2013-03-01
3 分钟Howard Goodall and Suzy Klein discuss Simple Gifts from Copland's Appalachian Spring
The story of music in 50 pieces with Howard Goodall and Susie Klein.
Howard, I know one of the main strands of your thought as music unfolds in the 20th century is that the world of dance becomes increasingly important.
Your next choice is Copeland's appellation Spring, a piece of 1944.
Why did you choose this?
Rather like Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony, it has a patriotic purpose.
Appalachian spring came along at a time in the war where the Americans looked like they might be able to win the war.
At least they were fighting this great struggle right across the globe, and their values were being tested to many people in the Second World War.
What the Second World War was about was a struggle between totalitarianism and free values of the west.
The appalachian spring story about a pioneer community, a simple pioneer community with a simple shaker hymn tune in the middle of it.
Tis a gift to be simple, is celebrated.
Copeland's music is a simple celebration.
It's a beautiful, beautiful piece, but it is itself a celebration of perhaps a more old fashioned style of music.
It's not cutting edge modernism we're talking about here.
It's a reassuring piece of music.
There's a sense of confidence and a boosting of morale going on in this piece, which was immediately popular, became very, very popular, and stayed popular in music ever since.
Whilst Aaron Copeland, gay, left wing, unorthodox man, might have not felt the same after Hiroshima and after the McCarthy witch trials which took place in the 1950s, he may not have felt quite so reassured about America's future.
But what comes across in appalachian spring of 1944 is this tremendous sense of confidence in simple values and about the american past and why they were doing what they were doing and why they wanted to prevail.
But leaving that aside, this is also a piece which, in terms of 20th century music, it's possible to write a piece of 20th century music for the ballet, which does nothing, scare people, which people can immediately enjoy.
At a time in the 1940s where swing is the music of most people in the western world, the ability to say, well, we still have a relevance here in doing this orchestra music.
We can still do something that completely connects with ordinary people and that it can be enjoyed widely and has been ever since is again part of my discussion in this history of the relevance of classical music in a popular age.