Clarinet Concerto (Copland)

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Aaron Copland's Clarinet Concerto was written between 1947 and 1949^[1], although a first version was already available in 1948. This composition is also sometimes referred to as the Concerto for Clarinet, Strings and Harp. The concerto would later be choreographed by Jerome Robbins for the ballet Pied Piper (1951).

1 History
- 1.1 The concerto
- 1.2 Performances
2 Style and structure
3 Discography
4 References
5 External links

[edit] History

[edit] The concerto

Soon after Copland composed his Third Symphony, jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman, in 1947, commissioned him to write a clarinet concerto. Goodman tells Copland biographer Vivian Perlis^[2]^[3]:

"I made no demands on what Copland should write. He had completely free rein, except that I should have a two-year exclusivity on playing the work. I paid two thousand dollars and that's real money. At the time there were not too many American composers to pick from... We never had much trouble except for a little fracas about the spot before the cadenza where he had written a repetition of some phrase. I was a little sticky about leaving it out- it was where the viola was the echo to give the clarinet a cue. But I think Aaron finally did leave it out... Aaron and I played the concerto quite a few times with him conducting, and we made two recordings."

Copland was in Rio de Janeiro in 1947 as a lecturer and conductor. It was there that he made many drafts of the Concerto. On August 26, 1948, the concerto was still not finished^[4] (dribbling along...), although on September 30 of the same year he would claim in a letter to Verna Fine he was almost done^[5]. On December 6, 1948, he wrote to Carlos Chavez^[6] he had completed the composition and was satisfied with the result. Although the concerto had still not been publicly performed, in a letter dated August 29, 1950 to Serge Koussevitzky^[7], Aaron Copland reconsiders a commitment to turn the first movement into an "Elegy for Strings":

Dear Sergei Alexandrovitch:

Ever since our conversation over the telephone about the Clarinet Concerto arrangement the thought has been growing in my mind that I made a mistake in saying 'yes' to your proposal about using the first movement separately as an Elegy for strings.

...

I am convinced that to cut the piece in half takes away from the integrity of the Concerto as I originally conceived it, and I am basically unwilling to do that, —at least until the work has had several seasons to make its way as a complete Concerto. No one will be able to understand why, if I am satisfied with the Concerto as a whole, I should be willing now to present only half the work in an orchestral dress in which it was not conceived. Moreover, no one will be able to understand why you should want to present an arrangement of half a work when the entire work is available and has never been heard in its original form in Boston. In the public's mind it can only be understood as an implied criticism of the second movement, and I am unwilling to launch a new work in such a light. Later on, after the Concerto is established as a Concerto, I shall probably feel differently about it.

...

As an alternative solution I have thought of the following possibility. You may remember that I told you I had recently completed a Song Cycle of twelve songs with texts by the New England poet Emily Dickinson.

...

It seems to me that I could compose an Elegy in her memory, based on material from one or two of the songs inspired by her poems. I cannot absolutely promise to have it ready in time, but will do my best to finish it so that you can have it for the December 1st concerts. It would be an Elegy for Strings lasting about 6 minutes, -- or perhaps a trifle more.

...

History would prove Aaron Copland right, as a couple of months after this letter the Concerto would start its career as one of the finest 20th century Concertos for Clarinet.

[edit] Performances

Benny Goodman premiered the concerto on an NBC radio broadcast with the NBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Fritz Reiner, on November 6, 1950^[8].

Some claim this performance, however, was not the world premiere, and attribute the world premiere to Ralph McLane and the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy because this performance on November 28, 1950 was the first "public performance" ^[9]^[10]. In any case it was the first public performance of the Concerto in New-York^[11].

This November 28, 1950 performance —probably just beyond the end of the two-year exclusivity— had been scheduled by Copland to increase pressure on Goodman, since he kept on putting off the first performance^[12]. A recording of the first radio performance by Goodman, with the NBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Fritz Reiner is available on CD on the Legend music label (see below).

The concerto quickly established itself as a standard piece in the clarinet repertoire. Since the performance by Benny Goodman, other notable performances include those by:

Stanley Drucker and the New York Philharmonic with Leonard Bernstein
Richard Stoltzman and the London Symphony Orchestra
Paul Meyer and the English Chamber Orchestra
Sabine Meyer and the Bamberger Symphoniker

However, one particular recording of note is the one with Goodman and conducted by Copland himself, which Aaron Copland considered to be his best recording ever^[13].

[edit] Style and structure

Copland incorporated many jazz elements into his concerto.

