Along with the ballets Billy the Kid and Rodeo, Appalachian Spring represents the style of music for which Copland is best known. Melodic material is simple and tuneful, rhythms bounce along unpredictably, and bold, stark sonorities suggest the majesty and expanse of the archetypal American landscape. But the composer was deep into his career before turning to the style that would bring him his greatest notoriety. Earlier works reveal influences as diverse as European modernism, neoclassicism, and jazz. His more straightforward melodic style enabled him to win a greater following with concert audiences. While some of his younger contemporaries regarded him as having “sold out,” there can be no denying the great impact his music has had. During the last years of his life, he was widely considered “the Dean of American composers.”
Appalachian Spring was written on a commission from Martha Graham; Copland’s original title for the work was simply Ballet for Martha. The ballet was to be performed in the relatively small confines of the Coolidge Auditorium at the Library of Congress, so Copland scored the work for only thirteen instruments – double string quartet, bass, flute, clarinet, bassoon, and piano. The piece is still often performed with this instrumentation, which has no difficulty projecting the music’s charm and is, arguably, even more effective at capturing its serene simplicity. But the work’s great success encouraged Copland to make an arrangement for full orchestra, in a slightly shortened version that removes some of the more choreographically dependent parts of the score. The orchestral version earned Copland the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 1945, and drew such critical praise as the following, offered by Olin Downes after a performance by the Boston Symphony in April 1946:
[T]his is certainly one of the best of Copland’s scores…. In it the folk element is strongly present; it is neither disguised nor disfigured by affectation. A modern composer takes this material as his own – as a musical substance that has for him a beauty as of today – and not as some archaic relic of an imaginary past. The music is simple and full of feeling. It is admirably orchestrated, with fine taste and a sure hand…. [I]t is a charming and sincere score, by a composer whose craftsmanship develops and acquires fresh distinction as he advances.
The story line for the ballet is
cast in simple, generic terms, set in 19th-century