Aaron Copland: Music in the Twenties; 8; Nationalism: New World Style

nice be nice jd that's the beginning of a piece i wrote in the twenties called music of there we'll play the complete section two sections of it later on just as we find a european and even far east and creative

artist collected in the price of the early twenties we also find a whole slew of both north and south american artists who've gathered there at the same time a new generation of american composers men like roy harris and rogers sessions walter piston and virgil thompson lawyer douglas moore and markets not all of them or in paris during that decade as a cause i was two and from latin america such typical figures is the brazilian composer had the villa lobos and carlos chavez of mexico are also there it was an impressive collection of talent not only in music but in all the arts and i suppose that's one of the reasons why the twenties and lasted so vividly in the public imagination without being aware of it it seems to me that north and south american composers came to paris with a similar need to assert a certain independence from your pets rather ironically that the men were trying to break away from your

would be heading for europe in order to break away from it but of course it wasn't his conscience in their own minds at that time as it seems to us now the first world war maybe in pot the reason for this urge to cut oneself also speak in the creative apron strings of european art it was something about the twenties l attended in the phrase of alfred stieglitz the photographer to make us want to affirm america the four years of world war one in forcibly separating us from europe for so long was certainly one of the contributing causes from being able to conceive of an independent american art freed of the influence of your colonial countries in this hemisphere it a great show rather similar musical histories i concede remains that in the first a fine musician as an immigrant brings foreign music to the new shorts that went on for a good many years both in latin america

and here then in the next day or the native composer born in a colonial country is the need to study in your brings back wonderful tales of great master works in europe and axa's propagandize generally initiating know generally imitating in his own work what he admired in your offense that would be the appearance of native office who feel the need to assert their own creative independence they often use local color to help achieve it and it right before a significant nationalist break through in the writing of old latin american and north american music i came at the beginning of the twenties that you wanted a bit you might say it began with the arrival in paris in nineteen twenty three a villa lobos the brazilian composer i remember seeing him for the first time without knowing who we was at a soiree shane adds logic and i remember what a

striking figure he cut in his forties wielding is in evan ebel cigar and being rather voluble and forceful personality was obvious that he came from latin america stories told of him that when he first came to paris explained everybody again volubility he was not interested in learning anything they've come there to show everybody what you already done that was indicative of his general attitude he can easily be taken as a symbolic figure for all latin america in the twenty eight but that was then below was fully one mistaken look out the nature of the country he comes from brazil after all is latin america's most fascinating country think of those five different strains negro spanish portuguese italian and the indian and you see that a brazilian composer if he's trying to create a music peculiar to his own country has a much richer source material that is true of any of the other latin american countries

i'm sure that i'm sure that was one of the contributing factors and the ability of villa lobos the developer music that we connect both with him as a person and with his country a margin we want to perform for you one of his most actors that works a suite for the rather unusual combination of voice and violin we're dealing here with only two separate melodic pots but they sound as villa lobos treats them very satisfying complete of the three sections of the work we're going to reform the third movement which employs no text explorers of fact brazilian rhythm and sixteenth notes the singer sings syllables which helped the farmers know doesn't understand portuguese to get the flavor of the country's resilient cities have a special gift for singing sixteenth notes in staccato very quickly so that they fall on here like pelting rain it's characteristic of the country i don't know who invented at

the villa lobos have been able to make an expert use of it not only in this work but in many other works known as also the brilliant and idiomatic writing for the violin that was typical of the yellow buses stop his ability to take full advantage of the characteristic sounds of each instrument he was took me into his house in brazil and showed me the roman which he kept the large collection a percussion instruments and i was astonished at the richness and the variety of percussive noises which a brazilian composer had access to we're beginning gradually in our own music to find these new percussive sounds but the brazilians in ahead of them from way back the odyssey the bolivians a native brazilian exhausting and robert frank violence been in amt you know