Mellers^[14] —Copland being representative of the American "Other"— links Copland’s affinity for jazz elements with the fact that “both Negro and Jew are dispossessed people who have become, in a cosmopolitan urban society, representative of man’s uprootedness.”

Copland himself^[15] acknowledged that his signature "bittersweet lyricism" like in the first movement of the Clarinet Concerto may have been influenced by his feelings of loneliness and social alienation over his homosexuality.

On the piece, Copland writes^[16]:

"The instrumentation being clarinet with strings, harp, and piano, I did not have a large battery of percussion to achieve jazzy effects, so I used slapping basses and whacking harp sounds to simulate them. The Clarinet Concerto ends with a fairly elaborate coda in C major that finishes off with a clarinet glissando - or "smear" in jazz lingo."

The piece is written in a very unusual form. The two movements are played back-to-back, linked by a clarinet cadenza. The first movement is written in A-B-A form and is slow and expressive, full of bittersweet lyricism. The cadenza not only gives the soloist an opportunity to display his virtuosity, but also introduces many of the melodic Latin American jazz themes that dominate the second movement.

The overall form of the final movement is a free rondo with several developing side issues that resolve in the end with an elaborate coda in C major. Copland noted that his playful finale is born of

"an unconscious fusion of elements obviously related to North and South American popular music (for example, a phrase from a currently popular Brazilian tune, heard by me in Rio, became embedded in the secondary material)."

This section was written specially for Benny Goodman's jazz talents; however, many of the technical challenges were above Goodman's confidence level, and the original score shows several alterations by Goodman to bring down higher notes, making it easier to play^[17]. The manuscript page of the original coda has suggested changes by Goodman in pencil, and the memo on top reads^[18]:

"1^st version —later revised— of Coda of Clarinet Concerto (too difficult for Benny Goodman)"

Indeed, although Goodman certainly was an accomplished clarinet player he had his limitations. This can also be heard in his recording of the Nielsen clarinet concerto under Morton Gould with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra^[19]

Recently, performances of the restored original version have been given by Charles Neidich and Andrew Simon, amongst others. In the liner notes of the Chandos CD Composers in New York, Charles Neidich writes:

"...of that [1948] coda, complete with a tremendously brilliant clarinet part: cascading arpeggios which [Copland] decided were too difficult for the clarinet and which in the revised version he gave to the piano."

Only a few recordings of this version have been made (see the discography section below).

The concerto contains other notable references such as material from “The Cummington Story”, an "Office of War Information Documentary" (written in 1945) which sets the stage for the film's church-centered small town. It is the refugees’ theme from the unpublished film score that is used in the concerto.^[20]

[edit] Discography

[edit] Recordings on LP:

Paul Drushler . Version with piano. Mark 3344

[edit] Recordings available on CD:

Stanley Drucker. Copland: El Salon Mexico/Concerto for Clarinet and String Orchestra/Music for the Theatre/Connotations for Orchestra. Deutsche Grammophon 431 672-2 © 1991, (p) 1991

[edit] Recordings of the original 1948 version

[edit] Recording of performance directed by the composer

[edit] Recording of the first radio performance

[edit] Recordings available on DVD:

[edit] References

^ The Aaron Copland Collection ca. 1900-1990
^ Peter Laki: in the program of Franklin Cohens performance of the piece (March 16-18, 1995 with the Cleveland Orchestra)
^ Since 1943, by Aaron Copland and Vivian Perlis. St. Martin's
^ Letter to Louis Kaufman, August 26, 1948
^ Letter to Verna Fine September 30, 1948
^ Letter to Carlos Chavez December 6 1948
^ Letter to Koussevitzky August 29 1950
^ Naxos liner notes
^ Musical Quarterly - Sign In Page
^ Oehmsclassics: Levine, James - Documents of the Munich Years · Vol. 4
^ Pamela Weston, Clarinet Virtuosi of the Past, Emerson Editions
^ Naxos liner notes
^ Letter to Verna Fine November 7, 1963
^ Wilfrid Mellers, Music in a New Found Land (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), p.85 quoted in ibid., p.518
^ Pollack, Howard. Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1999, p.525
^ Peter Laki: op. cit.
^ Clarinet Concerto sketches
^ The liner notes of the Bieri recording on Pan Classics have a facsimile of this page
^ Bertelsmann Music Group, RCA classics, Classical Navigator, Nordic Music no.88, 74321 29255 2
^ Use of material from "Down a country lane" and "The Cummington Story", p.11

[edit] External links

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Categories: Compositions by Aaron Copland | Clarinet concertos