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2018-19 CONCERT SEASON
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APPALACHIAN SPRING
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2019 at 7:00pm SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2019 at 2:30pm ENT CENTER FOR THE ARTS 5225 N Nevada Ave, Colorado Springs, CO 80918 Colorado Ballet Society Colorado Vocal Arts Ensemble Guest artist sponsorships available Gian Carlo Menotti The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore Aaron Copland Appalachian Spring (complete ballet) |
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A PERFECT 'SIMPLE GIFT'
Winner of the 1945 Pulitzer Prize in Music, Copland's Appalachian Spring is the quintessential piece of American music. For the first time in Colorado Springs, the piece will be performed in its original 13-instrument version by the Chamber Orchestra of the Springs with choreography from the Colorado Ballet Society in a special Valentine weekend event. Colorado Vocal Arts Ensemble also joins the cast for Menotti's hilarious The Unicorn, The Gorgon and The Manticore.
Depicting a simple country wedding, Appalachian Spring was one of Aaron Copland's World War II-era populist works, exploring the depth and strength of the American people. A young couple arrives at a newly-built farmhouse, ready to start their lives together. As the celebration intensifies, each new dance becomes more uproarious than the last, including The Minister's Dance concludes of ferocious fire. The familiar Simple Gifts brings the day to close and the young couple are left in their new home, looking out the front window with optimism.
Gian Carlo Menotti's The Unicorn, The Gorgon and The Manticore is a stark contrast to the Copland, focusing on the foibles of human nature, peer pressure and fashion. When an eccentric gentlemen moves into a castle in a small town and appears on the boardwalk with three mystical creatures, the townspeople alternately ridicule and copy him. Cynical and hysterical, Menotti's dry wit perfectly unmasks the insecurities and anxieties that lead people to do the strangest things just to fit in.
Winner of the 1945 Pulitzer Prize in Music, Copland's Appalachian Spring is the quintessential piece of American music. For the first time in Colorado Springs, the piece will be performed in its original 13-instrument version by the Chamber Orchestra of the Springs with choreography from the Colorado Ballet Society in a special Valentine weekend event. Colorado Vocal Arts Ensemble also joins the cast for Menotti's hilarious The Unicorn, The Gorgon and The Manticore.
Depicting a simple country wedding, Appalachian Spring was one of Aaron Copland's World War II-era populist works, exploring the depth and strength of the American people. A young couple arrives at a newly-built farmhouse, ready to start their lives together. As the celebration intensifies, each new dance becomes more uproarious than the last, including The Minister's Dance concludes of ferocious fire. The familiar Simple Gifts brings the day to close and the young couple are left in their new home, looking out the front window with optimism.
Gian Carlo Menotti's The Unicorn, The Gorgon and The Manticore is a stark contrast to the Copland, focusing on the foibles of human nature, peer pressure and fashion. When an eccentric gentlemen moves into a castle in a small town and appears on the boardwalk with three mystical creatures, the townspeople alternately ridicule and copy him. Cynical and hysterical, Menotti's dry wit perfectly unmasks the insecurities and anxieties that lead people to do the strangest things just to fit in.
PROGRAM NOTES BY MARK ARNEST
Concert overview:
This program pairs Pulitzer-Prize-winning composers Aaron Copland and Gian Carlo Menotti. Copland won his only Pulitzer prize in 1945 for this very work, the original ballet version of Appalachian Spring. Menotti was the first composer ever to win the award twice, in 1950 for his opera The Consul and in 1955 for another opera, The Saint of Bleeker Street. Their posthumous reputations have diverged: Today, Copland is the best-known American classical composer, while Menotti’s works – although composed with a skill equal to Copland’s – are staples only of smaller opera companies.
Overview: Gian Carlo Menotti
Born July 7, 1911, Cadegliano-Viconago, Italy; died February 1, 2007, Monte Carlo, Monaco
Work Composed: 1956
Gian Carlo Menotti doesn’t figure largely in music history textbooks. He didn’t evolve a new musical language or influence a school of composers. But Menotti carved out a niche – modestly sized operas, approachable by a wider audience than was typical of his generation’s composers – and excelled at it. Menotti’s operas are crafted with a deep understanding of both the human voice and the orchestra instruments. They neither ascend the heights nor plumb the depths of the human condition; but on their own terms they nearly always satisfy.
Menotti spent his youth in Italy. Armed with a letter of recommendation from legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini, he entered Philadelphia’s prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in 1928, where his fellow students included Leonard Bernstein and Samuel Barber. Barber and Menotti went on to become lifelong partners, and Menotti, who like Richard Wagner wrote his own opera librettos, would supply the librettos for two of Barber’s operas.
In addition to his creative work, Menotti’s legacy includes important work as an impresario. He founded the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, in 1958, and its subsequent 1977 expansion to Spoleto USA in Charleston, South Carolina. The festival encourages collaborations between different arts. He directed many productions of his own operas, and in his 80s, was director of the Rome Opera.
The Unicorn, the Gorgon, and the Manticore is an intensely collaborative work, composed for instrumentalists, chorus, and dancers. Menotti described it as a “madrigal fable.” The simple story is a parable of the creative artist in society, in which society comes off rather badly, aping the artist’s values without understanding them. (For a composer who specialized in music for a wide audience, this seems a bit churlish.) Unlike an opera, there are no solo vocal parts, and the choral singing is mostly unaccompanied, creating the strongest possible contrast between instrumental and vocal sections. (The two groups combine only in the penultimate “March to the Castle.”)
