This the the abstract of an essay in The New Yorker (8/27/7) about Aaron Copland that illustrates the complexity of issues related to art and its accessibility to common folk. Mr. B. has a copy of the magazine in his classroom.
The essay quotes Copland from a speech in March, 1949:
Lately I've been thinking that the Cold War is almost worse for art than the real thing -- for it permeates the atmosphere with fear and anxiety. An artist can function at his best only in a vital and healthy environment for the simple reason that the very act of creation is an affirmative gesture. An artist fighting in a war for a cause he holds just has something affirmative he can believe in. The artist, if he can stay alive, can create art. But throw him into a mood of suspicion, ill-will and dread that typifies the Cold War attitude and he'll create nothing. (p. 37)
The essay quotes Copland from a speech in March, 1949:
Lately I've been thinking that the Cold War is almost worse for art than the real thing -- for it permeates the atmosphere with fear and anxiety. An artist can function at his best only in a vital and healthy environment for the simple reason that the very act of creation is an affirmative gesture. An artist fighting in a war for a cause he holds just has something affirmative he can believe in. The artist, if he can stay alive, can create art. But throw him into a mood of suspicion, ill-will and dread that typifies the Cold War attitude and he'll create nothing. (p. 37)
Abstract
A Critic at Large
Appalachian Autumn
Aaron Copland confronts the politics of the Cold War.
by Alex Ross August 27, 2007
A CRITIC AT LARGE about Aaron Copland and the politics of the Cold War. In May of 1945, American composer Aaron Copland received a Pulitzer Prize for his ballet score “Appalachian Spring.” Copland seized the nation’s attention, post-war, and his works became synonymous with the heartland, matching the collectivist ethos of the New Deal. Beneath the patriotic surface, these scores also bore traces of the leftist politics that preoccupied so many artists and intellectuals in the Roosevelt era. At the height of the Cold War, political watchdogs noted Copland’s leftist leanings. Between 1949 and 1953, Copland endured media vilification after his appearance at the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace; denunciations from anti-Communists in Congress; and a session before Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Copland emerged unscathed, and retained his iconic status, but he was never quite the same afterward. Postwar, New Deal populism began to acquire a dubious reputation. In 1946, as the country was tilting to the right, Copland introduced his Third Symphony, which echoed Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s recent work and the populist language of Commerce Secretary Henry Wallace. Mentions Virgil Thomson’s critique of the Third Symphony. Describes Shostakovich’s appearance at the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace, at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, in March, 1949. Mentions Nicolas Nabokov and the Americans for Intellectual Freedom. Copland, appearing at the conference, distanced himself from the propaganda on both sides. Mentions Time magazine and Life magazine. After the conference, Copland traveled to Paris and met the composer Pierre Boulez. In the fall of 1949, Arnold Schoenberg denounced Copland on the radio, and the F.B.I. opened a file on him. Copland had reason to worry: he had already been labeled a “fellow traveler” by Life magazine and he was a gay man. Mentions Rep. Fred Busbey’s condemnation of Copland in Congress, in January of 1953. In May, 1953, Copland was called before McCarthy’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Copland’s political predicament did not bring about a wholesale change of style. He never abandoned tonality in favor of twelve-tone writing, and, in several postwar pieces he retained a version of his populist manner. But the conspicuous stylistic split that appears in his later music seems symptomatic of the political polarization of the time. Mentions his opera “The Tender Land,” and his dissonant work “Connotations,” created in the late fifties and early sixties. After “Connotations,” his output rapidly dwindled. In the eighties, he began suffering from memory loss and Alzheimer’s. Copland died in 1990, at the age of ninety.
The New Yorker’s archives are not yet fully available online. The full text of all articles published before May, 2006, can be found in “The Complete New Yorker,” which is available for purchase on DVD and hard drive. Many New Yorker stories published since December, 2000, are available through Nexis. Individual back issues may be purchased from our customer-service department at 1-800-825-2510.
A Critic at Large
Appalachian Autumn
Aaron Copland confronts the politics of the Cold War.
by Alex Ross August 27, 2007
A CRITIC AT LARGE about Aaron Copland and the politics of the Cold War. In May of 1945, American composer Aaron Copland received a Pulitzer Prize for his ballet score “Appalachian Spring.” Copland seized the nation’s attention, post-war, and his works became synonymous with the heartland, matching the collectivist ethos of the New Deal. Beneath the patriotic surface, these scores also bore traces of the leftist politics that preoccupied so many artists and intellectuals in the Roosevelt era. At the height of the Cold War, political watchdogs noted Copland’s leftist leanings. Between 1949 and 1953, Copland endured media vilification after his appearance at the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace; denunciations from anti-Communists in Congress; and a session before Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Copland emerged unscathed, and retained his iconic status, but he was never quite the same afterward. Postwar, New Deal populism began to acquire a dubious reputation. In 1946, as the country was tilting to the right, Copland introduced his Third Symphony, which echoed Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s recent work and the populist language of Commerce Secretary Henry Wallace. Mentions Virgil Thomson’s critique of the Third Symphony. Describes Shostakovich’s appearance at the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace, at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, in March, 1949. Mentions Nicolas Nabokov and the Americans for Intellectual Freedom. Copland, appearing at the conference, distanced himself from the propaganda on both sides. Mentions Time magazine and Life magazine. After the conference, Copland traveled to Paris and met the composer Pierre Boulez. In the fall of 1949, Arnold Schoenberg denounced Copland on the radio, and the F.B.I. opened a file on him. Copland had reason to worry: he had already been labeled a “fellow traveler” by Life magazine and he was a gay man. Mentions Rep. Fred Busbey’s condemnation of Copland in Congress, in January of 1953. In May, 1953, Copland was called before McCarthy’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Copland’s political predicament did not bring about a wholesale change of style. He never abandoned tonality in favor of twelve-tone writing, and, in several postwar pieces he retained a version of his populist manner. But the conspicuous stylistic split that appears in his later music seems symptomatic of the political polarization of the time. Mentions his opera “The Tender Land,” and his dissonant work “Connotations,” created in the late fifties and early sixties. After “Connotations,” his output rapidly dwindled. In the eighties, he began suffering from memory loss and Alzheimer’s. Copland died in 1990, at the age of ninety.
The New Yorker’s archives are not yet fully available online. The full text of all articles published before May, 2006, can be found in “The Complete New Yorker,” which is available for purchase on DVD and hard drive. Many New Yorker stories published since December, 2000, are available through Nexis. Individual back issues may be purchased from our customer-service department at 1-800-825-2510.
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