Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
Concerto for Clarinet and String Orchestra, with Harp and Piano
composed: 1947-8 (age 48)
first performance: New York (and NBC radio), November 6, 1950 (Benny Goodman, NBC Symphony Orchestra/Fritz Reiner)

Random number 586 off the master list. This is our ninth selection, for those who are counting. Which didn’t even include me, until just now, so surely no one.

I love this picture – from 1947 – and think it complements the piece nicely. The piece is like walking out into the backyard and feeling pretty good about things. But still keeping an eye on that cat.

I could have given you this picture of a later performance of the piece, but for illustrative purposes, the era is much more important to me than the occasion.

Is this Aaron Copland’s best piece? I remember listening to it one day on my iPod – on a train, I think, which always helps music seem vital – and thinking, “this has got to be Copland’s best piece.” But is it? It doesn’t have that essential seriousness shared by most of his other works that I would put in the running – the Second Symphony, the Piano Variations, the Piano Quartet – nor does it have the cinematic breadth of sentiment of stuff like Billy the Kid or Appalachian Spring that most people would probably point to.

What it has, what leaped out at me that day, is a sense of comfort, and, as a result, truth. The rhythm of it, the inner life of it, is relaxed in a way that seems real and unforced; actual happiness rather than a show of happiness. There is no false drama in it; it emotes at the scale of life.

The first section passes like a fine afternoon, the central cadenza paces around like the cat in the yard, and the last section has some fun in the same setting; maybe friends came over and you set up the badminton net.

Copland took several famous shots at composing “the sound of America,” and this isn’t one of them, but all the same, I think this is where he really gets it right. In the opening section, I hear an America that I recognize; a country without cadences or climaxes, the sweet, mild song of disinterested birds. Beauty too familiar to be called beauty, yet there it is anyway. We are in a hammock, and the sky is blue, and maybe the grass is a little brown but oh well. When emotion swells, to the degree that it does, it is just that: the play of emotion over a moment that hasn’t changed, like the shadows of clouds. The hammock isn’t even swinging. I find this music very touching, not because it is stronger than life but because I have actually lived it.

In the cadenza, I am touched by the same authenticity. Usually a cadenza like this for a monophonic instrument – with motives tossed this way and that, slowly as though being improvised, then worked into a frenzy, ideas alternated and dropped and picked up again, loud like there’s music playing and then soft so it’s almost like praying – feels like something out of “101 Great Audition Monologues.” I.e. a contrivance, a sales pitch; range and contrast purely for the sake of your money’s-worth. The clarinet cadenza here isn’t that. It’s just a cat. Or a thought. It goes through its changes but it isn’t claiming anything or asking for attention. Something is happening that is different in rhythm and delivery from what came before, but not so different in soul. Clouds are still passing over the moment and not the other way around.

Maybe this contented, contemplative spirit of non-event doesn’t quite last all the way to the very end – there has to be a climax, naturally – but it lasts quite a way into the fast section, where the bounding tenths in the bass (and elsewhere) are the same as the ripples of gentleness that opened the whole piece. The fast part doesn’t break with the placidity; it is, if I may, high-energy placidity. It is a dance of relaxation, like the badminton set, which is after all just a step away from the hammock.

The “jazzy” theme epitomizes the wonderful spirit of this piece. It has absolutely nothing jazzy whatsoever about it except for an attitude of nonchalance. (And a couple of flatted notes. And a couple syncopated notes too, if you’re really counting.) My point is, the piece isn’t capturing anything about the world of jazz music; it’s just connecting to a similarly populist sense of ease and satisfaction. It’s feelin’ all right. But it is not out at a club. It’s just at home.

The ending, then, is the only part where this piece brings me back to the concert hall, to the land of concerti and virtuosi and glissandi. But we’ve been brought there gradually and, at least until the very last moments, the enthusiasm doesn’t need to be manufactured; it finds its way naturally.

Yes, the piece may just be lemonade. But it’s a very fine lemonade – just the right temperature, just the right sweetness, tartness, mellowness, crispness – and that is far more admirable, soulful, and significant a thing than the mediocre steaks of so much classical music.

Dubal recommends

Stoltzman, London Symphony Orchestra, Leighton Smith: RCA 09026-61630-2
Drucker, New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Bernstein: Deutsche Grammophon 431672-2

He notably does not recommend the performance by Benny Goodman (for whom it was written) with Copland conducting (Columbia Symphony, 1963). I’ve seen a number of places where this performance is criticized as clumsy and lifeless. But to me, this is the perfect performance. Goodman’s nervous affectlessness and Copland’s merely competent direction are exactly what this deeply unpretentious piece need. The undeniable blandness of the recording, to me, perfectly evokes the breezes and the birds of the beautiful, indifferent American day I’ve been referring to all along. Performances with any suggestion of spectacle or charisma per se are going against the grain. At least as I hear it. Copland called it “the best record I ever conducted” and I’d like to think it was because he heard his own music the way I hear it.

I’ll admit, I didn’t listen to too many different recordings this time around. Didn’t get the ones above – just listened to the Copland/Goodman version and also to Charles Neidich, I Musici de Montréal/Yuli Turovsky (1999), which restores several very high passages toward the end that Benny Goodman asked Copland to revise because they scared him. It’s immediately clear that the original passages make more compositional sense than the replacement versions, so this is a worthwhile listen, but as I’ve been saying, I find this piece’s lack of traditional charisma to be its source of grace, so I have no need for the “whoa” notes. I’ll grant Neidich and Turovsky that for a “sassy” interpretation, theirs is pretty well-judged. Unlike a version by Richard Stoltzman that I heard (streaming online, I forget where), which arrogantly and tastelessly affected “jazzy” without any affinity at all for Aaron Copland’s supreme avuncular squareness.

This is quite copyrighted so no pdfs of the score for download. There’s no need, though, because it has been posted online in more than its entirety, by reputable institutions. Here’s 113 pages of sketches at the Library of Congress – absolutely fascinating if you take the time – and here’s the original manuscript full score at Juilliard. (It’s Flash, so I can’t link you straight to it, but click through and it’s where you’d expect.)

Incidentally: 1001 Classical Recordings recommends the Goodman/Copland recording. So once again I like their style. And the Medtner concerto wasn’t on their list, which, much as I like the piece, I can understand.