Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring

Appalachian Spring, with music by Aaron Copland and choreography by Martha Graham, counts among the best-known American contributions to the global concert hall and stage. In the years since its premiere - as a dance work at the Library of Congress in 1944 - it has become one of Copland's most widely-performed scores, and the Martha Graham Dance Company still treats it as a signature work. Over the decades, the dance and the music have taken on a range of meanings that have transformed a wartime production into a seemingly timeless expression of American identity, both sonically and visually. In this Oxford Keynotes volume, distinguished musicologist Annegret Fauser follows the work from its inception in the midst of World War II to its intersections with contemporary American culture, whether in the form of choreographic reinterpretations or musical ones, as by John Williams in 2009 for the inauguration of President Barack Obama. Speaking to both dance and music studies, this incisive exploration of Appalachian Spring situates the work in distinctive contexts of collaborative and individual creation. -- from back cover.