The influence of Stravinsky – in particular his Neoclassical works – is strong in Unicorn, especially in the instrumental interludes. Menotti’s music is less taut, but more charming, than the Russian composer’s. The madrigals come from a different world altogether: Menotti updates the world of the late Renaissance, effortlessly mingling complex contrapuntal passages and simple chordal ones, and always sensitive to the rhythm of the words. Menotti’s editor and friend Paul Wittke described Menotti’s composition teacher at Curtis, Rosario Scalero, as a “tyrannical taskmaster,” but he gave Menotti the thorough contrapuntal training necessary to pull these pieces off.
And in the final madrigal, Menotti allows himself an outpouring of emotion that Stravinsky would have shunned. Menotti said of this madrigal, “It is the most deeply and personally felt of anything I’ve written. It is something I would like for my own funeral.”
Overview: Aaron Copland
Born November 14, 1900, Brooklyn, New York City, NY, died December 2, 1990, Sleepy Hollow, NY
Work Composed: 1943-44
It took Aaron Copland until his 30s to find his creative voice. In his youth, he experimented with various styles, including jazz influences in his 1926 Piano Concerto (an unappreciative critic remarked that the problem wasn’t that the piece contained jazz, but that it contained such bad jazz); Jewish folk music in his 1929 trio Vitebsk; and abstract modernism in his 1930 Piano Variations. But while Copland absorbed many modern compositional techniques, he was never comfortable with hard-care modernism: Music, he thought, was essentially a social art, and should be accessible to the public even if that public lacked musical education. “The composer who is frightened at losing his artistic integrity through contact with a mass audience is no longer aware of the meaning of the word art,” he wrote in 1941.
Copland’s embrace of the broader public began with of El Salón México, composed between 1933 and 1936. Here, Copland recast various Mexican popular songs through the lens of modern music. Copland followed with the ballet Billy the Kid, which contained both original themes and reinterpreted American folk songs; and for the next two decades, Copland’s “vernacular” style was the most influential style in American music. Echoes of it continue in movie scores to the present day. If Copland’s originality no longer startles us, it’s because we’ve heard so much of the music he influenced.
Three “vernacular” works – Appalachian Spring, A Lincoln Portrait, and Fanfare for the Common Man – are the best known of Copland’s pieces; and of these, Appalachian Spring is by far the most ambitious. Despite its 75 years, the music exudes freshness, charm, rhythmic vitality, and deep tenderness. Much of the music is reminiscent of folk music, but only the famous Shaker tune, “Simple Gifts,” is an actual folk song.
This 13-instrument ballet is actually the first version of Appalachian Spring. (Old-timers will remember the Colorado Springs Symphony performing it in the 1990s, when the symphony was involved in an educational CD-ROM project that never came to fruition.) It’s about ten minutes longer than the more-familiar orchestral suite that Copland made in 1945, and the musical flow is slightly better. Late in life, Copland wrote, “I have come to think that the original instrumentation has a clarity and is closer to my original conception than the more opulent orchestrated version.”
Los Angeles Times music critic Chris Pasles summarized Martha Graham’s original scenario:
A young farm couple ruminate on their lives before getting married and setting up house in the wilderness. An itinerant preacher delivers a sermon. An older pioneer woman oversees the events with sympathy and wisdom. The newlyweds muse on their future as night falls. In the course of the dance, Graham reveals the inner lives of the four principal characters – Wife, Husbandman, Pioneer Woman and Preacher. She shows that the couple will face a future that will not be all sweetness and light, but she also draws out the private and shared emotional resources they will be able to bring to the challenges. Such is the power of Graham’s images, however, that this very particular story broadens out to become a parable about Americans conquering a new land.
Graham herself encapsulated the work in a 1975 interview:
It’s spring. There is a house that has not been completed. The bare posts are up. The fence has not been completed. Only a marriage has been celebrated. It is essentially the coming of new life. It has to do with growing things. Spring is the loveliest and the saddest time of the year.
The chamber orchestra version is necessarily less sonically sensuous than the full orchestra version, with less sheer mass of sound. But you may be surprised at how little you miss the full orchestra. Copland generally completed his pieces before even considering which instruments he would use. As he wrote to Graham, “the orchestration is a mere detail. With me it always comes last.”
And to counterbalance any loss is the additional music. Copland wrote that the suite was “a condensed version of the ballet, retaining all essential features but omitting those sections in which the interest is primarily choreographic (the largest cut was the Minister’s dance).” But that dance extends the ballet’s expressive world. Aaron Sherber, music director of the Martha Graham Dance Company, has written that “much of this section is indeed more disquieting, more edgy, than the music in the rest of the suite, which to me makes the ballet a richer piece of music.” You be the judge; meanwhile, a full-orchestra version of the entire ballet, completed from sketches Copland made in the early 1950s plus orchestration by David Newman, premiered in 2016.
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Libretto for The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore
INTRODUCTION
There once lived a Man in a Castle, and a strange man was he.
He shunned the Countess’ parties; he yawned at town meetings;
he would not let the doctor take his pulse; he did not go to church on Sundays.
Oh what a strange man is the Man in the Castle!
INTERLUDE I
The Dance of the Man in the Castle.
