From the New World

Aaron Copland: Fanfare for the Common Man

Copland composed Fanfare for the Common Man in 1942, incorporating it into his Symphony No. 3 a few years later. The work’s title is taken from a speech by Henry A. Wallace, Vice President under Franklin D. Roosevelt, in which he proclaimed that the war and its imminent end would see the dawning of “the Century of the Common Man”.

The symphony crafted by Copland from the fanfare premiered in October 1946 and it is permeated by wartime heroism and patriotic fervour.

The fanfare has left significant traces in musical history; the British progressive rock band Emerson, Lake and Palmer recorded a version in 1977 and American composer Joan Tower wrote six fanfares of her own between 1987 and 2016 as a comment on Copland’s work, Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman Nos. 1-6.

Roustom: Adrift on the Wine-dark Sea

Syrian-American composer Kareem Roustom has drawn inspiration from heroism in a class of its own for his clarinet concerto Adrift on the Wine-dark Sea. It deals with the Syrian refugee Doaa Al-Zamel, who fled across the Mediterranean Sea in 2014. The boat on which she and her fellow refugees were fleeing was rammed and sank but she succeeded in keeping herself and two infants alive for four days clinging to the innertube of a children’s swimming pool – despite not being able to swim. Roustom draws parallels between Al-Zamel’s fate and Odysseus’ ill-fated voyage home from the Trojan Wars. The clarinet plays the role of Odysseus/Doaa Al-Zamel and the orchestra the role of the sea and the other threats that stand in the their way. After a clarinet solo in the middle of the piece, a few notes of brass appear to reference Copland’s fanfare. Doaa Al-Zamel now lives in Sweden. Steven Spielberg has purchased the film rights to the book that tells her harrowing story.

Antonín Dvořák: Symphony No. 9

When the composers of scores for the western films of the 1940s and ‘50s were searching for inspiration, they turned to a Czech. For his part,Dvořák was inspired by the Native Americans music, African-American spirituals and folk music he had studied during a stay in the United States between 1892 and 1895.

When listening to the first movement of Symphony No. 9, “From the New World”, it is easy imagine the camera swooping across the prairies and mountains, while the more sedate second movement could depict a night camped out beneath the stars; the cor anglais plays a sanguine theme as, beyond the horizon, the sun awaits. The third movement begins with a few orchestral flourishes reminiscent of Beethoven’s Ninth, which of course also marks the beginning of something new. For the finale, we return once again to the kind of cinematic music from which John Williams has clearly borrowed; the introduction could be from Jaws, while the majestic fanfare is reminiscent of the closing music to Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope.