Today is the 124th birthday of composer Aaron Copland.
My plog (poetry blog) posts have featured Copland in the past, particularly for his 12-poem song cycle “The Poems of Emily Dickinson for Voice and Piano.” You can read my past posts which include info on Copland
Years ago, in the 1980s, my wife taught 3rd grade at a Friends school in Media, PA. She assigned a letter writing project to her students – each one had to write a letter of inquiry to a famous person; one young man chose Aaron Copland.
In the letter, the boy exclaimed, “I just love Apple, H, and Spring.” LOL – of course, he was referring to Copland’s work “Appalchian Spring.”
My plog (poetry blog) posts have featured Copland in the past, particularly for his 12-poem song cycle “The Poems of Emily Dickinson for Voice and Piano.” You can read my past posts which include info on Copland
Years ago, in the 1980s, my wife taught 3rd grade at a Friends school in Media, PA. She assigned a letter writing project to her students – each one had to write a letter of inquiry to a famous person; one young man chose Aaron Copland.
In the letter, the boy exclaimed, “I just love Apple, H, and Spring.” LOL – of course, he was referring to Copland’s work “Appalchian Spring.”
| Copland always said the title of that work tickled him because people would always come up to him to say how completely he had captured the essence of spring in the piece. However, he did not title the work. Martha Graham did. Copland always referred to what he was composing as “Ballet for Martha” becuase she had asked him to write the piece. Graham came up with the title from a line of a poem called “The Bridge” by Hart Crane. And get this – the line “O Appalachian spring” refers to a stream, not a season. So the title of Copland’s work has nothing to do with springtime – though I agree that piece absolutely captures the essence of the season. |  |  |
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Info on the poem can be found HERE. The collected poems of Hart Crane are HERE.
Of course, Dickinson wrote of spring often. If you search “spring” in the online Dickinson archive, then 86 entries pop up, and these entries represent 30 different poems Dickinson wrote with the word “spring.” (for the longest time I thought she’d written 31 poems with the word “spring,” but yesterday I realized that the alphabetical listing included one poem called “Opon a Lilac sea,” and then later in the list there’s a poem entitled “Upon a Lilac sea” – and they are the same poem – so the 86 entries for the word “spring” represent 30 poems).
Like Crane’s “Appalachian spring,” did any of Dickinson’s “springs” refer to a stream?
I’ll take a look at that tomorrow.
Of course, Dickinson wrote of spring often. If you search “spring” in the online Dickinson archive, then 86 entries pop up, and these entries represent 30 different poems Dickinson wrote with the word “spring.” (for the longest time I thought she’d written 31 poems with the word “spring,” but yesterday I realized that the alphabetical listing included one poem called “Opon a Lilac sea,” and then later in the list there’s a poem entitled “Upon a Lilac sea” – and they are the same poem – so the 86 entries for the word “spring” represent 30 poems).
Like Crane’s “Appalachian spring,” did any of Dickinson’s “springs” refer to a stream?
I’ll take a look at that tomorrow.
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