FIRST MADRIGAL
Ev’ry Sunday afternoon, soft winds fanning the fading sun,
all the respectable folk went out walking slowly on the pink promenade by the sea.
Proud husbands velvety-plump, with embroider’d silk-pale ladies.
At four o’clock they all greeted each other; They spoke ill of each other at six:
Women: “How d’you do?” “Very well, thank you.”
“Have you heard?” “Pray, do tell me.”
“Tcha tcha tcha tcha tcha ra tcha ra tcha...”
“How funny, how amusing, how odd! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”
“How well you look!” “How pretty your dress!”
“Thank you.” “Thank you.” “Good-bye.” “Good-bye.”
“Isn’t she a gossip!” “Isn’t she a fright!”
Men: “How d’you do?” “Very well, thank you.”
“What do you think of this and that?”
“In my humble opinion: Bla bla bla bla bla la la la la bla...”
“How profound, how clever, how true! Only you could understand me.”
“Thank you.” “Thank you.” “Good-bye.” “Good-bye.”
“Oh, what a pompous ass!” “Oh, what a fool!”
INTERLUDE II
Promenade.
FIRST SUNDAY
SECOND MADRIGAL
(Enter the Man in the Castle and the Unicorn)
One Sunday afternoon the proud Man in the Castle joined the crowd in the promenade by the sea.
He walked slowly down the quai leading by a silver chain a captive unicorn.
The townsfolk stopped to stare at the ill-assorted pair.
Thinking the man insane some laughed with pity, some laughed with scorn:
“What a scandalous sight to see a grown-up man
promenade a unicorn in plain daylight all through the city”
“If one can stroke the cat and kick the dog;
if one can pluck the peacock and flee the bee;
if one can ride the horse and hook the hog;
if one can tempt the mouse and swat the fly,
Why, why would a man both rich and well-born raise a unicorn?”
“If one can strike the boar with the spear and pierce the lark with an arrow;
if one can hunt the fox and the deer,
and net the butterfly and eat the sparrow;
if one can bid the falcon fly and let the robin die;
Why, why would a man both rich and well-born raise a unicorn?”
“If one can skin the mole and crush the snake;
if one can tame the swan on the lake and harpoon the dolphin in the sea;
if one can chain the bear and train the flea;
if one can sport with the monkey and chatter with the magpie,
Why, why would a man both rich and well-born raise a unicorn?”
THIRD MADRIGAL
(Dance of the Man in the Castle and the Unicorn)
Unicorn, my swift and leaping Unicorn,
Keep pace with me, stay close to me, don’t run astray, my gentle rover.
Beware of the virgin sleeping under the lemon tree,
her hair adrift among the clover.
She hides a net under her petticoat, and silver chains around her hips,
and if you kiss her lips the hidden hunter will pierce your throat.
Unicorn, beware!
Her crimson lips are hard as coral and her white thighs are only a snare.
For you who likes to roam, a kiss is poisoned food;
Much sweeter fare is the green laurel; much safer home is the dark wood.
FOURTH MADRIGAL
(The Count and the Countess)
Count: “Why are you sad, my darling?
What shall I buy to make you smile again?
Velvets from Venice, furs from Tatary or dwarfs from Spain?”
Countess: “Why was I ever born? Ah, my husband dear!
I fear that you cannot afford to calm my sorrow.
Why was I ever born if I must go through life without a Unicorn!
Ah, my master, my lord!”
Count: “Ah, dry your tears, my pet, my wife.
Whether I swim or fly, whether I steal or borrow.
I swear that you will own a Unicorn tomorrow.”
INTERLUDE III
As the Count and the Countess appear with a Unicorn, the townsfolk stare at them in surprise. Soon everyone in town imitates them until every respectable couple is seen promenading with its own Unicorn.
SECOND SUNDAY
FIFTH MADRIGAL
(Enter the Man in the Castle with the Gorgon)
Behold the Gorgon stately and proud.
His eyes transfixed but not unaware of the envious stare of the common crowd.
Behold the Gorgon tall, big and loud.
He does not see the smiling enemy.
He does not pause to acknowledge the racket of the critical cricket
nor to confute the know-how of the sententious cow.
He slowly sarabands down the street ignoring the hunter but mixing with the elite.
Fearless and wild, his wings widespread.
He fascinates the maiden and frightens the child.
SIXTH MADRIGAL
(The Townsfolk and the Man in the Castle)
Townsfolk: “And what is that? A Bloody-Nun, a were-wolf?”
Man: “This is a Gorgon.”
Townsfolk: “And what did you do with the Unicorn, please?”
Man: “He only liked to gambol and tease.
I quickly grew tired of the fun,
So I peppered and grilled him.”
Townsfolk: “Do you mean?”
Man: “Yes, I killed him.”
Townsfolk: “Oh but the man must be out of his mind.
How ungrateful of him,
to wilfully destroy the pretty Unicorn so gentle and coy.
and had he found something prettier at least,
but look at the Gorgon the horrible beast.”
Wicked is Man, Patient is God,
All He gives Man to enjoy Man will destroy.
Banish all sleep, weep for the dead.
Cover my head with a black veil.
Muffle the horn and the lute, silence the nightingale.
For the Unicorn, slain by Man, will not leap ever again.
