3rd Symphony (Copland)
The 3rd Symphony by the American composer Aaron Copland (1900–1990) was premiered in Boston in 1946 .
Origin, premiere and reception
Aaron Copland was primarily concerned with music for the stage, film and radio in the 1930s and 1940s. During this time he made a name for himself with orchestral works and ballets such as El Salón México (1936), Billy the Kid (1938), Rodeo (1942) and Appalachian Spring (1944). In March 1944 he accepted a commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation to compose his 3rd symphony and began work in Tepotzlan, Mexico, in the summer of 1944 . He also resorted to thematic material that had been created from 1940, including for an unrealized piano concerto. The Fanfare for the Common Man , composed in 1942 and whose processing characterizes the fourth movement of the symphony , also became a substantial element .
The 3rd Symphony was completed in September 1946 in Massachusetts near Tanglewood , a few weeks before its premiere on October 18, 1946 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the Boston Symphony Hall under the direction of Sergei Kusewizki . The European premiere followed on May 25, 1947 in Prague by the Czech Philharmonic with the conductor Leonard Bernstein .
Copland's Third Symphony was celebrated as a "landmark in American music" at its world premiere and has received several awards, including the New York Music Critics' Circle Award . Leonard Bernstein, who is considered to be the most important interpreter of the work he has recorded twice (1966, 1986), said: “The symphony has become an American monument, like the Washington Monument or the Lincoln Memorial” (“The symphony has become an American monument , similar to the Washington Monument or the Lincoln Memorial ”). The premiere conductor Kussewizki considered Copland's 3rd Symphony "the greatest American symphony ever written" ("the greatest American symphony that was ever written").
However, some friends and critics found the finals too overloaded. After the premiere, Kusevitsky recommended cuts, which Copland reluctantly agreed to make. After its first performances, Bernstein also saw the need for cuts and deleted 10 of the 19 final acts of the symphony, which Copland subsequently sanctioned. In 1966 Boosey & Hawkes published a revision of the first edition from 1947, which, in addition to these abbreviations, includes further corrections.
The most common recordings usually use the version with the shortened finale. A recording released in 2017 under Leonard Slatkin , however, uses the original, unabridged version.
Cast, playing time and characterization
The score calls for the following instrumentation: 3 flutes , piccolo , two oboes , English horn , two clarinets , clarinet , bass clarinet , two bassoons , contrabassoon , four horns , four trumpets , three trombone , tuba , timpani , percussion ( bass drum , tom-tom , Cymbals , xylophone , glockenspiel , quint , wooden block , snare drum , triangle , rattle , ratchet , anvil , claves , tubular bells ), 2 harps , celesta , piano and strings .
The playing time of the 3rd Symphony by Aaron Copland is around 40 minutes. It is Copland's most extensive orchestral work. The symphony consists of 4 movements, the third and fourth moving directly into one another.
- Molto moderato - with simple expression
- Allegro molto
- Andantino quasi allegretto
- Molto deliberato
Copland, who from the 1920s onwards became particularly well-known as a composer of symphonic jazz and processor of American folklore, foregoing intentional references of this kind in his symphony, even though they sometimes sound through without direct thematic quotations.
The expressive first movement begins and ends in E major. Formally, it does not follow the sonata form , but a curved structure with a lively middle section and a final section that recapitulates the introduction in an expanded form. This exposes three themes one after the other: the first in the strings, the second in violas and oboes, the third in trombones and horns. The first and third topics are taken up again in the fourth sentence.
The 2nd movement is based on the typical Scherzo with the first part, trio and a modified repetition of the first part (A – B – A '). An introduction by the brass section is followed by a theme repeated three times, sounding first in the horns and violas with continuation in the clarinets, then in the strings and finally in the low brass, interrupted by other episodes. The trio, in which solo woodwinds dominate first, followed by the strings, follows directly. The final part, in which the first theme is initially taken up by the piano, is a modification of the first part, in which the lyrical trio theme appears again.
The 3rd, predominantly lyrical movement is a free form in which, after an independent opening section (the 1st violins intone a rhythmically modified variant of the 3rd theme from the 1st movement), the following sections develop from one another, similar to a sequence of variations .
The fourth movement following attacca is based on the sonata form. The introductory fanfare (see example above) is based on the Fanfare for the Common Man , which Copland had composed in 1942 for Eugene Goossens . Initially voiced in the pianissimo of the flutes and clarinets, then brass and drums join. Two themes follow, the first in moving sixteenths; the second with more sanglichem character is in the middle of performing embedded with a dissonant tutti abruptly ending chord. In the recapitulation , the first theme and the fanfare theme are interwoven, and the opening theme of the first movement is quoted. Towards the end the second, vocal theme reappears before the symphony closes with the resumption of the opening phrase in full orchestral sound.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Chicago Symphony Orchestra, quotations cf. Program notes, Phillip Huscher, including Copland's own work notes
- ↑ CD supplement Naxos 8.559844, Copland: 3rd Symphony a. a., Leonard Slatkin, Detroit Symphony Orchestra
literature
- Elizabeth Bergman Crist: Aaron Copland's Third Symphony from Sketch to Score . The Journal of Musicology, 18 (3), 2001, pp. 377-405.
- LP CBS 61681: R. Harris: 3rd Symphony / A. Copland: 3rd Symphony. Leonard Bernstein, New York Philharmonic, cover text by William Flanagan (Eng.)