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Re: Copland Concerto markings

Author: mrn  Date:   2008-11-18 21:39 Tony Pay wrote: > Mike wrote: > > >> Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, "Conversations with Igor > Stravinsky," Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co. (1959), p. 21.>> > > Yes, that's probably more informative than mine. Is there any > more than that there (I don't have that copy)? There is a little bit more. It's a strange sort of book in that it is written in the form of a dialog or interview, except that the questions Robert Craft asks are very, very specific and jump from topic to topic in way that makes it immediately obvious that Craft already knows all the answers before he asks the questions. (which I guess you would expect of Robert Craft, but it still seems a bit fragmented at times--of course, a lot of Stravinsky's music jumps around from idea to idea like that, too. Consequently, there's not a whole lot of context to each individual question and answer, but here's that quote again in its original context: "R.C.: Meters. Can the same effect be achieved by means of accents as by varying the meters? What are bar lines? "I.S.: To the first question my answer is, up to a point, yes, but that point is the degree of real regularity in the music. The bar line is much, much more than a mere accent, and I don't believe that it can be simulated by an accent, at least not in my music." > I'd just like to say that everything you write gladdens my > heart, Mike. (Keep it coming...:-) You just made my day! Thank you! :-) > One small objection: I don't know that I'm so taken by the idea > of 'influences'. The fact that there are coherent structures > used, structures that you can recognise and that can be used to > anchor a performance, seems to me to be independently valid of > where else they can be discovered. I'd agree with that. The rhythm exists as a unifying idea in the work regardless of whether you can find it in some other kind of music. In fact, especially after listening to Copland again, I don't really think Copland intended the 3-3-2 rhythm to suggest Klezmer music. When I wrote that, I was sort of "thinking out loud' (or "on the screen," I guess you could say), and thinking about that rhythm in the abstract just happened to make me think about Klezmer, which is one of the places where you hear that rhythm a lot. That led me to wonder if there might be a place or two in the music where Copland might have actually *tried* to make a subtle suggestion of Klezmer in his "unconscious fusion" of styles (as Copland put it). "Influence" was probably too strong of a word. The word "suggestion" probably better captures what I thinking at the time. I hadn't really thought about it in that way before writing that post, but the very end of the Copland Concerto is actually quite similar to the way a lot of Klezmer tunes end, except in reverse, with the gliss placed after the downward skip. Of course, the gliss is an obvious musical allusion to the opening of Rhapsody in Blue, but by putting it at the *end* along with this octave skip figure and grace note "scoops" (which Benny Goodman plays slightly "smeared" in his recording--unlike Stoltzman, who overdoes the effect) Copland seems to allow the gliss to reclaim some of its Klezmer roots, but because it's done "in reverse order" and "dressed up" by the strings it does so in a very symphonic-sounding way without sounding cutesy or "kitsch." (In fact, I can't help thinking that final measure, with the strings and harp ascending, sounds like it came from a movie soundtrack--although maybe that's because the orchestra I play in is rehearsing music from a John Williams soundtrack currently so everything sounds like John Williams these days--or more precisely, I am reminded that John Williams sounds like everyone else. :-) I don't know if this was intentional on the part of Copland, but if it was, I wouldn't have expected him to say much about it, anyway. I also wouldn't think Copland would want the performer to "klezmerize" the ending (except possibly to the very limited extent Benny Goodman did with the grace notes in his recording with Copland conducting, which may have more to do with Goodman's usual playing technique than anything Copland envisioned--we may never know the answer to that question). It simply occurred to me that this is something that's there in the music for the attentive listener to discover, and it makes me smile when I hear it. (Sort of like the little grin I get when I hear the strange, slightly out-of-place chord immediately following the fanfare in the first movement to Poulenc's Gloria--I've never seen anyone say this, but I swear Poulenc intentionally ripped that one right out of Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, mvt. 3 [first note or two]; I know the fanfare itself came straight out of a Stravinsky piano work. When Stravinsky said "Great composers steal," Poulenc took that as an invitation, it seems. ;-)

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