I’ve heard the “chamber” Appalachian Spring too (I have a CD somewhere with Hugh Wolff). Copland trimmed away some stuff when making the suite, to good effect I think — there are some less effective passages in the original.

?

On the subject of the post, I think attitudes cut both ways. For all the silly denunciations of the Busbeys of this world, there’s also the fact that most creative artists are sufficiently alienated from the endeavors of the people who run this country (as I am too). In the 30’s and 40’s it wasn’t that way, hence some of Copland’s activities. I remember once running across a symphonic piece that Marc Blitzstein (as far as I know both gayer — although he was married for a bit — and more leftwing than Copland) had written to celebrate the airforce (or Army Air Corps). Great World War II airplanes darkening the sky cover.

David, I did say “unless you’re steeped in mid-century American music.” Which clearly, you are. Very few people would know them, let alone as recognize as important.

So much for Walter Piston, Henry Cowell, Darius Milhaud, William Grant Still, Virgil Thomson, Morton Gould, Leo Sowerby, and Howard Hanson–just to name the composers *I* recognize as important. But Deems Taylor rises to visibility on the strength of his Disney connection. Sigh.

For fans of Appalachian Spring, it was originally scored for a chamber orchestra not a full symphony (because of space limitations at Martha Graham’s perfomance venue . . .) The chamber version was released on vinyl, and I presume it’s on cd, though I haven’t re-bought it, and it’s wonderful.

Kind of like “Hallelujah” and sadness, maybe. But I think there’s more intrinsically there in Copland than that.

Partly because it, or they, sample/mimic folk music, right?—and at that, folk music which has been around longer than even Ellington.

assuredly ranks among the most recognizably American music

This pretty bizarre, isn’t it? How can a classical concert piece be more American than “Take the A Train”? (Or any of a million other examples, from William Billings on down.) And yet somehow it is, and it would take a more acute cultural critic than Ross to disentangle why.