Aaron Copland: Music in the Twenties; 11; Experimental Attitudes. Part 1

i gave her a rematch are that's by charles ives when we first heard about in the twenties one of the exciting things in a period like the twenties i think was a sense of risk that everyone took making judgments about the various works of the authors of that time was easy enough to spot really top people everybody knew that sharon very it was a somebody in the

twenties and the same went for stravinsky or when you got off that level it wasn't all easy to know which of the new men were going to be the big shots of the future which draws obama get lost in the shuffle for example suddenly during the twenties can be a certain dissatisfaction among composes with the way the normal scale have been divided crow medically unfit people half tall like this people began to question why half tones who decided that us gale how to be divided equally by half tones after all the music of eastern countries showed divisions which were not nearly as neat as half tones and anyway if you wanted to be me why not divide the octave and a quarter tones like this top that would be a court

in between those two audit and six tones or eight films but not nearly in half tones the problem with microphones is of course that is not easy to hear them as you can say not even though we're saying one of the division of the scale as it gets more than half tones becomes more more difficult to distinguish for art is so the idea of using smaller divisions was that a very fruitful still the czech composer tod road and choppers and chamber music in court owns and cause the considerable stir in the twenties another typical interest at that time very much in the front of everyone's mind was the interest in all sorts of mechanical music devices most famous of all the music that was mechanically inspired was george and giles mechanic composed about nineteen twenty four i've no idea whether young people today a familiar would join ten

thousand and i can tell you that in the twenties he made a very big noise indeed he was a talented youngster from trenton new jersey whose career became somehow tampered with i suppose one might say because of enormous scandal that attended the first performance of the ballad make any in paris the work was set for a piano's and one player piano xylophone drums and various kinds of percussion plus an airplane propeller which made a considerable noise and breeze in the closed whole you can see that the right combination anti other side of the euros was in itself rather sensational this interest in unusual instrumental combinations was typical gender about their first as usual in nineteen fifty in a brief were called heads diversity written for the unique ensemble soprano just a harmonium and hawk i don't think any other composer before or since has ever written another word for that particular group odd

combinations of all sorts who experimented with a word for piccolo contra days and triangle we've been sort of this quite ordinary then in general the dry sound of the jazz band had considerable influence among classical composers if you wanna be really dry however you want to find yourself to do or percussion instruments alone which was another fascination of the times the whole percussion orchestra one could go on of course or perhaps i've said enough to suggest the nature of experimental procedures in the twenties but if the road of the experimenters was tough in europe it was much tougher in the united states it was during the twenties we first became aware of a remarkable composer who was very much of an experimentalist whose name was then completely unknown to us now of course everybody knows about it and talking about charles ives some few examples of

his music or heard for the first time in the twenties even though most of it had been written during the previous friday is that for eyes no one would play his music when he wrote it and fewer at it at all until well past the twenties the first orchestral performance of any work lives was in nineteen twenty seven when one moment of his fourth symphony was conducted by eugene goes sins in new york ives was the real thing by real thing i mean a man who was thoroughly american in all his instincts and who had grown up in the tradition and for all and emerson he was deeply imbued with the ideals that we collect in our minds with new england he was truly independent spirit he was a pioneering soul born musically in advance of his time or persisted in his efforts to record america in musical terms despite discouragement he was a bubble a daring spirit who had experimented with all sorts of innovations before he knew the

music and schoenberg or stravinsky yet try things out we later came to connect with their day he had written bowl dissonance is cross rhythms that is this a simultaneous rhythms independent of one another unusual instrumental groupings unconventional formal structures it's hard to name a single innovation of the twenties which can't be found in the music i've wrote during that first years of the century we're going to play a short work of his untitled the unanswered question we played a few measures at the beginning of the program it's typical in anyway and exploits the counter play a completely independent elements the string section with its own conduct the plays softly making night sounds which i've explained to the preparatory know represent the immutable forces of the druids then there's the so trumpet which endlessly repeat the question that never does get answered and then the four flutes who comment

in a rather distant language another ineffectually as it turns out on the question that the trumpet is asking at the very end all that remains after the final question sung by the trumpet all the night sounds of the distance trains it's an extraordinarily imaginative piece unparalleled in the year nineteen eighty are associate conductor today those know you're

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data or a latino teenagers around it in nineteen twenty one i just published his own expense a collection of one hundred and fourteen sorg is in the note that accompanies these storms he explains that nobody really want to but we were just hanging around the house for so many

years but he finally decided he'd get rid of them by publishing them or as he says bringing them out on the clothesline for the neighbors to see as it turned out the songs are unique contribution to song that ritual not all of them of course but the best of them and that's a twenty five mr rich and content extraordinarily broaden the range of feeling that they communicate all the way from the most ordinary kind of song that the most profound donald graham the rigid coming at the piano is going to sing three songs by iris i want your first simple song cold two little flowers it has a vocal line it's very straightforward and forecourt a time against which the piano provides a background in seven eight report it is

it is this is or serenity as a vocal line that hovers between just a few notes following the

natural speech rhythm of where he is polling in a very subtle and touching way it's a truly inspired soul i use that word rarely but i can use it in relation to serenity we use it was it

is yeah this is it is he's been charlie rutledge of the cowboy song about charlie the top like john madden unhappy fate while on the roundup it begins with a

folksy intelligent treatment that was on to a musical ii realistic tone painting which is absolutely brilliant of charlie foreign office boss it's a strange i've seen brew of really is in developing a mold that is somehow larger than a mere cowboy song james us these nurse game

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as god oh there is i was very fond of a contemporary of his who was also a composer from new england this time from cape cod by the name of caught ruggles ruckel was also a discovery of the twenty he shares with knives same independence of spirit and shared with him also a good fighter right of music in defiance of the conventions of that time during the twenties he wrote for pieces on which his reputation is mainly bates first angels written for six trumpets men and mountains for chamber orchestra and

what we're going to play for you portals for a chamber group of strings and then finally the sun dried or before august henry cow how is a revealing story about knives incentive visit to run he says that i was upset by the way the audience was reacting to ruggles piece right in the midst of it and stood up and began the writing of this novel was sitting there and saying stop being such a sissy why can't you stand up before such fine strong music like this use your ears like a man in polls we're going to play for you now we get this find strong voice that i was talking about was nothing prefabricated about it it gives you a sense that it's continually in the process of growing from fresno the last bit with

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again the twenties was a period when the idea that anything goes is very prevalent in everybody's mind it encouraged experiment some of which in the nature of things they'd approach to be dead ends with the same feeling also produced lasting works by composers such as ivan ruggles mental as well for now as english critics said were dedicated to the integrity of their own spirit

it's been the peak at the national educational television network