Appalachian Spring

Appalachian Spring ( German: not - as well as in English often wrongly assumed - Spring in the Appalachian Mountains but Appalachian source) is a famous ballet music of the American composer Aaron Copland. The work was premiered in October 1944 and is widely used especially in a socket as an orchestral suite.

Formation

Copland wrote the ballet, which is written for three ten-member chamber orchestra, at the request of choreographer and dancer Martha Graham, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge funded by. During the period that the work Copland himself wrote that it would be very stupid to write something like a ballet and the corresponding scores would have historically not last long. In 1945 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for music for the ballet.

In 1945, Copland wrote the ballet to as orchestral suite, with most components of the work were preserved. Both the ballet and the orchestral version was very positively received by the public, even though the orchestral suite for the growing awareness of the composer played the more important role. In 1972, a version of the suite was the publisher Boosey & Hawkes published, which brought together the structures of the orchestral suite with the occupation of the original ballet: double string quartet, double bass, flute, clarinet, bassoon and piano. All three versions are still performed frequently today.

Originally Copland had given the work a title and referred to it simply as " Ballet for Martha ". Shortly before the premiere beat Graham " Appalachian Spring", a designation from the Hart Crane poem before, even if it has no direct relationship with the ballet of action. Copland was later often amused when listeners reported him how well he had yet captured the beauty of the Appalachian Mountains in his music.

Appalachian Spring was on 30 October 1944 in the Library of Congress in Washington DC premiered, Graham danced the lead role. The stage was designed by the Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi.

Construction

The plot of the ballet tells of a spring of the American pioneers of the 1800s, after they have built a new farmhouse in Pennsylvania. Among the main characters, there are a newlywed couple, a revivalist preacher and his followers.

The orchestral suite is divided into eight sets, which describes Copland follows:

The original ballet version is divided into 14 sets. The records that were not included in the orchestral suite, are all between the seventh and the last sentence.

The seventh movement, the variations of the Shaker tune " Simple Gifts " ( 1848 ), is the most famous section of the ballet and has been used for numerous TV commercials. Copland himself published various arrangements of this theorem for Wind Band ( 1958) and Orchestra ( 1967) under the title "Variations on a Shaker Melody". Each variation relies on the simple topic and is varied in tone, monitoring, registration, dynamics, timbre and tempo. The second variation presents a lyrical editing in lower registers, while the third forms a strong contrast to a rapid staccato. The last two variations of this section use only a part of the folk melody, initially as a pastoral variation, then as a majestic conclusion. In the ballet, but not in the suite, can be found here, a longer intermediate section, which leads away from the folk melody and the final two variations anticipates.