SEVENTH MADRIGAL
(The Count and the Countess. The latter has secretly poisoned her Unicorn)
Count: “Why are you sad, my darling?
Gone is the swallow from your limpid eyes,
Gone is the silver from your clarion voice.”
Countess: “Ah, my Unicorn.
Whether he grazed on mandrake or hellebore or only caught a chill
I very much fear, my Unicorn is done for, he is so very ill.”
Count: “Do not grieve, my dear,
once he’s dead and gone we shall buy a younger one.”
Countess: “Ah, my Unicorn, no younger one can take his place.
Besides they have grown too commonplace.
The Mayor’s wife has one, so does the doctor’s wife.
Now that my Unicorn is gone I want a Gorgon.”
Count: A Gorgon! Ha, God forbid!”
Countess: “Ah, you no longer love me. You must love another.
Ah me, that’s clear: I must go back to mother.”
Count: “Bon voyage, my dear.”
Countess: “Ah, abandoned and betrayed, I shall take the veil and die a nun.”
Count: “Why not an abbess? I couldn’t care less.”
Countess: “Think of our son who has done no wrong.”
Count: “The little monster, take him along.”
Countess, crying: “Ho, ho, Oh! No! Not that, I pray, not that, I pray!”
Count: “Calm yourself, my dear. I shall find a Gorgon this very day.”
INTERLUDE IV
As the Count and the Countess appear at a picnic with a Gorgon, the Townsfolk stare at them in great surprise. Soon all the Unicorns in town are killed and every respectable couple is now seen promenading a Gorgon.
THIRD SUNDAY
EIGHTH MADRIGAL
(Enter the Man in the Castle with the Manticore)
Do not caress the lonely Manticore. Do not unless your hand is gloved.
Feeling betrayed, feeling unloved, so lost he is in cabalistic dreams
he often bites the hand he really meant to kiss.
Although he’s almost blind and very, very shy and says he loves mankind.
His glist’ning back whenever tapped will quickly raise its piercing quills.
How often as if in jest inadvertently he kills the people he loves best.
Afraid of love he hides in secret lairs and feeds on herbs more bitter than the aloe.
Fleeing the envious, the curious and the shallow, he keeps under his pillow
a parchment he thinks contains Solomon’s seal and will restore his sight.
And late at night he battles with the Sphinx.
NINTH MADRIGAL
(The Townsfolk and the Man in the Castle)
Townsfolk: “And who is that? Methuselah or Beelzebub?”
Man: “This is the Manticore.”
Townsfolk: “And what of the Gorgon? How is he these days?”
Man: “He was so proud and pompous and loud I quickly grew tired of his ways.
First I warned him and then I caged him. Fin’ly he died.”
Townsfolk: “He died? of what?”
Man: “Of murder.”
Townsfolk: “Oh, but the man must be out of his mind.
How ungrateful of him, to slaughter in a cage the gorgeous Gorgon, the pride of his age.
Had he found something prettier at least, but this Manticore is a horrible beast.”
INTERLUDE V
The Countess secretly stabs her Gorgon.
TENTH MADRIGAL
(The Count and the Countess)
Count: “Why are you sad, my darling?”
Countess: “Why are you sad, my darling? I like that, I like that!
Are you drunk, are you asleep, or just blind?”
Count: “I must be all three for I dreamt you were charming and kind.”
Countess: “I dare say, with the exception of you,
the whole town is aware of my terrible plight.
My Gorgon is lost, my Gorgon, my Gorgon is hopelessly lost!”
Count: “Hardly a reason to weep.
I can now get you a dozen at half his original price.”
Countess: “How dare you suggest such a thing.
You have no intuition or sense, you are vulgar and dense.”
Count: “I bow to your eloquence, but what have I said?”
Countess: “Do you expect me to keep and pamper and feed a breed that is common and cheap?”
Count: “I shall say no more.”
Countess: “Not even to offer me a Manticore.”
Count: “A Manticore? That ghost, that golem, that ghoul in my house! Never!”
Countess: “You are a fool!”
Count: “I married you!”
Countess: “You are a mule!”
Count: “You are a shrew!”
Countess: “How dare you, Oh, I faint.”
Count: “(Oh what a wife have I, Medusa she is and Xantippe,
still she must share my bed, I wish I were dead.)”
Countess: “Saying something?”
Count: “Oh nothing.”
Countess: “May I then have my Manticore?”
Count: “Don’t be a bore.”
Countess: “Oh, why did I marry a count of no account, since I could have married a duke or a prince.”
Count: “(Because they were clever and I was a fool.)”
Countess: “Saying something?”
Count: “Oh nothing!”
Countess: “I heard you.” she slaps him
Count: “(Oh what a wife have I, Medusa she is and Xantippe,
Oh what a wife have I, I wish she would die.)”
Countess: “Do you still refuse?”
Count: “You are much too convincing and forceful and deft.”
Countess: “I knew we would finally see eye to eye.”
Count: “Yes, the one eye I have left.”
INTERLUDE VI
As the Count and the Countess appear with the Manticore, the Townsfolk stare at them in great surprise. Soon all the Gorgons in town are killed and every respectable couple is now seen promenading a Manticore.
ELEVENTH MADRIGAL
(The Townsfolk)
Have you noticed the Man in the Castle is seen no more Walking on Sundays his Manticore.
I have a suspicion. Do you suppose? Do you? The Manticore too?
