Symphony No 3
Aaron Copland
✒️1944–46 | ⏰ 40 minutes
Aaron Copland
Born: Brooklyn, New York City, 1900
Died: North Tarrytown (now Sleepy Hollow), New York State, 1990
Aaron Copland grew up above the Brooklyn department store owned by his parents. A child of the new century, he left the musical conservativism of New York in 1921 to study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. She was ‘an intellectual Amazon’, Copland recalled, who encouraged him to follow his own musical instincts. Paris was ‘where the action was’, he said, and it was there, aligned to the rhythmic complexity of Stravinsky, that he wrote his ambitious ballet Grohg.
He returned to the US in 1924 with a commission arranged by Boulanger for an organ symphony (later rescored as the First Symphony). Serge Koussevitzky, music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, premiered Copland’s jazzy Music for the Theatre and Piano Concerto.
During the 1930s, Copland adopted a simpler style that led to the wide appeal of his three ballets on American subjects: Billy the Kid, Rodeo and Appalachian Spring, as well as the patriotic Lincoln Portrait and Fanfare for the Common Man. Hollywood turned to him for three film scores, and in 1950, he wrote his Clarinet Concerto for jazz clarinettist Benny Goodman. In the 1950s, the time of Senator John McCarthy’s anti-Communist ‘witch hunts’, his left-wing views led to FBI investigations and a blacklisting of his works.
The 1950s and 60s saw a return to his early progressivism, but he gave up composing in the 70s, feeling he had run out of ideas. He exerted a huge influence on forming a distinctive American music, not only through his compositions, but also as a writer, educator, administrator and supporter of younger composers.
What is the story?
The US is big on ambition and the ideals of freedom, progress and opportunity, but its classical music history is relatively short. While 19th century musical nationalism swept Russia, Europe and Scandinavia, the US relied on European imports. Czech composer Antonín Dvořák was invited to help shape what an American classical music tradition might become, writing his Symphony No 9, ‘From the New World’ in the US in 1893.
Even when a distinct American classical music tradition began to emerge in the 20th century, it was shaped in large part by outsiders. Many key American composers studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, and the leading lights of Broadway and Hollywood – including George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, Erich Korngold and Bernard Herrmann – came from Jewish immigrant families. So did Aaron Copland, known as the ‘Dean of American music’.
Why is this piece so iconic?
In the 1930s and 40s, Copland made his name with a trio of ballets – Billy the Kid, Rodeo and Appalachian Spring – based on cowboy or pioneer-settler scenarios and infused with North American folk songs and dances. Now, after World War II, the time was right for a great American symphony. Copland admitted he was ‘reaching for the grand gesture’.
Copland took the natively European form of the symphony – whose roots reached back to Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven – and made it the US' own, by incorporating jazz and popular styles along with his unique ability to frame in sound the open landscapes of the country. In another bold gesture, he folded his earlier Fanfare for the Common Man, emblematic of democracy and human endeavour, into the Symphony’s last movement. Highlighting the work’s contrasting influences, Copland’s longtime friend and champion Leonard Bernstein described Copland’s Third Symphony as at the same time ‘very symphonic and very jazzy’.
What is the music like?
The opening string melody, warmed by shining brass, has a spacious quality often associated with North American classical music. A new lyrical tune complements the first, beginning to soar. So far, the mood has mostly been of peace, pastoralism and prayerfulness. But a third, dirge-like idea, begun on trombones with an angular, sawing accompaniment, leads to a first climax. The three themes return – the first two cleverly intertwined (trombone and flute), the third one now higher and more shrill. Another climax, this one more seismic, but then a return of the opening calm.
Rousing fanfares launch the second movement, which proceeds with spiky playfulness. Later, the opening fanfare, slowed down, becomes a grand chorale and builds to a massive climax. The second part of this movement’s ABA form brings a calmer, more folk-like mood. A twittering piano leads a return to the busy opening music (‘A’ section), which concludes with a grander version of the middle section’s folk-like theme.
The third movement opens with an eerie recollection of the first movement’s third theme, the kernel for a series of episodes intended, Copland said, ‘to emerge one from the other in continuous flow’. The last movement emerges without a break, with flutes borrowing from Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. This movement carries an ‘exhilarating gumbo of themes’, a conclusion to what Sir Antonio Pappano describes as ‘the quintessential American symphony’.
