Appalachian Spring (Ballet for Martha) . . . Aaron Copland
(Born November 14, 1900, in Brooklyn, New York; died December 2, 1990, in North Tarrytown, New York)

Appalachian Spring has an iconic stature, being the work most emblematic of Copland’s name, having inspired more admiration by critics and listeners than any of his other music. Some of this fame is probably due to its intertwined history with the work of the famous twentieth century modern dancer, Martha Graham. When the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation in the Library of Congress commissioned a dance work from Martha Graham in 1942, she turned to Aaron Copland for the music. In 1944 he delivered a score to her entitled Ballet for Martha, which subsequently became its subtitle. Miss Graham found the title for her ballet in a poem by Hart Crane, and Appalachian Spring became one of her most durable works and one of the best loved of all-American compositions. “Appalachian Spring would never have existed without her special personality,” Aaron Cop¬land said in 1974. “The music was created for her and it reflects the unique quality of a human being.”

The action of the ballet, as described in a note in the score, concerns “a pioneer celebration, in spring, around a newly built farmhouse in the Pennsylvania hills, in the early part of the last [sic. Nineteenth] century. The bride to be and the young farmer-husband enact the emotions, joyful and apprehensive, that their new domestic partnership invites. An older neighbor suggests now and then the rocky confi¬dence of experience. A revivalist and his followers remind the new householders of the strange and terrible aspects of human fate. At the end, the couple are left, quiet and strong, in their new house.” In an interview published in 1975, Miss Graham added, “It is essentially the coming of a new life. It has to do with growing things. Spring is the loveliest and saddest time of year.”

“Appalachian Spring is generally thought to be folk-¬inspired,” Mr. Copland said, “but the Shaker tune ‘Tis the Gift to be Simple’ is the only folk material actually quoted in the piece. Rhythms and melodies that suggest a certain ambiance, and the use of specific folk themes, are after all not the same thing. It took me about a year to finish and I remember thinking how crazy it was to spend all that time because I knew how short lived most ballet scores are, but [it] took a life of its own.” Nevertheless, the score displays an absorption in the vernacular, as Pollock, Copland’s biographer says, “suitable to a script so steeped in a wide range of American myth and folklore. It often gives the impression of folk music.”

Copland’s Appalachian Spring ballet divides into two parts that “seemingly portray peace and war.” In May 1945 Copland arranged an orchestral suite from the ballet, cutting pieces here and there and highlighting the work’s “more idyllic side.” He used a relatively small orchestra but larger than the one for the original, and the larger group provided a new color and brilliance to the work.

Appalachian Spring was first performed at the Library of Congress in Washington on October 30, 1944, by a cast that included Miss Graham, Merce Cunningham and Erick Hawkins. The music was scored for an ensemble of thirteen instruments: flute, clarinet, bassoon, piano, four violins, two violas, two cellos and bass. Those were all the instruments there was room for in the tiny pit of the small auditorium. Although five different versions now exist, the orchestral suite is the best known today.

The suite is sometimes performed by the original-sized small ensemble, but also often in Copland’s re-scoring for a moderately sized orchestra of piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, two trombones, timpani, percussion, harp, piano and strings.



Carmina Burana: Cantiones Profanae, for Solo Voices, Chorus and Orchestra . . .Carl Orff
(Born July 10, 1895, in Munich; died there March 29, 1982)

During the 12th and 13th centuries, a tremendous body of Latin and vernacular poetry was created by poets collectively known as “goliards.” To group them together under a single name is misleading, however, for the goliards were drawn from every rank of society. The poets include prominent churchmen such as Walter of Châtillon (1135-1176) and Philip, Chancellor of the University of Paris (d.1236), as well as now-nameless students, vagabonds, and jongleurs. The poetry is similarly variable: there are moralistic and fervidly religious poems, as well as secular lyrics that range from love songs (heterosexual and otherwise) to humorous and obscene stories. The most famous collection of goliard poetry is the Carmina Burana (literally “Songs of Beuren”), a 13th-century collection of over 200 poems that was compiled at the Benedictine monastery in Benediktbeueren, south of Orff’s hometown of Munich. This richly-illuminated manuscript was probably gathered together for a wealthy abbot of the monastery. Most of its poems are written in Church Latin, but there are several poems in a Bavarian dialect of medieval German, and a few poems that are partially in French (for example, no.16 in Orff’s setting).

