The music makers; Aaron Copland

This is Aaron Copeland. There is a certain I suppose a certain advantage to work quietly without anybody bothering you especially in America. We don't have the problem so much in the field of music but you know in theater and in literature the minute anyone distinguishes themselves in any way why the powers of the cause of the commercial world stop working on them. And it gets very difficult to go on as if you were nobody knew about you and you were just doing your work. In music we don't have that because there isn't so much money involved as a rule if you write a fine symphony nobody is going to write. No one's going to make a great deal of money out of you if you write another fine symphony. Michigan State University radio presents the music makers. Today Aaron Copeland as our guest in a series of conversations with prominent Americans whose art in business is music. Mr. Copeland stature in American musical culture is

impressive his list of compositions extends in time from 1920 to the present and in scope from film scores to music for the theater ballet chamber music and symphonies. Mr. Copeland has organized concerts for the performance of music by young composers was the first director of the American festival of contemporary music at Gatto and founded in 1937 the American composers alliance is list of honors include a Pulitzer Prize and I know a doctorate in music from Princeton University and Academy Award and the New York Critics Circle Award. His considerable talents have been demonstrated as author lecturer pianist conductor and teacher with Mr Copeland is hosting these conversations. Pat Forde Mr. Copeland I guess that most critics and me as ecologists can sensibly talk about what is called German music or French music talian music Russian music. I

think one critic rather facetiously said that. The way you write American music is that you become an American and then you write any kind of music. And we have all something in this country that we can now finally late into the 20th century call typically American music. Well you've touched on a subject which is very close to my own heart because when I was a student 40 years ago or even when later when I was beginning to write my first pieces the whole question of American ism in serious music was. It preoccupied me a great deal. And I think it was partly when I went to Paris to finish my studies that I began to get rather sentimental about America it was. From the vantage point of Paris that it seemed important to put into serious musical terms New York or even Brooklyn where I was born. And so therefore as I say the whole question of how you

create a serious music which is immediately recognizable as American I stress the word serious because obviously we've done it in popular music brilliantly. The whole world recognizes American popular music they're not quite so quick in recognizing American serious music. But there isn't really any reason why we can't do it in serious music that's why it seemed to me when I began. And so the early years of my own career were very much tied up with this problem both in my own work and in the work of other American composers of my own generation trying to find a solution to how you do create an American tone or temper or atmosphere in music. It's a really rather long story sometimes I've talked about it for a whole hour and I think a fascinating one the sum total I would say is that we did accomplish it I think you can recognize Nowadays it's a

kind of music which could only have been written by somebody who lives in America and who grew up especially with our popular music as part of his natural heritage. Unfortunately from the standpoint of my own generation the younger generation nowadays doesn't seem to be at all interested in that problem. Perhaps it's because we did it for them we solved it for them in a certain sense but the tendency nowadays is entirely away from nationalistic expression and music and all the young fellows are writing a music which tries to be international in style and because of that you will find the same kind of musical style whether you're in Tokyo of Buenos Aires or Berkeley California or wherever you go all the younger composers are now writing in what can only be called and international manner so that the whole problem of how you write in American music is for the moment in abeyance.

Well there's this international trend is this good or bad or neither. Well it's a swing of the pendulum let's put it that way you know how the arts are. The younger generation always is very anxious to do something different from what Popper and grandpa did that's very much in the front of their minds because in a sense of the generation for example that followed Wagner they couldn't compete with Bach and they couldn't do it as well as he did they could only be post Wagnerian something lesser really. And so the only way to get out of such a jam is to do something different. And it's the natural instinct. If the older generation was concerned with the nationalism they're not concerned with it they could say it was a different problem. And so they meet the competition Jovita say of their elders on a different plane not on the same plane. And there are there are examples obviously in musical history when the tendency was more international in pre 19th century music for

example. It would be sometimes a little difficult to tell the difference between in the tally and 18th century composer and a German an 18th century composer. It was the 19th century that began to emphasize national characteristics. So the younger people might quite justifiably say we're going back to an even older tradition before nationalism in music was developed because the young composer today have. The atmosphere in which to experiment and do a lot of different things is they society in which he lives now is really conducive to this kind of freedom of work really well. But also it's a question which could get a very elaborate answer. And I think the younger composer is of course writing a music which is not heard in the normal concert world. It therefore is the music of almost

