AARON COPLAND
Born November 14, 1900, in Brooklyn, NY
Died December 2, 1990, in Peekskill, NY
Clarinet Concerto (17’)
Slowly and Expressively – Cadenza – Rather fast – Trifle faster – Tempo I (rather fast)
The invitation to compose a clarinet concerto arrived as a commission for $2,000 – a reasonable fee in 1947 – from the well-known jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman. Copland accepted the work, stating years later that he had “long been an admirer of Benny Goodman and I thought that writing a concerto with him in mind would give me a fresh point of view.”
Copland began writing the Concerto in the fall of 1947 while on a State Department tour of South America. A more lucrative offer from Hollywood requesting a film score for The Red Pony interrupted work on the Concerto. Following a summer at Tanglewood, Copland finished the Concerto in the fall of 1948.
A side note on Benny Goodman is appropriate for some listeners whose memory might not encompass the musical giants of the mid-20th Century. Goodman (1909 – 1986), known as the “King of Swing,” was among the most famous musicians of his day. A noted jazz clarinetist and Big Band leader, Goodman was well-known for his trio with pianist Teddy Wilson and drummer Gene Krupa, as well as for his associations with other big band leaders like Bix Beiderbecke, Glenn Miller, and Tommy Dorsey. Goodman straddled the world of jazz and Big Band with classical concert music, commissioning works from composers like Béla Bartók, Paul Hindemith, and Darius Milhaud.
Goodman, who studied classical clarinet after establishing his reputation in popular music, was never entirely comfortable reading from scores, and delayed the premiere, much to Copland’s disappointment, until November 6, 1950. Fritz Reiner conducted the NBC Symphony Orchestra in the world premiere broadcast over the NBC network. The first public performance occurred a few weeks later when Eugene Ormandy led soloist Ralph McLane and the Philadelphia Orchestra on November 28.
The Concerto wasn’t quite a hit out of the starting gate. The acerbic music critic Virgil Thomson wrote, “It sounds as if some essential explanation were lacking, as if a ballet or a film score belonging to it had been left out.” Interestingly, choreographer Jerome Robbins used the music for a ballet, The Pied Piper, that was the hit of the 1951 season in New York City. The work quickly entered the repertoire of the great clarinetists of the second half of the 20th Century where it remains today, one of Copland’s most beloved compositions.
Sensing the music’s relationship to a possible film score is not entirely out of line. Copland interrupted work on the Concerto to write the score for The Red Pony, and shortly after the Concerto he would win his Academy Award for The Heiress. The nostalgic sentimentality of the Concerto’s opening recalls his 1940-Oscar nominated score for Our Town. The second theme derives from another film score titled The Cunningham Story. The listener is free to visualize their cinematography. The opening slow movement evokes the familiar Americana of Copland’s earlier works and stands out as one of his lushest and most romantic compositions. The clarinet plays long-breathed, languid, and lyrical lines over the soft accompaniment of strings and harp.
A cadenza for the solo clarinet becomes a transition to the second movement. Rather than a reflection backwards, the solo quickly moves from nostalgia to introducing fragments that will form the jazzy quality of the second movement.
The music breaks out into a fast tempo full of jazz inspired syncopations. The contrast to the first movement couldn’t be greater. Lyricism gives way to urbanized spiky music that leaps in all directions. In the absence of a percussion section, Copland introduces a piano for accents and finger work, and employs “slapping basses and whacking harp sounds” to create percussive effects.
Writing about his music, Copland described the second movement as an “unconscious fusion of elements obviously related to North and South American popular music: Charleston rhythms, boogie woogie, and Brazilian folk tunes.” The music is difficult and challenging for the soloist and the orchestra with any number of moments where a miscount could send the music tumbling. At times, it seems to anticipate the Latin rhythms of Bernstein’s West Side Story. The music ends with a coda in C major punctuated with a clarinet glissando, or “smear,” that might be a nod back to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.
©Don Reinhold, 2021
