Composed 1929; Duration: 19 minutes
First BPO Performance: April 21 & 23, 1968 (Aaron Copland, conductor)
Last BPO Performance: February 1-2, 2013 (JoAnn Falletta, conductor)
Before the adaptable Aaron Copland created a uniquely populist, American sound with a music-for-all approach during the Great Depression and World War II with ballets like Billy the Kid, Rodeo, and Appalachian Spring, he set out to be an American modernist. The Roaring Twenties accommodated artistic experimentation and academic rigor, and Copland traveled to Paris in the early part of the decade to hone his craft with famed teacher Nadia Boulanger.
Among his works from this time was the ballet Grohg, a morbid scenario inspired by the recent film, Nosferatu. If a horror ballet feels out of place in Copland’s portfolio, perhaps he felt the same, as it was withdrawn. Although never performed, much of the music was reconstituted in other works, as with the three-movement Dance Symphony, composed for a prize awarded by the RCA Victor company in 1929, with a considerable award of $5,000.
The work was performed in 1931 by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski’s direction to mixed acclaim. Harmonically and emotionally foreboding, the opening movement is alluringly rhythmic with Copland’s trademark clear orchestral textures. The wind-heavy middle movement creeps with nocturnal fright. As the jarring language of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (1913) was still fresh in 1920s Paris, it is unsurprising that the impressionable Copland imbued his finale with its unavoidable influence. Audiences may also detect resemblances to later Copland works like El Salón México (1936). Dance Symphony is a compelling and little-known link in the chain that connects Aaron Copland’s Parisian modernism of the 1920s with his later wartime Americana.