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as in these days sleep for voice and violent written in nineteen twenty three by the brazilian composer villa lobos as far as the united states itself goes there's no doubt whatever in the minds of most commentators but the twenties began a new era in our music one always tends to believe of course that history begins with one cell and i'm encouraged i think that the combined opinion of so many qualified people must have some basis in truth eric the fact is that the idea of finding the music which was recognizably

american inequality although it didn't have its art in the twenties seemed to flower most importantly that it's a familiar experience that when one goes abroad one often sees america more truly from across the ocean and one guzman was living right inside you become sentimental in paris about brooklyn in a way that you could never become sentimental about brooklyn while living there that happened to many others and it happened to me also during the teens had been a second wave of interest in using specifically american folk songs or what passed for such a bad time for example henry of gilbert and written ballets based on negro spirituals often fall well i'd use indian melody i suppose it was more shock would that stimulated this interest in american materials are using some and self in the new world symphony and then encouraging some of his american pupils to do likewise but not into jazz came along in the twenties that we have a popular

american music that was completely expressive of our era and at the same time and musical interest for composes it's poly rhythmic structure it so special melodic turns of phrases smith's and blue notes and breaks or all there to be made you so that was double it my teacher in paris was the first president pointed out to me that i had a rhythmic sense which was different from that of europeans i was unaware of it that she was fast made with trying to play two independent rhythms as self you know one with the right hand and one of the left hand and i remember out testing my rhythms together at the piano me poking away one rhythm while she was playing the other back home during the twenties some older composers point with a more polite john carpenter wrote his ballets crazy cat and skyscrapers and as greenburg court briefs there with is their new jazz but strangely enough if you were living in

paris than you would you would be more aware of something like neo as jazz inspired creation of the world that of george gershwin's rhapsody in blue and i think it was partly the fact that the europeans themselves seemed so interested in jazz that stravinsky and neil and even of bell we're all using jazz materials occasionally that gave us the notion that if they can do it certainly we americans could do it and maybe even do it better since it was the music we were completely at home with having grown up with it after i returned from my years of study abroad i myself became very intrigued with the idea of writing a work it was recognizably american within a serious musical idiom at the psychological moment leading composers an organization that played an historical role in introducing new contemporary

music in new york audiences asked me for an orchestral composition bibi premiered in the fourth nineteen forty five under the baton of course of its key like yeah jazz materials i compose this week in five parts with chamber orchestra and call that music for that then the following year at the instigation of course of its key himself i wrote a piano concerto also based on jazz materials and first performed in nineteen twenty seven both these words are typical of my musical thinking at that time we try to fight to moments of the music for the theater for you the prologue and the burlesque the first and the fourth is the economy to believe now forty years later these words would have sounded so shocking to the audience isn't first heard them i suppose it wasn't nearly the music itself that shocked so much of the fact that we were bringing raucous jazz into the

sacrosanct atmosphere of the concert hall in those days no one had ever heard jazz in carnegie hall by now all that past history and i doubt whether these pieces was shot and he bought the prologue youthful passion is about a typical twenty thousand but know also that more lyrical oval passage which plays an important role goals in the beginning and the end of the first movement the central portion of the allegro is more obviously based on jazz tunes and jazz rhythms nebraska the breast emphasizes another characteristic of the primaries that is the love for the protests in those days composers were fond of mixing keys that really didn't want to mix a result ali tonalities made it possible to write what was referred to as music

of the wrong notes school the fact that the atonality didn't gel properly in the conventional sense emphasize the grotesque three and their composers took full advantage of that new possibility i know i was influenced by that notion in the writing of his burlesque which in every other respect is a burlesque black and he buys burlesque at any rate for is the prologue photograph by it is also

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brady and he's brought in burlesque for my own music for the theater written in nineteen twenty five during the threat is for the first time we find the beginnings of what has continued since that time the tendency for north and south americans to look toward one another with the idea of getting artistic sustenance from one another the need to affirm national characteristics that was uppermost in the minds of some of us not all of us some of us at that time with the thing that united is often our relationship to europe and the need to free ourselves from you

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