Aaron Copland is best known as the quintessential American composer--the
man whose musical opus gave us Billy the Kid, Rodeo, Appalachian Spring
and Fanfare for the Common Man.
Aaron Copland is seen conducting the soundtrack for the film Something Wild, 1961.
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Plain spoken and lacking a college degree, nonetheless he became one of
the most influential figures in 20th-century American music, as
composer, lecturer, conductor, pianist and author.
Jennifer DeLapp knows Copland well. He was the subject of the
musicologist's doctoral dissertation at the University of Michigan. When
she interviewed for a faculty position last fall at the School of Music,
Director Christopher Kendall noted that 2000 marked the centennial of
Copland's birth. He also talked about the Clarice Smith Performing Arts
Center and its focus on collaborative, interdisciplinary projects that
bring together performance and academic theory--an issue of particular
interest to DeLapp. "I don't just want to sit in a library and do my
work," says the musicologist. "I enjoy the performances and appreciate
and respect what goes into putting on a single good performance. I think
the two can benefit from each other,"
Now as academic coordinator of the "Aaron Copland and American Identity"
festival DeLapp has that chance. "I'm not sure I had a month long event
of this scope in mind at the time." Indeed, the project, under the
auspices of the center, brings together not only the departments of
dance, theater and music and the Performing Arts Library, but also draws
upon art history, history, archaeology and English.
In addition to performances and exhibitions (see adjacent calendar), an
opening three-day conference is expected to attract scholars in history,
art history, English, American culture, as well as music.
DeLapp believes Copland is a natural for such exploration. "He lived
through things in our recent past: the Depression, World War II, the
Cold War, and he was not somebody who stayed in an ivory tower. He
really wanted to connect with American culture, American identity. Some
composers and artists are more interested in distilling out some
abstract essence of the culture. But he was more about
rolling-up-the-sleeves and digging in."
The composer also wrote books: His What to Listen for in Music is
considered a classic primer. And, in an unusual undertaking for a
classical composer, he wrote film and ballet scores. Here, his American
signature took the form of folk tunes borrowed from Latin American dance
music, cowboy tunes and Shaker songs.
It wasn't always that way. He first embraced the dissonant sounds
associated with modernity and the jazz age. But during the 1930s,
Copland saw new audiences developing around the radio and the phonograph
and he thought that it was important to reach them, explains DeLapp.
Copland made a deliberate decision to say what he had to say in the
simplest terms--using more triads (such as the C major chord), simpler
harmonic language and more melody. Likewise, his film scores conveyed
the angular, clean, open sound that has become standard for Westerns.
"He really did change the sound that we associate with the open spaces
on the prairie and American culture," says DeLapp.
Ironically, that American sound was also viewed as subversive in some
circles. Like many other liberal-minded artists of his day, Copland
found himself blacklisted and called before Sen. Joseph McCarthy's
Committee on Un-American Activities. It was this aspect of Copland's
life that DeLapp's dissertation explored.
But at the heart of it all is the music itself--articulating so clearly
our American identity.
--DB
Who Did Hoodoo?
Sometimes, the most extraordinary discoveries are made when they are
least expected. During a routine dig at the James Brice House in
Annapolis, Md., a team of faculty and students from the Department
of Anthropology's Archaeology Field School unearthed
artifacts once used in the African spiritual practice of Hoodoo. The
items provide tangible evidence of Hoodoo's existence in the Chesapeake
Bay region.
According to Jessica Neuwirth, archaeological curator for the Historic
Annapolis Foundation and liaison to the university, Hoodoo originated in
the 19th and early 20th centuries as a manifestation of cultural beliefs
from different regions of Africa. "It involves the relationship between
the human and the spirit world," she says, "and understanding one's
place in the cosmos."
Everyday items, such as those found in the Brice House, took on new
significance during Hoodoo rituals. For example, among the artifacts
discovered in Annapolis are bottles used to capture spirits; pierced
coins, often worn around the ankle, to guide the soul smoothly through
life; matchsticks to light candles at a homemade altar--or to burn a
piece of paper bearing an enemy's name; and feathers that represent the
flight of the soul. "Some believed that practitioners of Hoodoo really
could fly to commune with the spirits," says Neuwirth.
What's most striking about the discovery is not just the items
themselves, but the order in which they were arranged beneath the floors
of the house: They were buried to form a cosmogram, a symbol originated
in Africa's Congo region that is usually represented by a cross inside a
circle. The horizontal line separates the living and the dead, as well
as night and day; the vertical line connects the spirit world to
humanity; and the circle symbolizes the cycle of life, from birth to
death.
The presence of these items, along with similar artifacts previously
discovered in the Charles Carroll and Slayton Houses in Annapolis,
offers a more detailed view of African American life in the city during
the turn of the 20th century. "This is proof that African beliefs
followed many to the New World," says Neuwirth.
The team of archaeologists, headed by Neuwirth; Mark Leone, professor
and Chair of the Department of Anthropology; James Harmon, project
principal investigator and a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of
Geography at Maryland; and Matthew Cochran, a graduate student in
anthropology, will continue to analyze the existing items. All
investigations at the Brice House are sponsored by the International
Masonry Institute, the Maryland Historical Trust, the Historic Annapolis
Foundation and the Department of Anthropology. --BM