We must form a committee to stop all these crimes.
We should arrest him, we should splice his tongue and triturate his bones.
He should be tortured with water and fire, with pulleys and stones
(He should be put on the rack, on the wheel, on the stake.)
in molten lead, in the Iron Maiden.
Let us all go to explore the inner courts of the Castle
and find out what he has done with the rare Manticore.
THE MARCH TO THE CASTLE
Slow, much too slow, is the judgement of God.
Quick is the thief. Speedy architect of perfect labyrinths the sinner.
But God’s law works in time and time has one flaw: it is unfashionably slow.
We, the few, the elect, must take things in our hands.
We must judge those who live and condemn those who love.
All passion is uncivil. All candor is suspect.
We detest all, except, what by fashion is blest.
And forever and ever, whether evil or good, we shall respect what seems clever.
TWELFTH MADRIGAL
(The Man in the Castle on his death-bed, surrounded by the Unicorn, the Gorgon, and the Manticore.)
Oh foolish people who feign to feel what other men have suffered.
You, not I, are the indifferent killers of the poet’s dreams.
How could I destroy the pain-wrought children of my fancy?
What would my life have been without their faithful and harmonious company?
Unicorn, My youthful foolish Unicorn, please do not hide, come close to me.
And you, my Gorgon, behind whose splendor I hid the doubts of my midday, you, too, stand by.
And here is my shy and lonely Manticore, who gracefully leads me to my grave.
Farewell. Equally well I loved you all.
Although the world may not suspect it,
all remains intact within the Poet’s heart.
Farewell. Not even death I fear as in your arms I die.
Farewell.
Concert overview:
This program pairs Pulitzer-Prize-winning composers Aaron Copland and Gian Carlo Menotti. Copland won his only Pulitzer prize in 1945 for this very work, the original ballet version of Appalachian Spring. Menotti was the first composer ever to win the award twice, in 1950 for his opera The Consul and in 1955 for another opera, The Saint of Bleeker Street. Their posthumous reputations have diverged: Today, Copland is the best-known American classical composer, while Menotti’s works – although composed with a skill equal to Copland’s – are staples only of smaller opera companies.
Overview: Gian Carlo Menotti
Born July 7, 1911, Cadegliano-Viconago, Italy; died February 1, 2007, Monte Carlo, Monaco
Work Composed: 1956
Gian Carlo Menotti doesn’t figure largely in music history textbooks. He didn’t evolve a new musical language or influence a school of composers. But Menotti carved out a niche – modestly sized operas, approachable by a wider audience than was typical of his generation’s composers – and excelled at it. Menotti’s operas are crafted with a deep understanding of both the human voice and the orchestra instruments. They neither ascend the heights nor plumb the depths of the human condition; but on their own terms they nearly always satisfy.
Menotti spent his youth in Italy. Armed with a letter of recommendation from legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini, he entered Philadelphia’s prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in 1928, where his fellow students included Leonard Bernstein and Samuel Barber. Barber and Menotti went on to become lifelong partners, and Menotti, who like Richard Wagner wrote his own opera librettos, would supply the librettos for two of Barber’s operas.
In addition to his creative work, Menotti’s legacy includes important work as an impresario. He founded the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, in 1958, and its subsequent 1977 expansion to Spoleto USA in Charleston, South Carolina. The festival encourages collaborations between different arts. He directed many productions of his own operas, and in his 80s, was director of the Rome Opera.
The Unicorn, the Gorgon, and the Manticore is an intensely collaborative work, composed for instrumentalists, chorus, and dancers. Menotti described it as a “madrigal fable.” The simple story is a parable of the creative artist in society, in which society comes off rather badly, aping the artist’s values without understanding them. (For a composer who specialized in music for a wide audience, this seems a bit churlish.) Unlike an opera, there are no solo vocal parts, and the choral singing is mostly unaccompanied, creating the strongest possible contrast between instrumental and vocal sections. (The two groups combine only in the penultimate “March to the Castle.”)
The influence of Stravinsky – in particular his Neoclassical works – is strong in Unicorn, especially in the instrumental interludes. Menotti’s music is less taut, but more charming, than the Russian composer’s. The madrigals come from a different world altogether: Menotti updates the world of the late Renaissance, effortlessly mingling complex contrapuntal passages and simple chordal ones, and always sensitive to the rhythm of the words. Menotti’s editor and friend Paul Wittke described Menotti’s composition teacher at Curtis, Rosario Scalero, as a “tyrannical taskmaster,” but he gave Menotti the thorough contrapuntal training necessary to pull these pieces off.
And in the final madrigal, Menotti allows himself an outpouring of emotion that Stravinsky would have shunned. Menotti said of this madrigal, “It is the most deeply and personally felt of anything I’ve written. It is something I would like for my own funeral.”
Overview: Aaron Copland
Born November 14, 1900, Brooklyn, New York City, NY, died December 2, 1990, Sleepy Hollow, NY
Work Composed: 1943-44
It took Aaron Copland until his 30s to find his creative voice. In his youth, he experimented with various styles, including jazz influences in his 1926 Piano Concerto (an unappreciative critic remarked that the problem wasn’t that the piece contained jazz, but that it contained such bad jazz); Jewish folk music in his 1929 trio Vitebsk; and abstract modernism in his 1930 Piano Variations. But while Copland absorbed many modern compositional techniques, he was never comfortable with hard-care modernism: Music, he thought, was essentially a social art, and should be accessible to the public even if that public lacked musical education. “The composer who is frightened at losing his artistic integrity through contact with a mass audience is no longer aware of the meaning of the word art,” he wrote in 1941.
