World Premiere: October 4, 1945
Most Recent HSO Performance:
November 11, 2012
Instrumentation: 2 flutes with second flute doubling on piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, timpani, bass drum, suspended cymbal, snare drum, tabor, triangle, glockenspiel, xylophone, woodblock, claves, harp, piano, and strings: violin I, violin II, viola, cello, and bass 

Duration: 24'

In 1942, Mrs. Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, one of America’s greatest patrons of the arts, went to see a dance recital by Martha Graham. So taken with the genius of the dancer-choreographer was Mrs. Coolidge that she offered to commission three ballets specially for her, and Graham chose as composers of the music Darius Milhaud, Paul Hindemith and an American whose work she had admired for over a decade—Aaron Copland. In 1931, Graham had staged Copland’s Piano Variations as the ballet Dithyramb, and she was eager to have another dance piece from him, especially in view of his recent successes with Billy the Kid and Rodeo. She devised a scenario based on memories of her grandmother’s farm in turn-of-the-20th-century Pennsylvania, and it proved to be a perfect match for the direct, quintessentially American style that Copland espoused in those years. 

The premiere was set for October 1944 (in honor of Mrs. Coolidge’s 80th birthday) in the auditorium of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and the limited space in the theater allowed Copland to use a chamber orchestra of only thirteen instruments (flute, clarinet, bassoon, piano and nine strings). He began work on the score in June 1943 in Hollywood while writing the music for the movie North Star and finished it a year later in Cambridge, where he was delivering the Horatio Appleton Lamb Lectures at Harvard. The plot, the music and most of the choreography were completed before a title for the piece was selected. Graham was taken at just that time with the name of a poem by Hart Crane—Appalachian Spring— and she adopted it for her new ballet, though the content of the poem has no relation with the stage work. 

Appalachian Spring was unveiled in Washington on October 30, 1944, and repeated in New York in May to great acclaim, garnering the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Music and the New York Music Critics Circle Award as the outstanding theatrical work of the 1944–1945 season. Soon after its New York premiere, Copland revised the score as a suite of eight continuous sections for full orchestra by eliminating about eight minutes of music in which, he said, “the interest is primarily choreographic.” On October 4, 1945, Artur 

Rodzinski led the New York Philharmonic in the premiere of this version, which has become one the best-loved works of 20th-century American music. 

Edwin Denby’s description of the ballet’s action from his review of the New York premiere in May 1945 was reprinted in the published score: “[The ballet concerns] a pioneer celebration in spring around a newly built farmhouse in the Pennsylvania hills in the early part of the 19th century. The bride-to-be and the young farmer-husband enact the emotions, joyful and apprehensive, their new domestic partnership invites. An older neighbor suggests now and then the rocky confidence of experience. A revivalist and his followers remind the new householders of the strange and terrible aspects of human fate. At the end, the couple are left quiet and strong in their new house.” 

Copland wrote, “The suite arranged from the ballet contains the following sections, played without interruption: 

“1. Very Slowly. Introduction of the characters, one by one, in a suffused light. 

“2. Fast. Sudden burst of unison strings in A-major arpeggios starts the action. A sentiment both elated and religious gives the keynote to this scene. 

“3. Moderato. Duo for the Bride and her Intended—scene of tenderness and passion. 

“4. Quite fast. The Revivalist and his flock. Folksy feelings—suggestions of square dances and country fiddlers. 

“5. Still faster. Solo dance of the Bride— presentiment of motherhood. Extremes of joy and fear and wonder. 

“6. Very slowly (as at first). Transition scene to music reminiscent of the introduction. 

“7. Calm and flowing. Scenes of daily activity for the Bride and her Farmer-husband. There are five variations on a Shaker theme. The theme, sung by a solo clarinet, was taken from a collection of Shaker melodies compiled by Edward D. Andrews, and published under the title The Gift To Be Simple. The melody I borrowed and used almost literally, is called ‘Simple Gifts.’ It has this text: 

Tis the gift to be simple, ’Tis the gift to be free,
’Tis the gift to come down Where we ought to be.
And when we find ourselves In the place just right, ’Twill be in the valley 

Of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain’d,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be asham’d. To turn, turn will be our delight,
’Til by turning, turning we come round right. “8. Moderate. Coda. The Bride takes her place 

among her neighbors. At the end the couple are left ‘quiet and strong in their new house.’ Muted strings intone a hushed, prayer-like passage. The close is reminiscent of the opening music.”