Fanfare for the Common Man
Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
Any sense of familiarity triggered by the percussive opening to this work will intensify when the trumpets sound. Aaron Copland’s ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ has been used and occasionally misused in ballet, film, TV, pop music and the concert hall. Being as American as apple pie, it prompted the critic Colin Wilson to suggest Copland’s ‘…final importance may well be that, together with Gershwin, he is the most typically American composer his country has produced so far.’
As the USA entered the Second World War in 1943 after the Japanese Kamikaze bombardment of the US Navy at Pearl Harbor, a wave of patriotism swept the country. In line with this nationalistic mood, Eugene Goossens, the British conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, asked 18 American composers to create fanfares to serve as openers for his orchestra’s concerts. (About 25 years earlier in the UK, he had put the same request to British composers to boost the Allies’ morale during the First World War.) When Vice-president Henry Wallace heard of the Pearl Harbor bombardment, he proclaimed the dawning of a ‘century of the common man’, words that Copland borrowed for the title of his fanfare, perhaps unaware of their socialist implications. Of the 18 American fanfares that emerged, only Copland’s outlived its première.
Despite its ubiquity and popularity, the fanfare presents a conundrum, echoed in the life of its creator. At the time of its composition it wasn’t a fanfare. The slow pulse was unmatched by other music sharing the title. Copland’s composition did not abide by the prevailing harmonic conventions associated with fanfares. A yellow card, football fans might think; maybe two of them. Not so. Rather than ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ being rejected because of its irregularities, the concept of a fanfare was broadened instantly to ensure its inclusion. Barbara Heninger suggested that Copland’s fanfare ‘…is one of those happy works that seem so right; it is as if the composer had discovered a force of nature and simply set it to paper.’ The maverick becomes the archetype.
The corresponding riddle in Copland’s life and reputation is complex, but the gist is this. Copland remains a super-patriotic, Yankee composer, vide the ballets ‘Appalachian Spring’, ‘Billy the Kid’ and ‘Rodeo’; also his opera, ‘The Tender Land’. It is sometimes forgotten that this Hero of the Republic was a son of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania, and a homosexual accused of being a Communist sympathiser. The political charges led to extensive and demeaning investigations during the purges of Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, but Copland emerged intact. Alongside the word ‘fanfare’, the concept of ‘patriotism’ had also been redefined.
Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
Any sense of familiarity triggered by the percussive opening to this work will intensify when the trumpets sound. Aaron Copland’s ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ has been used and occasionally misused in ballet, film, TV, pop music and the concert hall. Being as American as apple pie, it prompted the critic Colin Wilson to suggest Copland’s ‘…final importance may well be that, together with Gershwin, he is the most typically American composer his country has produced so far.’
As the USA entered the Second World War in 1943 after the Japanese Kamikaze bombardment of the US Navy at Pearl Harbor, a wave of patriotism swept the country. In line with this nationalistic mood, Eugene Goossens, the British conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, asked 18 American composers to create fanfares to serve as openers for his orchestra’s concerts. (About 25 years earlier in the UK, he had put the same request to British composers to boost the Allies’ morale during the First World War.) When Vice-president Henry Wallace heard of the Pearl Harbor bombardment, he proclaimed the dawning of a ‘century of the common man’, words that Copland borrowed for the title of his fanfare, perhaps unaware of their socialist implications. Of the 18 American fanfares that emerged, only Copland’s outlived its première.
Despite its ubiquity and popularity, the fanfare presents a conundrum, echoed in the life of its creator. At the time of its composition it wasn’t a fanfare. The slow pulse was unmatched by other music sharing the title. Copland’s composition did not abide by the prevailing harmonic conventions associated with fanfares. A yellow card, football fans might think; maybe two of them. Not so. Rather than ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ being rejected because of its irregularities, the concept of a fanfare was broadened instantly to ensure its inclusion. Barbara Heninger suggested that Copland’s fanfare ‘…is one of those happy works that seem so right; it is as if the composer had discovered a force of nature and simply set it to paper.’ The maverick becomes the archetype.
The corresponding riddle in Copland’s life and reputation is complex, but the gist is this. Copland remains a super-patriotic, Yankee composer, vide the ballets ‘Appalachian Spring’, ‘Billy the Kid’ and ‘Rodeo’; also his opera, ‘The Tender Land’. It is sometimes forgotten that this Hero of the Republic was a son of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania, and a homosexual accused of being a Communist sympathiser. The political charges led to extensive and demeaning investigations during the purges of Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, but Copland emerged intact. Alongside the word ‘fanfare’, the concept of ‘patriotism’ had also been redefined.