD POLLACK Founding Sons: Copland, Sessions, and Berger on Genealogy and Hybridity 15 MARTIN BRODY PART II COPLAND'S GREATER CULTURAL WORLD "To Become as Human as Possible": The Influence of André Gide on Aaron Copland 47 PAUL ANDERSON Copland and American Populism in the 1930s 81 MORRIS DICKSTEIN From the New York Avant-Garde to Mexican Modernists: Aaron Copland and the Visual Arts 101 GAIL LEVIN Making an American Dance: Billy the Kid, Rodeo, and Appalachian Spring 121 LYNN GARAFOLA vu CONTENTS PART III COPLAND'S INNER CIRCLE Dear Aaron, Dear Lenny: A Friendship in Letters 151 VIVIAN PERLIS Aaron Copland and Arthur Berger in Correspondence 179 EDITED AND INTRODUCED BY WAYNE D. SHIRLEY PART IV ANALYTIC PERSPECTIVES War Drums, Tolling Bells, and Copland's Piano Sonata 233 LARRY STARR Copland's Gift to be Simple Within the Cumulative Mosaic Complexities of His Ballets 255 ELLIOTT ANTO KO LETZ PART V POLITICAL EDGES Copland and the Politics of Americanism 277 ELIZABETH B. CRIST From Orient to Occident: Aaron Copland and the Sagas of the Prairie 307 BETH E. LEVY Aaron Copland, Norman Rockwell, and the "Four Freedoms": The Office of War Information's Vision and Sound in The Cummington Story (1945) 351 NEIL LERNER Aaron Copland Meets the Soviet Composers: A Television Special 379 TRANSCRIBED AND INTRODUCED BY EMILY ABRAMS Vili Contents PART VI COPLAND AND HIS PUBLIC Aaron Copland and the Composers' Forum-Laboratory: A Post-Concert Discussion, February 24, 1937 395 TRANSCRIBED AND INTRODUCED BY MELISSA DE GRAAF Copland on Television: An Annotated List of Interviews and Documentaries 413 COMPILED BY EMILY ABRAMS PART VII RECONFIGURING COPLAND'S WORLD 439 Copland Reconfigured LEON BOTSTEIN Index 487 Notes on Contributors 499 IX