of a special sect all clique. I don't think they want that way but that's the way it happens to turn out to be the reason being that they're writing music far in advance of what their audience is ready to hear the audience in the last hundred years has always lagged behind the composers have always been ahead of them and they'd catch up about 30 years after the piece has been written with a different problem from which you had no it's the same problem. It's. A little different in that the idea that there is such a thing as far out music is well established now so that even when people don't go for it or don't feel sympathetic with it they realize it exists and it doesn't get the kind of horrified reaction that we got when they heard I think our first works in the 20s. But nevertheless the younger composers as I say do not take pot normal pot in the

usual concert life of the country which is a bad thing and they thing that they do to get over that to get around it and beyond it is to make their own concerts. They in any big city you'll find a group of 250 to 300 people who will attend such concerts. And in the biggest cities you'll find the groups of composers who write the music and manage to get somebody to help pay to give the concert and find a number of musicians who are willing to struggle with these technical difficulties of the nua works so that there's a kind of a a special world that exists along with the normal concert world within which the more forward looking pieces are written and performed. You've already said I think that this isn't really good. It breeds an in-group and they sort of turn themselves in we're in this really probably isn't too good for the growth of the composer has it.

No I don't think it is good. We saw an example of it of course in the work of Charles I. I was spent. Fact is that his entire musical life in isolation. He never heard any of his pieces performed in public in the usual way and he never had a chance there for the test out how good his ideas would be. The general consensus of opinion is that they were wonderful ideas fresh ideas pioneering ideas and should have been heard and that he would have expressed the more clearly more coherently if he had been able to have an audience listen to the two of them. On the other hand there is a certain I suppose a certain advantage to work quietly without anybody bothering you especially in America. We don't have the problem so much in the field of music but you know in theatre and in literature the minute anyone distinguishes themselves in any way why the powers of the King of the commercial world stop working on

them. And it gets very difficult to go on as if you were nobody knew about you and you were just doing your work. In music we don't have that because there isn't so much money involved as a rule if you write a fine symphony nobody's going to write. No one's going to make a great deal of money out of you if you write another fine symphony. So that the advantage of working quietly by yourself with just a few friends paying attention to what you're doing and occasionally hearing it in front of an audience that's sympathetic. That's not to be Miss prize this the French would say. But you need a pat on the back. You know you know everybody goes there. Sure. And of course the universities are being very helpful in that matter now. As a matter of fact they've in a sense taken the place of the role that the symphony orchestras used to play the younger people have practically no chance of getting their music played in the ordinary concert symphonic

repertoire is that well it's now days it's due not only to the fact it was which was always true of the reluctance of the large symphony audience to lend themselves to new and unusual expressions in music but it's also doing out of the back of the composers of stopped writing for the symphony orchestra they stopped thinking of the symphony office orchestra as the place where they might be performed. And they're beginning to write in much greater numbers smaller ensemble pieces for maybe 10 to 12 instruments and getting those performed within a university. Set up very many of the universities nowadays have month long festivals of contemporary art as you know. Not only music all of them painting film and lectures on the subject of new expressions in the arts and I think many of our younger composers depend on the university now to give them a hearing and the largeness of the audience as a restriction.

If you get 3000 people it's a quite different kind of audience to make up from an audience of 300 people and basically the broad broad cross-section of the symphonic audience is a backward and conservative audience and not a particularly musical audience many of them go for social reasons because they think that some things shake about being a subscriber to symphony concerts without having a passionate interest in the music I mean they don't seem to care much what's on the programme they don't bother to look at what's on they just go and listen to whatever is served up to them. Dinner first and then yes while in the small audiences they wouldn't be at the concert in the first place if they didn't want to be there. There's no social thing that goes with it. And that's a big problem. It's hard to write a piece that holds the attention of a an audience of 3000. In the old days.

Generally the new music was imposed upon the audience by a conductor who cared enough about the future of music to bother to insist. Actually he. He filled the role of a an educator of a leader in the community of music. A man who knew what was best for the audience and not who took a an attitude oh lord if we don't play everything we play isn't loved by the audience and I lose my job that that attitude you see in London in Paris. By and large the typical normal standard repertoire is this is the same and all the artistes that perform in such concerts of the same they travel by jet everywhere and I mean that's one of the problems with a doctor's going all over conducting all over the world and yet they want to know your repertory. Also the fact that they don't have as much time to study the new school as you know it takes hours to prepare in a school you don't just stand up and conducted. You have to study it first know what's in it.

