On this day in 1943, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra performed the debut of Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. You can hear it here, but of course you’ve already heard it everywhere, and its echoes too, as in John Williams’s “Hymn to the Fallen” on the soundtrack to Saving Private Ryan. Along with the bit of Copland’s Appalachian Spring that uses “’tis a gift to be simple,” and his “Hoedown” from Rodeo, it assuredly ranks among the most recognizably American music. And it was written by a gay Jewish lefty from Brooklyn.

Eugene Goossens, the conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony, commissioned Copland’s Fanfare, along with a variety of others (one by Deems Taylor, who narrated Disney’s Fantasia, but the rest by people you probably never heard of unless you’re steeped in mid-century American music). Goossens wanted to, er, goose the war effort. Copland had considered calling it Fanfare for the Spirit of Democracy; also, Fanfare for Four Freedoms; later he said, “it was the common man, after all, who was doing all the dirty work in the war and the army.”

Also during the war, Copland composed the Lincoln Portrait, which included a narrator who recited the text I’ll put below the fold. In 1953, it went on the musical program for Eisenhower’s inauguration. Representative Fred Busbey (R-IL) objected, based on Copland’s association with Communist and fellow-traveler organizations, and the inauguration committee dropped it. As the historian Bruce Catton wrote, “it at least saved the assembled Republicans from being compelled to listen to Lincoln’s brooding words… ‘We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves.’” As a result of expelling this un-American composer, the inauguration program contained no American music at all. When told that Copland’s music was essential Americana in the repertoire of U.S. military bands, Busbey replied, “We must look into that!”

Busbey wasn’t wrong about “the known records of Aaron Copland for activities, affiliations, and sympathies with” leftist organizations. Particularly, Copland had appeared at the 1949 Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace at which, as the delightful Time put it, “U.S. left-wingers applauded the U.S.S.R.’s ‘fight for peace.’” Copland later expressed dissatisfaction with his sense of being used by Communists at such affairs.

But, as Copland said, “My ‘politics’—tainted or untainted—are certain to die with me, but my music, I am foolish enough to imagine, might just possibly outlive the strictures of a member of the Republican Party.”

He was right enough; twenty years later the Nixon administration wanted his music for the 1973 inauguration. Copland “did not admire Mr. Nixon,” he said. On the other hand, Nixon was the President. When he got a telegram from Nixon, two of his friends used it as a rolling paper for a joint and tried to smoke it, but Copland snatched it from them, saying “It’s from the President of the United States. That goes into my scrapbook.” Copland decided to let his music grace Nixon’s inauguration but declined, himself, to attend. Four years later, he attended and conducted his music at Carter’s inauguration.

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Narrator’s dialogue for the Lincoln Portrait, from NPR’s Performance Today:

“Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history.”

That is what he said. That is what Abraham Lincoln said.

“Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility.” [Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862]

He was born in Kentucky, raised in Indiana, and lived in Illinois. And this is what he said. This is what Abe Lincoln said.

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we will save our country.” [Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862]

When standing erect he was six feet four inches tall, and this is what he said.

He said: “It is the eternal struggle between two principles, right and wrong, throughout the world. It is the same spirit that says ‘you toil and work and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.’ No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation, and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.” [Lincoln-Douglas debates, 15 October 1858]

Lincoln was a quiet man. Abe Lincoln was a quiet and a melancholy man. But when he spoke of democracy, this is what he said.

He said: “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.”

Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth president of these United States, is everlasting in the memory of his countrymen. For on the battleground at Gettysburg, this is what he said:

He said: “That from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. That this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

Most of the information here comes from Howard Pollack, Aaron Copland and Herbert Parmet, Eisenhower and the American Crusades.