Copland’s embrace of the broader public began with of El Salón México, composed between 1933 and 1936. Here, Copland recast various Mexican popular songs through the lens of modern music. Copland followed with the ballet Billy the Kid, which contained both original themes and reinterpreted American folk songs; and for the next two decades, Copland’s “vernacular” style was the most influential style in American music. Echoes of it continue in movie scores to the present day. If Copland’s originality no longer startles us, it’s because we’ve heard so much of the music he influenced.
Three “vernacular” works – Appalachian Spring, A Lincoln Portrait, and Fanfare for the Common Man – are the best known of Copland’s pieces; and of these, Appalachian Spring is by far the most ambitious. Despite its 75 years, the music exudes freshness, charm, rhythmic vitality, and deep tenderness. Much of the music is reminiscent of folk music, but only the famous Shaker tune, “Simple Gifts,” is an actual folk song.
This 13-instrument ballet is actually the first version of Appalachian Spring. (Old-timers will remember the Colorado Springs Symphony performing it in the 1990s, when the symphony was involved in an educational CD-ROM project that never came to fruition.) It’s about ten minutes longer than the more-familiar orchestral suite that Copland made in 1945, and the musical flow is slightly better. Late in life, Copland wrote, “I have come to think that the original instrumentation has a clarity and is closer to my original conception than the more opulent orchestrated version.”
Los Angeles Times music critic Chris Pasles summarized Martha Graham’s original scenario:
A young farm couple ruminate on their lives before getting married and setting up house in the wilderness. An itinerant preacher delivers a sermon. An older pioneer woman oversees the events with sympathy and wisdom. The newlyweds muse on their future as night falls. In the course of the dance, Graham reveals the inner lives of the four principal characters – Wife, Husbandman, Pioneer Woman and Preacher. She shows that the couple will face a future that will not be all sweetness and light, but she also draws out the private and shared emotional resources they will be able to bring to the challenges. Such is the power of Graham’s images, however, that this very particular story broadens out to become a parable about Americans conquering a new land.
Graham herself encapsulated the work in a 1975 interview:
It’s spring. There is a house that has not been completed. The bare posts are up. The fence has not been completed. Only a marriage has been celebrated. It is essentially the coming of new life. It has to do with growing things. Spring is the loveliest and the saddest time of the year.
The chamber orchestra version is necessarily less sonically sensuous than the full orchestra version, with less sheer mass of sound. But you may be surprised at how little you miss the full orchestra. Copland generally completed his pieces before even considering which instruments he would use. As he wrote to Graham, “the orchestration is a mere detail. With me it always comes last.”
And to counterbalance any loss is the additional music. Copland wrote that the suite was “a condensed version of the ballet, retaining all essential features but omitting those sections in which the interest is primarily choreographic (the largest cut was the Minister’s dance).” But that dance extends the ballet’s expressive world. Aaron Sherber, music director of the Martha Graham Dance Company, has written that “much of this section is indeed more disquieting, more edgy, than the music in the rest of the suite, which to me makes the ballet a richer piece of music.” You be the judge; meanwhile, a full-orchestra version of the entire ballet, completed from sketches Copland made in the early 1950s plus orchestration by David Newman, premiered in 2016.
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Libretto for The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore
INTRODUCTION
There once lived a Man in a Castle, and a strange man was he.
He shunned the Countess’ parties; he yawned at town meetings;
he would not let the doctor take his pulse; he did not go to church on Sundays.
Oh what a strange man is the Man in the Castle!
INTERLUDE I
The Dance of the Man in the Castle.
FIRST MADRIGAL
Ev’ry Sunday afternoon, soft winds fanning the fading sun,
all the respectable folk went out walking slowly on the pink promenade by the sea.
Proud husbands velvety-plump, with embroider’d silk-pale ladies.
At four o’clock they all greeted each other; They spoke ill of each other at six:
Women: “How d’you do?” “Very well, thank you.”
“Have you heard?” “Pray, do tell me.”
“Tcha tcha tcha tcha tcha ra tcha ra tcha...”
“How funny, how amusing, how odd! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”
“How well you look!” “How pretty your dress!”
“Thank you.” “Thank you.” “Good-bye.” “Good-bye.”
“Isn’t she a gossip!” “Isn’t she a fright!”
Men: “How d’you do?” “Very well, thank you.”
“What do you think of this and that?”
“In my humble opinion: Bla bla bla bla bla la la la la bla...”
“How profound, how clever, how true! Only you could understand me.”
“Thank you.” “Thank you.” “Good-bye.” “Good-bye.”
“Oh, what a pompous ass!” “Oh, what a fool!”
INTERLUDE II
Promenade.
FIRST SUNDAY
SECOND MADRIGAL
(Enter the Man in the Castle and the Unicorn)
One Sunday afternoon the proud Man in the Castle joined the crowd in the promenade by the sea.
He walked slowly down the quai leading by a silver chain a captive unicorn.
The townsfolk stopped to stare at the ill-assorted pair.