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Sir Antonio Pappano
Chief Conductor
After 22 years as Music Director of the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, Sir Antonio Pappano became Chief Conductor of the LSO. He was born just 20 miles away, in Epping, and moved to the US aged 13 but now lives in London. He has held lead positions with the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels (1992–2002) and the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome (2005–23).
Opera is in his blood, and he brings this love of dramatic narrative and storytelling to his orchestral performances too. But he directs his players with great immediacy: his conducting style is unfiltered, impassioned and straight from the heart.
A natural communicator about music, too, he has presented programmes for BBC TV. Last year he was appointed Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, having conducted at the Coronation of King Charles and Queen Camilla last year.
The London Symphony Orchestra
At the London Symphony Orchestra, we believe that extraordinary music should be available to everyone, everywhere – from orchestral fans in the concert hall to first-time listeners all over the world.
The LSO was established in 1904 as one of the first orchestras shaped by its musicians. Since then, generations of remarkable talents have built the LSO’s reputation for quality, daring, ambition and a commitment to sharing the joy of music with everyone. Today, the LSO is ranked among the world’s top orchestras, reaching tens of thousands of people in London and on stages around the world, and millions more through streaming, downloads, radio, film and television.
As Resident Orchestra at the Barbican since the Centre opened in 1982, we perform some 70 concerts there every year with our family of artists: Chief Conductor Sir Antonio Pappano, Conductor Emeritus Sir Simon Rattle, Principal Guest Conductors Gianandrea Noseda and François-Xavier Roth, Conductor Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas, and Associate Artists Barbara Hannigan and André J Thomas. The LSO has major artistic residencies in Paris, Tokyo and at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, and tours regularly in Asia and the US.
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On Stage
Leader
Andrej Power
First Violins
Choha Kim
Clare Duckworth
Ginette Decuyper
Olatz Ruiz de Gordejuela
Maxine Kwok
William Melvin
Stefano Mengoli
Claire Parfitt
Elizabeth Pigram
Laurent Quénelle
Harriet Rayfield
Sylvain Vasseur
Dániel Mészöly
Hilary Jane Parker
Shoshanah Sievers
Second Violins
Thomas Norris
Sarah Quinn
Miya Väisänen
David Ballesteros
Matthew Gardner
Alix Lagasse
Iwona Muszynska
Csilla Pogány
Ricky Gore
Gordon MacKay
Polina Makhina
José Nuno Matias
Djumash Poulsen
Chelsea Sharpe
Violas
Eivind Ringstad
Gillianne Haddow
Malcolm Johnston
Germán Clavijo
Anna Bastow
Thomas Beer
Steve Doman
Sofia Silva Sousa
Robert Turner
Mizuho Ueyama
Nancy Johnson
Annie-May Page
Cellos
Timothy Walden
Gundula Leitner
Alastair Blayden
Salvador Bolón
Daniel Gardner
Amanda Truelove
Anna Beryl
Judith Fleet
Henry Hargreaves
Joanna Twaddle
Double Basses
Ville Väätäinen
Marcello Sung Hyuck Hong
Chaemun Im
Joe Melvin
Jani Pensola
Charles Campbell-Peek
Hugh Sparrow
Adam Wynter
Flutes
Gareth Davies
Anna Wolstenholme
Imogen Royce
Piccolo
Patricia Moynihan
Oboes
Juliana Koch
Emmet Byrne
Cor Anglais
Sarah Harper
Clarinets
Chris Richards
Bethany Crouch
E-flat Clarinet
Nicholas Rodwell
Bass Clarinet
Ferran Garcerà Perelló
Bassoons
Rachel Gough
Joost Bosdijk
Contra Bassoon
Martin Field
Horns
Diego Incertis Sánchez
Timothy Jones
Angela Barnes
Daniel Curzon
Jonathan Maloney
Trumpets
James Fountain
Gareth Small
Adam Wright
Imogen Whitehead
Holly Clark
Trombones
Simon Johnson
Rebecca Smith
Jonathan Hollick
Bass Trombone
Paul Milner
Tuba
Ben Thomson
Timpani
Nigel Thomas
Percussion
Neil Percy
David Jackson
Sam Walton
Patrick King
Mark McDonald
Harps
Bryn Lewis
Anneke Hodnett
Piano
Harry Rylance
Celeste
Zeynep Özsuca
Programme Notes Edward Bhesania. Edward Bhesania is a music journalist and editor who writes for The Stage, The Strad and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama.
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