A decade or so after A Lincoln Portrait and Fanfare for the Common Man, Copland returned to the patriotic genre one more time in this little-known choral work. Canticle of Freedom was an occasional piece, commissioned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the dedication of the school’s new Kresge Auditorium. According to eyewitnesses, the forces of MIT did less than full justice to the new work, which was first heard in an adequate performance when Robert Shaw conducted a revised version in Atlanta in 1967.

The composer made a special effort to keep the choral parts simple; he limited himself to unison singing or a two-part texture to make it easier for amateur performers. Yet it is not exactly a lightweight work. In spite of its relative brevity, it packs quite a punch, and the prominent brass and percussion parts give it a definite air of grandiosity. Some commentators have suggested that this paean to freedom was, in some sense, a response to Copland’s harrowing experience before Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, where he was grilled about the Communist contacts that he was suspected of having (but which he denied).

Copland chose a medieval text for the Canticle, perhaps to show the timelessness of the idea of freedom. The lines are from the epic poem The Brus (The Bruce) by Scottish poet John Barbour (ca. 1320-1395) about the wars between England and Scotland in the 13 th century. The poem–one of the earliest literary works to come down to us from Scotland–was written in Early Scots, but Copland used a translation into modern English by Willis Wager. (It is interesting that Copland’s friend, Mexican composer Carlos Chávez, had set the same text for unaccompanied chorus in 1944.) Copland emphasized the Scottish connection by consistently using the “Scotch snap” (short note–long note) throughout the piece, particularly on the word “freedom.”

~ Notes by Peter Laki, copyright 2024.