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characters—the Bride, her Bridegroom, the
Preacher, and a Pioneer Woman—quietly enter
onto the stage. Presumably, Graham conceived
the loving young couple to idealistically por-
tray her recent marriage. In fact, Graham and
Hawkins danced the leading roles, while Merce
Cunningham portrayed the Preacher and May
O’Donnell the Pioneer Woman.
Graham modeled the Pioneer Woman on her
great grandmother, a resourceful woman who
moved from Virginia to the rich soils of Penn-
sylvania during the previous century. “She terri-
fied me. She was very beautiful and was always
very still. What her father did, and what was
passed down in family lore, was wear his best
Sunday shirt to do his farming in the belief in
the nobility of physical labor. And before he
did any work, she had to be sure to iron it each
morning.”
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
follows the deservedly famous variations on the
Shaker melody “Simple Gifts.” Copland remem-
bered finding this tune in a 1940 collection. He
understood that “the dance would have been in
a lively tempo, with a 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
the 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
on October 30, 1944, at the Coolidge Festival
in Washington, DC. Her choice of
Appalachian
Spring
was derived from a line in Hart Crane’s
poem “The Bridge.” She explained to the com-
poser: “It really has nothing to do with the bal-
let. I just liked it.” Copland solidified his “Amer-
ican” style in
Appalachian Spring
. Aside from
the Shaker tune, no actual folk material appears
within the score. However, Copland evoked the
folk spirit in his mildly dissonant, yet captivat-
ingly simplistic musical material. Both choreog-
rapher Graham and set designer Isamo Noguchi
conformed their ideas to this uncluttered, direct
expression.
Appalachian Spring
earned the New
York Music Critics Circle Award as the out-
standing theatrical work of the 1944–45 season,
and Copland’s score garnered the Pulitzer Prize
in Music for 1945.
GEORGE GERSHWIN (1898–1937)
Rhapsody in Blue
Scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets
and one bass clarinet, two bassoons, three horns,
three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani,
crash cymbals, suspended cymbal, gong, snare and
bass drums, triangle, bells, two alto and one tenor
saxophones, banjo, strings, and solo piano
Paul Whiteman announced a provocative con-
cert in the
New York Tribune
on January 4, 1924.
The stated purpose of this musical event was to
decide “What is American music?” According
to the four-paragraph article, Whiteman had
assembled a distinguished panel of musicians
to decide the question. Among other music,
the program would contain three new compo-
sitions: a jazz concerto by George Gershwin, a
“syncopated tone poem” by Irving Berlin, and
an American suite by Victor Herbert.
Ira Gershwin brought this article to his broth-
er’s attention. George apparently had forgotten
about the “jazz concerto” project, which he had
discussed only in vague terms with Whiteman.
With less than six weeks before the concert, the
surprised musician began mapping out ideas.
Gershwin’s account of the creative process ap-
peared in 1938, one year after his tragic death
from brain cancer: “I had no set plan, no struc-
ture to which my music must conform. The
Rhapsody
, you see, began as a purpose, not as
a plan.” Sometime before January 7, Gershwin
had combed his “tune books” for useful melodic
ideas. Shuttling between New York and Boston
for the tryout of his musical
The Perfect Lady
(produced on Broadway as
Sweet Little Devil
),
Gershwin’s imagination came alive to the sounds
of his passenger train “with its steely rhythms,
its rattlety-bang. … I suddenly heard—even
saw on paper—the complete construction of the
Rhapsody
from beginning to end.”
AARON COPLAND (1900–90)
Appalachian Spring
: Ballet for Martha
Scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets,
two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, and two
trombones, timpani, xylophone, snare and bass
drums, cymbals, tabor (long drum), wood block,
claves, glockenspiel, triangle, harp, piano, and strings
Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge—one of America’s
foremost patrons of the arts—first attended
a performance by dancer and choreographer
Martha Graham during the early 1940s. Gra-
ham’s striking modern technique impressed
Coolidge, who soon commissioned three new
ballets for her foundation’s annual fall festival at
the Library of Congress. For these productions,
Coolidge also commissioned musical scores
from Aaron Copland (
Appalachian Spring
),
Darius Milhaud (
Jeux de printemps
, or
Imag-
ined Wing
), and Carlos Chávez. Paul Hindemith
eventually took over Chávez’s commission and
produced the ballet
Mirror before Me
, later re-
named
Hérodiade
.
Several years earlier, Graham had based her
dance
Dithyramb
on Copland’s Piano Varia-
tions. However, the Coolidge commission af-
forded these two seminal American artists their
first opportunity to collaborate start-to-finish
on a ballet production. Graham initially submit-
ted a brief dramatic script to Copland, who was
composing film scores in Hollywood at the time.
The original scenario involved several American
aspects, including a young Native American girl
modeled on Pocahontas. Graham had devel-
oped a fascination with Native American life,
dance, and ritual on a trip to the Southwest fol-
lowing her marriage to Erick Hawkins, the lead-
ing male dancer in her company. Although Na-
tive American elements ultimately disappeared
from the story line, Graham retained one sty-
listic influence in her production—the “squash
blossom hair arrangement” of the Hopi women.
The ballet scenario gradually evolved into
wedding celebrations in a 19th-century Penn-
sylvania farming community. Four principal
Martha Graham
Aaron Copland
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