Copland Symphony No. 3

There has always been a debate about “The Great American
Symphony.” By the time most prominent American composers got
around to writing large scale symphonic works, the symphony had
very nearly gone out of fashion. To many musicians and thinkers,
the symphony had passed on with the death of Mahler. With the
advent of atonality, which essentially destroyed the
developmental structure that symphonies rested on, there seemed
to be nowhere for the symphonic genre to go. The traditional
udnerstanding is that composers like Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and
Sibelius, among others, picked the symphony back up from its
deathbed and resurrected it. But there was a generation of
American composers also writing symphonies around this time, and
many of them have never quite gotten the consideration they
deserve. Ives wrote 4 brilliant symphonies, Bernstein wrote 3
ambitious symphonies, there are the symphonies by the first
generation of Black American composers, namely William Dawson’s
Negro Folk Symphony, and then there are much less known
symphonies by composers like Roy Harris, which were huge
successes at the time of their premiers, but which have faded
into obscurity. Despite many strong efforts, very few American
symphonies have made their way into the standard “canon.” That
is, except for one: Copland’s 3rd Symphony, which is almost
certainly the most played American symphony. It was written as
World War II was coming to an end, and it is one of Copland’s
most ardent and life-affirming works. Naturally, connections were
made to the Allied triumph in World War II, but Copland insisted
that the symphony wasn’t a reflection of the era, writing: "if I
forced myself, I could invent an ideological basis for the Third
Symphony. But if I did, I'd be bluffing—or at any rate, adding
something ex post facto, something that might or might not be
true but that played no role at the moment of creation."


Whatever the inspiration, this symphony has become one of
Copland’s most enduring works, even though it is also in many
ways one of his most complex. It is a massive work, nearly 40
minutes in length, and it requires a huge and virtuosic
orchestra. It also features some of Copland’s most recognizable
tunes, including of course, the Fanfare for the Common Man, which
permeates the symphony and is in many ways its central theme. So
today, on this Patreon Sponsored episode, we’ll dig deep into
this symphony, mapping out its unusual form, and savoring the
energy, optimism, and creativity with which Copland attacked the
well-worn genre of the symphony. Join us!