Programs · Episode

Copland on Composing

Aired: Thursday, February 1, 2018 @ 9:00 am
Hosted by Miles Hoffman

It’s often—not always, but often—interesting to read what composers have written about composing—especially if they’re good writers.

Full Episode:

It’s often—not always, but often—interesting to read what composers have written about composing—especially if they’re good writers. Aaron Copland was an excellent writer, although by all accounts a very reserved man, one who kept his personal feelings hidden.

It’s especially interesting then, that Copland once wrote that a composer, in his music, “gives us himself,” but that he also wrote that he hated what he called “an emotion-drenched voice.” “Somehow,” Copland wrote, describing a process that seems almost devoid of emotion, “suddenly, a musical idea occurs to you; either a whole phrase, or three notes, or a series of chords, something that seems pregnant with possibilities for development…. Some musical ideas are too short; they don’t seem long enough to carry you through ten minutes of music, so you have to start searching about for other ideas, contrasting ones that seem to fit with the original ones.” The words of Aaron Copland.

Playlist