Ravinia 2024 Issue 2

seminal American artists their first opportunity to collaborate start-to-finish on a ballet produc- tion. Graham initially submitted a brief dramat- ic script to Copland, who was composing film scores in Hollywood. The original scenario in- volved several American aspects, including a young Native American girl modeled on Poca- hontas. Graham had developed a fascination with Native American life, dance, and ritual on a trip to the Southwest following her marriage to Erick Hawkins, the leading male dancer in her company. Although Native American elements ultimately disappeared from the storyline, Gra- ham retained one stylistic influence in her pro- duction—the “squash blossom hair arrange- ment” of the Hopi women. The ballet scenario gradually evolved into wed- ding celebrations in a 19th-century Pennsylva- nia farming community. Four principal charac- ters—the Bride, her Bridegroom, the Preacher, and a Pioneer Woman—quietly enter onto the stage. Presumably, Graham conceived the loving young couple to idealistically portray her own recent marriage: she and Hawkins danced the leading roles, while Merce Cunningham por- trayed the Preacher and May O’Donnell the Pi- oneer Woman. Several dances ensue: a vivacious fiddler’s dance, the tender pas de deux for the bride and bride- groom, a fast group dance with the Preacher and his congregation, and a solo by the bride. Next comes the deservedly famous variations on “Simple Gifts,” a Shaker melody with text and music by Joseph Brackett Jr., who grew up with- in the Shaker societies of Maine and eventually became an elder of the Sabbathday Lake village and minister to the Alfred village. His relatively few compositions included the widely popular hymn, which Brackett completed in early sum- mer 1848. More than a dozen Shaker sources in- clude this hymn. Copland remembered finding the tune in the 1940 collection The Gift to be Simple: Songs, Dances and Rituals of the American Shakers , authored by Edward Deming Andrews. He The Martha Graham Dance Company performing Appalachian Spring at the Library of Congress’s Coolidge Auditorium on October 30, 1944 understood that “the dance would have been in a lively tempo, with single file of brethren and sisters two and three abreast proceeding with utmost precision around the meeting room. In the center of the room would be a small group singing the dance song over and over until ev- eryone was both exhilarated and exhausted. Lest this seem very scholarly, my research evidently was not very thorough, since I did not realize that there never have been Shaker settlements in rural Pennsylvania.” Fragments of earlier themes return, climaxing in a final version of “Simple Gifts.” As the young couple enter their new house and begin a life to- gether, tender strains of the introductory music return with an ambiguous sense of excitement and hope, yet uncertainty over what mysteries lie ahead. Graham left her ballet untitled—although Cop- land had operated with the working title Ballet for Martha —until the day before the premiere. Her choice of Appalachian Spring derived from a line in Hart Crane’s poem “The Bridge.” She explained to the composer: “It really has noth- ing to do with the ballet. I just liked it.” Copland solidified his “American” style in Appalachian Spring . Aside from the Shaker tune, no actual folk material appeared within the score. Howev- er, Copland evoked the folk spirit in his mildly dissonant, yet captivatingly simplistic musical material. Both choreographer Graham and set designer Isamo Noguchi conformed their ideas to this uncluttered, direct expression. The one-act ballet Appalachian Spring (Ballet for Martha) received its first performance by the Martha Graham Company on October 30, 1944, at the Coolidge Festival, Library of Con- gress, Washington, DC. Louis Horst conduct- ed a chamber ensemble of 13 instruments. The ballet earned the New York Music Critics Circle Award as the outstanding theatrical work of the 1944–45 season, and Copland’s score garnered the Pulitzer Prize in dramatic music for 1945. The composer compiled a suite from the ballet in 1944 and enlarged the instrumentation for Aaron Copland full orchestra, which the New York Philharmon- ic Orchestra under Artur Rodzinski premiered on October 4, 1945. JAMES P. JOHNSON (1894–1955) Charleston (orchestrated by David Rimelis; edited & arranged by Nicholas Hersh) Scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets (1st opt. improviser), two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets (1st opt. improviser), two trombones (1st opt. improviser), tuba, optional percussion (woodblock, cowbell), drum set, optional piano and banjo, and strings Pioneering African American musician James P. Johnson led a long, multifaceted career as jazz pi- anist, songwriter, recording artist, and classical composer. Born in New Brunswick, NJ, this youngest of five children of mechanic Williams Johnson and his wife, Josephine, a maid, grew up listening to an intriguing assortment of musical styles: Methodist hymns, classical piano, popular songs, military bands, vaudeville shows, dance bands, and “ring shouts,” a common form of mu- sic and dance in Southern and Caribbean com- munities of enslaved people with roots tracing back to West Africa. When the family moved to Jersey City in 1902, Johnson first encountered ragtime piano music, heard through open saloon windows, and determined to become a “tickler” himself. Johnson took his first musical gig and earned his first quarter at age 8. The family moved again in 1908, this time to New York City, where the teenager heard some of the hottest jazz pianists, such as Jelly Roll Morton, and learned to play “real” ragtime. The Big Apple also offered Johnson his first opportu- nities to hear the highest levels of classical music at concerts of the New York Symphony Orches- tra under Walter Damrosch. These traditions might seem worlds apart, but Johnson explained how classical music raised the level of ragtime: “The people in New York were used to hearing good piano played in concerts and cafés. The ragtime player had to live up to that standard. James P. Johnson RAVINIA.ORG  • RAVINIAMAGAZINE 73