And they're also busy rushing from one country to those that they don't have dive to study. How can we ensure a wider performance of new compositions by our composers in this country. It's a very tough one. You can't you can assure it in any way that I can think of. Of course if I were the czar of music in America I know what I would do. But I'm not. I don't know what you would do if you were the Czar. Well I would ask God 30 or 35 main symphony orchestras the ones with budgets of a sizable amount to agree in advance to have a policy that on every programme there'd be a work by a contemporary composer. You'd be surprised I think how much good that could do if it became simply customary to assume

that when you go to a concert you're going to hear a new piece. It may be challenging you may not like it or you may love it but they'll be a new piece. And of all composers knew that that was the policy of our symphony orchestras that alone would do a great deal of good if we could get the Metropolitan Opera Company for instance to take on the burden shall we call it introducing two new operas every year. After 10 years you have 20 new operas. One of which might be any good for the regular office. But anyhow everybody would get the idea that opera is not a museum aht it's an art that's alive or that all composers are interesting and raw and interested in writing such works. You just changed the whole liveliness I think of the scene it was our great problem in music is and this is different from the other arts. We are always a danger of being turned into a museum aht instead of in the public mind instead of being an

art which is continuously evolving like all the other arts for some very strange reason. People who would never dream of wanting to go to anything but the latest play on Broadway and want to read the latest the most recently published novel when it comes to music they always want to hear Tchaikovsky. Similar familiar music they don't apply it to the art of music the same interest that they have in the other arts. And to break that down it's very very difficult of course to be interested in any art form. You have to have a base for it you have to have the knowledge and the exposure and a little bit of understanding. Well that's another phase of Bernstein's television programs I would think would fall into this category helping to create a destiny. But that's also another phase of of the difficulty of trying to come to some sort of summing up of the good and the bad in a way you are relation

to both sides of the picture. I think the big public is confused as they naturally would be on the. The problem of just what one it is to love and understand art because it's confused I think in their minds with knowing about aht having information about OC and having even access to art. But the sort of thing that you're aware of in Europe which makes France or France for example a cultured nation is. It's probably something that takes a thousand years to produce. It's the sense that you get when you're there that even those people who never go to the Louvre who never go to a concert who never read an intellectual magazine or a magazine. Let's say the daily newspaper.

Even those people have a feeling about ah that has seeped down to them in some mysterious way. After a thousand years which I big public simply hasn't got yet. They may have seen more pictures in Life magazine of great masterpieces. They may have heard more mean serious music on radio but we do not have by we I mean the artist in general I think is true to say I do not have the sense that the big mass public still. Understands what it means to be an artist and why a grown up man with children and a family would spend all day long pulling little black marks on ruled paper why that is so serious. Why it's so necessary and who needs it really. The whole the whole relation of OC to entertainment for example where it moves over into the more serious areas very vague to them and why art is that is worth let's say in the quote field of

painting why art which is what so many thousands of dollars is really important artistically quite aside from the money value that is is an area that still needs a lot of doing and I'm not sure that it can be cured quickly. I think it's going to take a long time. But of course each generation should help in trying to spread the real sense of the arts to to really love the arts in the sense that an artist does in the sense that you were going to devote your entire life to being an artist. I think that that is a very very important part of the artist's job to do what he can to make understood why an artist is fascinated with OT and why it's so meaningful to him why it has always been so meaningful in all civilizations and why America if it doesn't develop such a feeling for the arts

is somehow lacking lacking in the eyes of the rest of the world that does have such a feeling and eventually lacking in our own eyes we'll certainly the more affluent we get the more we're going to miss the other side the more profound side of living I suppose in all the countries of Europe that you were talking about. Art enjoyed a position of prominence. It's just along with their it was their religious and their nobility and this was at the top of the society whereas in this country the masses came over and art is coming up from down here that's right Oldring down from the south that's why it's so important that we involve the government in in the arts because people pay attention to what the government does if it seems important to the government that we have it it's going to seem more important to them too. After all in Germany today for instance has let's say 80 opera houses we have you know we have two or three. Now why do they have a opera how do they get 80

