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WRITTEN BY THE 'DEAN OF AMERICAN MUSIC', AARON COPLAND, IN 1964. A HINT OF THE WELL KNOWN HYMN 'AMAZING GRACE' CAN BE HEARD IN THE MUSIC. MR. COPLAND SAID THE TITLE REFERS TO MUSICAL STATES OF BEING. PERFORMED BY THE UNIV. N. COLORADO WIND ENSEMBLE.
highschool bands jazz bands college bands all region bands community bands concert bands honor bands interlochen arts academy marching bands national music camp tmea all state bands university bands
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Contemporary band compositions, classical music arrangements, marches, jazz, symphonies, overtures. A collection from bands that I have played in throughout hi
Hello and welcome! "Symphonic Band Performances" is a compilation of recordings from several high school and college bands that I played in including the TMEA (Texas) All State Band, the TMEA Region X All Region Band, the Interlochen Arts Academy National Music Camp, the Cal Poly Tech Band, San Luis Obispo, the USAF Golden West Band, and recordings from my h.s. band, Beaumont H.S. and a few band recordings that were passed down to me. Also included are various All State groups and college and university bands. I participated and played in the large majority of these recordings. There are no professional recordings here and every recording is Public Domain. Most are available for free download. Each song has been converted from the original analog or digital source and edited with Audacity or Dak software. In the majority of these recordings, I play the tenor sax or alto sax, b flat or e flat clarinet, or directing. I was drum major for 2 years in high school, I have a BA from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, where I studied music ed, composition and theory. I had about 500 more recordings I was planning to digitize and upload, but this past Nov. 20th, my home was completely destroyed by fire, and all the contents, including all my music and instruments. So, this is it. Please feel free to post a comment here or on my member page. If you like, please become a fan by clicking "I'm a fan" below.
Song Info
Genre
Classical • Symphonic
Charts
Peak #106
Peak in subgenre #14
Rights
public domain
Uploaded
September 28, 2009
Track Files
MP3
MP3 15.6 MB • 190 kbps • 11:27
Story behind the song
Aaron Copland was born on November 14, 1900, in Brooklyn, New York, the youngest of five children born to Harris Morris Copland and Sarah (Mittenthal) Copland. He attended Boys' High School and studied music privately (theory and composition with Rubin Goldmark, beginning in 1917). In 1921 he went to France to study at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, where his principal teacher was Nadia Boulanger. During his early studies, he had been much attracted by the music of Scriabin, Debussy, and Ravel; the years in Paris provided an opportunity to hear and absorb all the most recent trends in European music, notably the works of Stravinsky, Bartók, and Schoenberg. Upon completion of his studies in 1924, Copland returned to America and composed the Symphony for Organ and Orchestra, his first major work, which Boulanger played in New York in 1925. Music for the Theater (1925) and a Piano Concerto (1926) explored the possibilities of jazz idioms in symphonic music; from this period dates the interest of Serge Koussevitzky, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, in Copland's music - a sponsorship that proved important in gaining a wider audience for his own and much of America's music. In the late 1920s Copland turned to an increasingly abstract style, characterized by angular melodic lines, spare textures, irregular rhythms, and often abrasive sonorities. The already distinctive idiom of the early works became entirely personal and free of identifiable outside influence in the Piano Variations (1930), Short Symphony (1933), and Statements, and the basic features of these works remained in one way or another central to his musical style thereafter. The 1920s and 1930s were a period of intense concern about the limited audience for new (and especially American) music, and Copland was active in many organizations devoted to performance and sponsorship, notably the League of Composers, the Copland-Sessions concerts, and the American Composers' Alliance. His organizational abilities earned him the sobriquet of American music's natural president from his colleague Virgil Thomson. Beginning in the mid-1930s, Copland made a conscious effort to broaden the audience for American music and took steps to adapt his style when writing works commissioned for various functional occasions. The years between 1935 and 1950 saw his extensive involvement in music for theater, school, ballet, and cinema, as well as for more conventional concert situations. In the ballets, Billy the Kid (1938), Rodeo (1942), and Appalachian Spring (1944; Pulitzer Prize, 1945), he made use of folk or folklike melodies and relaxed his previous highly concentrated style, to arrive at an idiom broadly recognized as "American" without the sacrifice of craftsmanship or inventiveness. Other well-known works of this period are El Salón México (1935) and A Lincoln Portrait (1942), while the Piano Sonata (1943) and the Third Symphony (1946) continue the line of development of his concert music. Among his widely acclaimed film scores are those for Of Mice and Men (1939), Our Town (1940), The Red Pony (1948), and The Heiress (1949). Copland's concern for establishing a tradition of music in American life was manifested in his activities as teacher at The New School for Social Research and Harvard and as head of the composition department at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood, Massachusetts, founded by Koussevitzky. His Norton Lectures at Harvard (1951-1952) were published as Music and Imagination (1952); earlier books, of similar gracefully didactic intent, are What to Listen for in Music (1939) and Our New Music (1941). Beginning with the Quartet for Piano and Strings (1950), Copland made use of the serial methods developed by Arnold Schoenberg, amplifying concerns of linear texture long present in his music. The most important works of these years include the Piano Fantasy (1957), Nonet for Strings (1960), Connotations (1962), and Inscape (1967); the opera
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