Carl Orff's “secular cantata” on texts from the Carmina Burana is certainly his best-known work. Orff is a familiar name to many music educators: he was the creator of a systematic method of music education for children and the composer of an important body of Schulwerke, or educational music. However, much of his concert and stage music remains unknown to American audiences.

Carmina Burana, composed in 1935-36, is the earliest of Orff's works; in 1937, he withdrew from publication everything else he had composed up to that time. The success of Carmina Burana prompted the composition of two related works: Catulli Carmina and Il Trionfo di Afrodite, both of which he based upon medieval models. All three settings were conceived as stage works, and in Carmina Burana and its sequels, Orff suggested that costumes, staging, and props would add to the effect of the work. Carmina Burana did not become well known until after the end of the World War II. Primarily now performed as a concert piece, it sometimes s been produced with costumed mimes and dancers on stage and chorus and solo voices in the orches¬tra pit.

The musical style of Carmina Burana and much of Orff's later work owes a great deal to the neoclassical music of Stravinsky, and echoes of Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms and Les Noces are clear. Orff's style is harmonically simple, with ostinato rhythmic figures repeated over long static harmonies. The entire choral prologue, for example, is set above an unchanging D in the bass. The orchestration is simple, yet colorful: Orff shows a preference for percussive effects that highlight the accents of the text and his own rhythmic figures. Melodic figures are short and frequently repeated with very little development. There are also moments of pure Romanticism, however, particularly in the baritone’s solo lines. Orff did not use any of the relatively few extant melodies preserved with goliard poetry for his material. The end result of his compositional procedures is striking: his settings of these 700-year-old lyrics first published in 1847 are imbued with both freshness and mystery.

In speaking about his aesthetic philosophy, Orff remarked that: “I am often asked why I nearly always select old material, fairy tales, and legends for my stage works. I do not see this material as old, but rather as valid. The time element disappears, and only the spiritual element remains. My entire interest is in the expression of these spiritual realities. I write for the theater to convey a spiritual attitude.” Orff’s ordering of the secular poems he chose reflects a deep understanding of the medieval spirit.

The 24 texts are arranged into three large sections: I.“Spring,” II. “In the Tavern,” and III. “The Court of Love,” and each of these sections is further subdivided. The first two texts, serving as a prelude to Section I, deal with the most potent symbol of medieval life: the Wheel of Fortune. In countless manuscript illuminations—including a prominent page in the original Carmina Burana manuscript—this wheel is depicted being manipulated by a capricious Lady Fortune. Fortune’s Wheel alternately raises and lowers the kings, churchmen, and peasants who cling to it and represents the quick and uncontrollable turns of fate in humans’ lives. Section I, “Spring” reflects an idealized and mythological view of Nature and Springtime. Spring was an important medieval metaphor both for resurrection and for youth, but here the enjoyment of the season is purely sensuous. In a subsection, titled “On the Green” (nos.6-10), the outdoor spirit is directed towards thoughts of love and dancing. This subsection contains the only purely orchestral music in Carmina Burana: an instrumental “Tanz” (dance) that opens the section, and a “Reie” (round-dance) inserted before the chorus “Swaz hie gat umbe.”

The four numbers set in the tavern give four different perspectives of medieval merrymaking: drunken musings, feasting (sung from the perspective of the “feastee,” a roasted swan!), a satire of a drunken clergyman (who invokes the spurious St. Decius, patron saint of gamblers), and finally the drunken and entirely democratic free-for-all of “In taberna quando sumus.”

