Free Republic

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 [since the twentieth century, State of the Union], December 1, 1862) The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise...

Aaron Copland ~ 1900-1990 This is the complete Orchestral Suite, not the Ballet Suite. (Apologies for my poor labeling of the piece as I somehow managed to note 'Part 2' twice; this was done when I created the video before YouTube allowed running times longer than ten minutes...) Copland's "Billy the Kid" was commissioned by Lincoln Kirstein for his ballet company, Ballet Caravan, in 1938. The hope was to create an "American" ballet, to counteract the Russian tradition so popular in ballet for centuries. The result, and I'll quote as I know the music but don't know ballet, was, "the...

Composing can be a lonely job. Hour after hour, the composer sits at a piano, trying to bring out the music in his head. But for Aaron Copland, composition was about the people. Working with people, learning from them, befriending them, organizing and mentoring them. His enthusiasm for combining music with humanity assured his place in music history almost as much as his compositions. "As organizer, teacher, propagandist, critic, lecturer and expositor, he has been by far the most voluble, articulate and respected American musician of his time," wrote Harold Schonberg in The New York Times in 1970. His ballets...