Aaron Copland (1900-1990)

o Appalachian Spring, excerpt (1945)

Written for dancer Martha Graham
About an engaged 19th-century Pennsylvania couple
finishing building their farmhouse
Scored for chamber ensemble 13 instruments
Called Ballet for Martha, was given the unofficial name
Appalachian Spring by her
Won Pulitzer Prize for music
Diatonic melodies and harmonies
Transparent textures
Recognizable allusions to familiar music, folk songs
Dissonance, counterpoint, motivic unity
Juxtaposed blocks of sound
Evokes country fiddling, dancing, singing in rural America
Shifting meters, offbeat accents, sudden changes of
texture Stravinsky influence
Diatonic melodies and harmonies, syncopation, guitarlike
chords American folk music
Pandiatonicism - Vertically combine consonant and
dissonant notes of the diatonic scale
4th and 5th leaps, wide spacing of chords Sparsely
populated landscape
Superimposed tonic and dominant triads
William Grant Still (1895-1978)
o Afro-American Symphony, No. 1: First movement (1930)
First symphony by black composer to be performed by
major orchestra
One of the most prolific composers of his era
The Dean of African-American composers
Traditional 4 movements, sonata-form/slow/scherzo/fast
finale
Longings; Sorrows; Humor; Aspirations
Not programmatic, but character sketches of poem by Paul
Laurence Dunbar (wrote about Southern black life)
Blues melody and harmonic progression, 12-bar-blues
Characteristic features of African-American music
Syncopations in both melody and accompaniment
Call-and-response between short phrases of melody
Lowered 3rd, 5th, 7th scale degrees, blue notes
Jazz band sounds, Harmon mutes, bass drum/cymbals
Form typical of European symphonies, but surprising key
changes

Pentatonic contours and melancholy air of spirituals

Swing rhythms written out rather than implied
Integrated string sounds of symphonic orchestra with
distinctive wind and brass sounds of jazz orchestra
Defined a style for film and popular music
Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)
o West Side Story, Act I, No. 8, Cool (1957)
Modern setting of Romeo and Juliet
Rival teen gangs in Manhattans west side, Sharks vs. Jets
Nominated for 5 Tony Awards, won one
Addressed race, ethnicity, and cultural assimilation
Musics function throughout show is to suggest emotional
states of gangs and characters
Styles and gestures from jazz, Latin music, modernist
classical music
Disjointed, angular style of bebop
Prominent tritones, jazz timbre instruments
Bebop and cool jazz symbolize conflict
Jets dance in modern jazz style, expresses energy and
anticipates violence to come
Fugue on subject full of half-steps and large leaps, all 12
chromatic notes
Entrances at minor 3rd intervals avoid normal tonal
associations of fugue
Fugue subjects developed and transformed, interweaved
Vincent Persichetti (1915-1987)
o Symphony for Band, No. 6, Op. 69: First movement (1956)
Standard in concert band repertoire
Typical 4-movement symphony form
Contributed to effort to establish permanent classical rep
for wind ensembles
Well suited, orchestrated for band medium, lots of different
instruments
Wide variety of timbres in constantly changing
combinations
Thematic material shared among every section
Heavy focus on percussion, lots of instruments
Rapid exchanges between percussionists, difficult parts
Ambiguous tonal center, chromaticism and rapidly moving
harmonies
Theme fragmented and developed, open fifths and rising
tenths
New harmonic environments, syncopated, leaping melody

Jazzy character contrasts with scalar, pastoral first theme

Short recap, transformation and augmentation of themes
No traditional tonal harmony, but still traditional elements
Mostly diatonic themes, chords based on 3rds and 5ths
Changes of pitch collection, shades of dissonance create
harmonic motion, tension, resolution
Musical language typical of Persichetti