Thinking the man insane some laughed with pity, some laughed with scorn:
“What a scandalous sight to see a grown-up man
promenade a unicorn in plain daylight all through the city”
“If one can stroke the cat and kick the dog;
if one can pluck the peacock and flee the bee;
if one can ride the horse and hook the hog;
if one can tempt the mouse and swat the fly,
Why, why would a man both rich and well-born raise a unicorn?”
“If one can strike the boar with the spear and pierce the lark with an arrow;
if one can hunt the fox and the deer,
and net the butterfly and eat the sparrow;
if one can bid the falcon fly and let the robin die;
Why, why would a man both rich and well-born raise a unicorn?”
“If one can skin the mole and crush the snake;
if one can tame the swan on the lake and harpoon the dolphin in the sea;
if one can chain the bear and train the flea;
if one can sport with the monkey and chatter with the magpie,
Why, why would a man both rich and well-born raise a unicorn?”
THIRD MADRIGAL
(Dance of the Man in the Castle and the Unicorn)
Unicorn, my swift and leaping Unicorn,
Keep pace with me, stay close to me, don’t run astray, my gentle rover.
Beware of the virgin sleeping under the lemon tree,
her hair adrift among the clover.
She hides a net under her petticoat, and silver chains around her hips,
and if you kiss her lips the hidden hunter will pierce your throat.
Unicorn, beware!
Her crimson lips are hard as coral and her white thighs are only a snare.
For you who likes to roam, a kiss is poisoned food;
Much sweeter fare is the green laurel; much safer home is the dark wood.
FOURTH MADRIGAL
(The Count and the Countess)
Count: “Why are you sad, my darling?
What shall I buy to make you smile again?
Velvets from Venice, furs from Tatary or dwarfs from Spain?”
Countess: “Why was I ever born? Ah, my husband dear!
I fear that you cannot afford to calm my sorrow.
Why was I ever born if I must go through life without a Unicorn!
Ah, my master, my lord!”
Count: “Ah, dry your tears, my pet, my wife.
Whether I swim or fly, whether I steal or borrow.
I swear that you will own a Unicorn tomorrow.”
INTERLUDE III
As the Count and the Countess appear with a Unicorn, the townsfolk stare at them in surprise. Soon everyone in town imitates them until every respectable couple is seen promenading with its own Unicorn.
SECOND SUNDAY
FIFTH MADRIGAL
(Enter the Man in the Castle with the Gorgon)
Behold the Gorgon stately and proud.
His eyes transfixed but not unaware of the envious stare of the common crowd.
Behold the Gorgon tall, big and loud.
He does not see the smiling enemy.
He does not pause to acknowledge the racket of the critical cricket
nor to confute the know-how of the sententious cow.
He slowly sarabands down the street ignoring the hunter but mixing with the elite.
Fearless and wild, his wings widespread.
He fascinates the maiden and frightens the child.
SIXTH MADRIGAL
(The Townsfolk and the Man in the Castle)
Townsfolk: “And what is that? A Bloody-Nun, a were-wolf?”
Man: “This is a Gorgon.”
Townsfolk: “And what did you do with the Unicorn, please?”
Man: “He only liked to gambol and tease.
I quickly grew tired of the fun,
So I peppered and grilled him.”
Townsfolk: “Do you mean?”
Man: “Yes, I killed him.”
Townsfolk: “Oh but the man must be out of his mind.
How ungrateful of him,
to wilfully destroy the pretty Unicorn so gentle and coy.
and had he found something prettier at least,
but look at the Gorgon the horrible beast.”
Wicked is Man, Patient is God,
All He gives Man to enjoy Man will destroy.
Banish all sleep, weep for the dead.
Cover my head with a black veil.
Muffle the horn and the lute, silence the nightingale.
For the Unicorn, slain by Man, will not leap ever again.
SEVENTH MADRIGAL
(The Count and the Countess. The latter has secretly poisoned her Unicorn)
Count: “Why are you sad, my darling?
Gone is the swallow from your limpid eyes,
Gone is the silver from your clarion voice.”
Countess: “Ah, my Unicorn.
Whether he grazed on mandrake or hellebore or only caught a chill
I very much fear, my Unicorn is done for, he is so very ill.”
Count: “Do not grieve, my dear,
once he’s dead and gone we shall buy a younger one.”
Countess: “Ah, my Unicorn, no younger one can take his place.
Besides they have grown too commonplace.
The Mayor’s wife has one, so does the doctor’s wife.
Now that my Unicorn is gone I want a Gorgon.”
Count: A Gorgon! Ha, God forbid!”
Countess: “Ah, you no longer love me. You must love another.
Ah me, that’s clear: I must go back to mother.”
Count: “Bon voyage, my dear.”
Countess: “Ah, abandoned and betrayed, I shall take the veil and die a nun.”
Count: “Why not an abbess? I couldn’t care less.”
Countess: “Think of our son who has done no wrong.”
Count: “The little monster, take him along.”
Countess, crying: “Ho, ho, Oh! No! Not that, I pray, not that, I pray!”
Count: “Calm yourself, my dear. I shall find a Gorgon this very day.”
INTERLUDE IV
As the Count and the Countess appear at a picnic with a Gorgon, the Townsfolk stare at them in great surprise. Soon all the Unicorns in town are killed and every respectable couple is now seen promenading a Gorgon.
THIRD SUNDAY
EIGHTH MADRIGAL
(Enter the Man in the Castle with the Manticore)
Do not caress the lonely Manticore. Do not unless your hand is gloved.