opera houses who started 80 opera houses. It was each little prince and each of the municipality before Germany was a country. Each one of them in order to be chic and to feel important had to have an opera house because this is neighboring Prince had won and they competed among one another now. At some point this thing which was only of interest to the upper classes at some point became of interest to the people who finally used to be invited to come. And nowadays a small. German city let's say like us and we in America never think of from one year's end to the other would feel terrible if their opera house were closed it would be like a blow to the municipality. And it's inconceivable. And they vote money and spend money on their opera houses in each German city. In a way that's completely out of line with what we'd be willing to do in our country with much greater resources so that it's a gradual growth and

it begins I think from the people who who are in the know and who are willing to spend money and time and energy. And I must hand it to a man like Mr. John Rockefeller the third who has taken such a stand in relation to Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York I don't think Mr. Rockefeller before he became involved in there was particularly sensitive or. I had been particularly active in the field of the arts I know he had been very interested in the patients aside in the Japanese Japan Society as a whole so that it's important for us to get those people who care the most both themselves and urge the government where they may have influence to take a stand. I mean what Secretary you Dollops been doing for instance in propagandizing continuously about the importance of the arts it's healthful what a late President Kennedy did and invite even inviting composers to the White House for the first time in our history. That

was something it was also a gesture which the big public can understand. What can we do to encourage a more open minded reception of music. Well I'm especially unfamiliar Yes I'm from the U.S.. Well I think the first thing one one ought to do is not attempt to to judge this thing on one hearing one hearing is simply not enough in order to get into it. And I think that that holds true for musicians just as well as it does for the broad audience the difference is that the musicians realize that they don't expect to hear everything the first time and the broader audience tends to either like it or hate it the first time through. So that unless you're willing in the first place to relax and let the music do things to you. I don't think you'll get anywhere with unfamiliar music. And also you must keep in mind the fact that it's going to sound different the 10th time than it

does when you hear it the first time. I'm not suggesting that all new music is good or that you want to hear all of it 10 times. But as a general principle to go on. I think it would be wise always to emphasize the need for relaxed listening and repeated listening before judging whether one likes something in the arts or not. Anyhow there's much too much emphasis on. Judgment and not enough on enjoying the thing if the thing interests you have it hold your attention if it arouses you if it upsets feel there's something in it you know it's only music which is bland and really doesn't matter whether you hear is that the knot that seems to me bad. But ah problem in music is that when composers like to write things that are challenging and the audience likes to listen to things that are familiar and comfy.

Do you find the same problem a very great extent with musicians do you find a great reluctance on the part of musicians to perform your works as a player already handed change to a certain yes. It depends there are some musicians who don't have much instinct for it. You know they're Musically they're not terribly imaginative they have a natural musicality. That allows them to play the piano or violin or some instrument or sing well but you might say they're not intellectuals really they can't imagine the music that they never heard before of the fascinated by it so you find that most of the new music will be played by musicians who have a special aptitude for being interested in something that's challenging. And then others the great majority of them are willing to just go on and play the accepted classics in the usual way. What kind of a job are our universities and colleges generally throughout the country

doing and in preparing musicians and I'm thinking particularly for composition. Well that is there enough good activity being done on this level I think it will be. There's a great deal of activity and especially if you compared to what was true 25 or 30 years ago the the universe is a playing a preponderant role into playing composes. When I was a student I used to think I knew everybody was studying composition and now days they spring up from all over the country and I don't know who they are. The list of full of fine names to me which is a good thing. And of course most of them go to the universities many times families would be reluctant to see their sons after graduating from high school devote all their time just to music study as I did. Nowadays I feel somehow that it's a possible thought I still learn music in the

university atmosphere as a regular member of the undergraduate body so that it has that advantage to it helps to soften the blow when you hear the Jetson want to be a composer if you learn to be a composer Khalid. That's probably better than deciding I write poetry the rest. This is probably good for you. That was Aaron Copeland our guest for the music makers a series of conversations with prominent Americans whose art and business is music. Host were these conversations is Pat forte. We invite you to be with us again next week for a conversation with violinist Isaac Stern. These programs are produced by Pat Ford at Michigan State University Radio under a grant from National Educational radio. This is the national educational radio network.