Fourth Concert of the 47th Season

I. Allegro moderato
II. Adagio
III. Scherzo

I Feel Pretty
Maria
Something's Coming
Tonight
One Hand, One Heart
Cool
America

Calico Jane
Sandy Land
Sail Away Lady
Leather Britches

Few composers have been able to sounds as "American" as Aaron Copland. What Gershwin did for the sophisticated urban side of American life, Copland did for "the wide open spaces." His early life was spent in Brooklyn, where he was born. At the age of twenty-one, he was able to go to Paris, where he studied with the legendary Nadia Boulanger. He was her first American student, and she was sufficiently impressed to commission him to write an organ concerto for her to perform during her American tour.

In spite of his urban background, he is most famous for his ability to evoke images of rural America, especially in his film-scores such as The Red Pony, and ballets such as Billy the Kid, and Rodeo.

Rodeo was written in 1942, for dancer Agnes De Mille. It was premiered by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, and was a great success on a continent in love with Le Wild West. The music is typically Copland, with its use of folk songs (Sis Joe), and syncopated hoedown rhythms. It is interesting to speculate as to what its reception would be in those days of the feminist movement. The plot concerns a "cowgirl" who can rope a steer as well as any man, but goes unnoticed, despite her expertise, until she dons a frilly dress and puts on makeup, whereupon the cow-pokes fall all over themselves in admiration.

The piece we hear today is the first of a suite of four dances taken from the ballet. A familiar Copland device is the descending major scale, heard repeatedly in this movement.

By this time, everyone knows that West Side Story is an updated version of Romeo and Juliet. The idea came from the choreographer Jerome Robbins in 1949, and originally was to have involved feuding between the Catholics and the Jews of New York around the time of Easter-Passover. The plan "marinated" for several years while Bernstein worked on other projects like Candide. By 1955, the Jewish-Catholic conflict had given way to the Puerto Rican-American rivalry, for a more contemporary theme.

This work is so well established that we tend to overlook its innovations. The movie version was a real landmark, containing almost twice as much music as the standard Hollywood musical. Also, unlike typical Hollywood musicals, it was filmed on location on West 68th Street in New York. Interestingly, that street no longer exists, the buildings have been razed to provide space for Lincoln Center, home of the New York Philharmonic, conducted for years by Leonard Bernstein, and the Metropolitan Opera, where the work has recently been resurrected as a full-fledged opera . . . conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

Not much of McKay's music is available on record. The Concerto for Cello is the only one that comes to mind. References can be found to other works, like the Evocation Symphony, the Symphonie Miniature, No. 2, and the Tlingit Suite. Mr McKay has written a popular text on "Creative Orchestration," and a reading of this book provides insights into his compositional principles.

He stresses clarity. He believes that the listener can follow only two clear ideas at a time. Any third element would have to be clearly subordinate to the other two. "Doubling" should not be done unless the composer can clearly state its purpose in a given situation. Interesting tonal effects can be achieved through the mixing of dissimilar timbres, but only if the combination is kept to two, or "at most, the timbres of contrasting melodic instruments combined with one dryer, percussive sound such as the snare drum or pizzicato strings." The logic behind this statement goes back to his comments on "doubling," where he says there are only two good reasons: for more power, or for more subtlety. He argues that if three contrasting melodic instruments are used together, the effect is "to merge into the general sound usually identified with reinforcement rather than subtlety."

One would expect his orchestrational ideas to be reflected in his compositions. Comments in his writings suggest that he favors tunes, but that he might jump from instrument to instrument, with no melodic strain carried on very long by one particular instrument. Will we notice this in the Suite on Fiddler's Tunes?