Feeling betrayed, feeling unloved, so lost he is in cabalistic dreams
he often bites the hand he really meant to kiss.
Although he’s almost blind and very, very shy and says he loves mankind.
His glist’ning back whenever tapped will quickly raise its piercing quills.
How often as if in jest inadvertently he kills the people he loves best.
Afraid of love he hides in secret lairs and feeds on herbs more bitter than the aloe.
Fleeing the envious, the curious and the shallow, he keeps under his pillow
a parchment he thinks contains Solomon’s seal and will restore his sight.
And late at night he battles with the Sphinx.
NINTH MADRIGAL
(The Townsfolk and the Man in the Castle)
Townsfolk: “And who is that? Methuselah or Beelzebub?”
Man: “This is the Manticore.”
Townsfolk: “And what of the Gorgon? How is he these days?”
Man: “He was so proud and pompous and loud I quickly grew tired of his ways.
First I warned him and then I caged him. Fin’ly he died.”
Townsfolk: “He died? of what?”
Man: “Of murder.”
Townsfolk: “Oh, but the man must be out of his mind.
How ungrateful of him, to slaughter in a cage the gorgeous Gorgon, the pride of his age.
Had he found something prettier at least, but this Manticore is a horrible beast.”
INTERLUDE V
The Countess secretly stabs her Gorgon.
TENTH MADRIGAL
(The Count and the Countess)
Count: “Why are you sad, my darling?”
Countess: “Why are you sad, my darling? I like that, I like that!
Are you drunk, are you asleep, or just blind?”
Count: “I must be all three for I dreamt you were charming and kind.”
Countess: “I dare say, with the exception of you,
the whole town is aware of my terrible plight.
My Gorgon is lost, my Gorgon, my Gorgon is hopelessly lost!”
Count: “Hardly a reason to weep.
I can now get you a dozen at half his original price.”
Countess: “How dare you suggest such a thing.
You have no intuition or sense, you are vulgar and dense.”
Count: “I bow to your eloquence, but what have I said?”
Countess: “Do you expect me to keep and pamper and feed a breed that is common and cheap?”
Count: “I shall say no more.”
Countess: “Not even to offer me a Manticore.”
Count: “A Manticore? That ghost, that golem, that ghoul in my house! Never!”
Countess: “You are a fool!”
Count: “I married you!”
Countess: “You are a mule!”
Count: “You are a shrew!”
Countess: “How dare you, Oh, I faint.”
Count: “(Oh what a wife have I, Medusa she is and Xantippe,
still she must share my bed, I wish I were dead.)”
Countess: “Saying something?”
Count: “Oh nothing.”
Countess: “May I then have my Manticore?”
Count: “Don’t be a bore.”
Countess: “Oh, why did I marry a count of no account, since I could have married a duke or a prince.”
Count: “(Because they were clever and I was a fool.)”
Countess: “Saying something?”
Count: “Oh nothing!”
Countess: “I heard you.” she slaps him
Count: “(Oh what a wife have I, Medusa she is and Xantippe,
Oh what a wife have I, I wish she would die.)”
Countess: “Do you still refuse?”
Count: “You are much too convincing and forceful and deft.”
Countess: “I knew we would finally see eye to eye.”
Count: “Yes, the one eye I have left.”
INTERLUDE VI
As the Count and the Countess appear with the Manticore, the Townsfolk stare at them in great surprise. Soon all the Gorgons in town are killed and every respectable couple is now seen promenading a Manticore.
ELEVENTH MADRIGAL
(The Townsfolk)
Have you noticed the Man in the Castle is seen no more Walking on Sundays his Manticore.
I have a suspicion. Do you suppose? Do you? The Manticore too?
We must form a committee to stop all these crimes.
We should arrest him, we should splice his tongue and triturate his bones.
He should be tortured with water and fire, with pulleys and stones
(He should be put on the rack, on the wheel, on the stake.)
in molten lead, in the Iron Maiden.
Let us all go to explore the inner courts of the Castle
and find out what he has done with the rare Manticore.
THE MARCH TO THE CASTLE
Slow, much too slow, is the judgement of God.
Quick is the thief. Speedy architect of perfect labyrinths the sinner.
But God’s law works in time and time has one flaw: it is unfashionably slow.
We, the few, the elect, must take things in our hands.
We must judge those who live and condemn those who love.
All passion is uncivil. All candor is suspect.
We detest all, except, what by fashion is blest.
And forever and ever, whether evil or good, we shall respect what seems clever.
TWELFTH MADRIGAL
(The Man in the Castle on his death-bed, surrounded by the Unicorn, the Gorgon, and the Manticore.)
Oh foolish people who feign to feel what other men have suffered.
You, not I, are the indifferent killers of the poet’s dreams.
How could I destroy the pain-wrought children of my fancy?
What would my life have been without their faithful and harmonious company?
Unicorn, My youthful foolish Unicorn, please do not hide, come close to me.
And you, my Gorgon, behind whose splendor I hid the doubts of my midday, you, too, stand by.
And here is my shy and lonely Manticore, who gracefully leads me to my grave.
Farewell. Equally well I loved you all.
Although the world may not suspect it,
all remains intact within the Poet’s heart.
Farewell. Not even death I fear as in your arms I die.
Farewell.