The third and longest section, “Court of Love,” reflects the two-fold conception of love common in medieval thought. We hear both the elevated ideal of courtly love: chaste longing for an unattainable lady heard in “Dies, nox et omnia” and the frankly erotic view of love in “Si puer cum puellula.” In most of the texts, these two threads are cunningly woven together. This section ends with “Blanchefleur and Helen” (no. 24), a single poem praising Venus in the same terms often reserved for addresses to the Virgin Mary. A repeat of the opening chorus, “O Fortuna,” serves as a postlude. In returning, Orff neatly encircles Carmina Burana within Fortune's Wheel.

The mixture of languages that scholars call “macaronic” begins in the “On the Lawn” section, No. 6, where late and Italianate Latin join with medieval Bavarian German dialect as well as some old French. In No. 24, Blanziflor and Helena perhaps are a pair of lovers, Whiteflower and Helen.

The instru¬ments required by the score are piccolo and three flutes, three oboes and English horn, three clarinets, small clarinet in E flat and bass clarinet, three bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani, percussion, celesta, two pianos and strings.

INTRODUCTION:
FORTUNE, EMPRESS OF THE WORLD
1. O Fortuna (Chorus): O Fortune, changing like the moon, always waxing or waning.
2. Fortune plango vulnera (Chorus): Weeping, I lament fortune's blows.

PART I
IN SPRINGTIME
3. Veris leta facies (Small Chorus): Spring's bright face greets the world.
4. Omnia sol temperat (Baritone): The pure, bright sun governs everything.
5. Ecce gratum (Chorus): See how the welcome sun brightens everything.
ON THE LAWN
6. Dance (Orchestra)
7. Floret silva (Large and Small Chorus): The forest is in flower and leaf. Where is my old friend? Who will love me?
8. Chramer, gip die varwe mir (Sopranos and Chorus): Shop¬keeper, give me the red color for my cheeks that the young man loves.
9. Round Dance (Orchestra) and Songs (Chorus): The girls want no man all summer. Come, come my dear friend. Sweet rose-like mouth, heal me.
10. Were diu werlt all min (Chorus): If the world were all mine, I'd give it all up to hold the Queen of England in my arms.

PART II
IN THE TAVERN
11. Estuans interius (Baritone): I talk to myself with rage and bitterness. My soul is dead. I manage to save my skin.
12. Olim lacus colueram ("Song of the Roast Swan," Tenor and Male Chorus): Once I lived on a lake, now I am well done, roasted black, and served on a platter.
13. Ego sum abbes (Baritone and Male Chorus): I am the Abbot of Cucany. Whoever joins me at dice after vespers loses his shirt.
14. In taberna quando sumus (Male Chorus): When we are in the tavern, we gamble and drink. First, play for the wine; then drink to the prisoners; then to the living; fourth to the Christians; fifth, the departed faithful; sixth, vain women; seventh, rural soldiers; eighth, fallen brothers; ninth, dispersed monks; tenth, sailors; eleventh, quarrelers; twelfth, the penitents; thirteenth, travelers. Men, women, soldiers, clerks, servants are drinking. The quick, the lazy, the white, the black, the steady, the wanderers are drinking. Men and women by the thousands are drinking.

PART III
THE COURT OF LOVE
15. Amor volat undique (Soprano and Chorus of Boys): Cupid flies everywhere.
16. Dies, nox et omnia (Baritone): Day and night, everything is going badly.
17. Stetit puella (Soprano): There stood a girl in a red tunic, like a rose.
18. Circa mea pectora (Baritone and Chorus): Many are the sighs from my heart for your beauty.
l9. Si puer cum puellula (Sextet): When a boy and a girl are alone in a room, what happy intimacy.
20. Veni, veni, venias (Double Chorus): Come, come, don't make me die.
21. In trutina (Soprano): Weighing love against chastity.
22. Tempus est iocundum (Soprano, Baritone and Chorus): It is time for rejoicing, girls and boys, winter or spring.
23. Dulcissime (Soprano): Sweetest boy, I give my all to you.

BLANZIFLOR AND HELEN
24. Ave formosissima (Chorus): Hail to the most beautiful girl, precious gem, noble beauty.

FORTUNE, EMPRESS OF THE WORLD
25. O Fortuna (Chorus): O Fortune, changing like the moon, always waxing or waning.

Copyright Susan Halpern, halpernprogramnotes.com

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