Appalachian Spring is an American ballet created by the choreographer Martha Graham and the composer Aaron Copland, later arranged as an orchestral work.

[4][1][5] This initiated the idea of music that was simple and accessible enough to be liked by the general public,[1][6] a concept pioneered in his opera for children The Second Hurricane (1937) and his greatly successful ballet El Salón México (1936).

[9] The composer solidified his populist and Americana style with ballets like Billy the Kid (1938) and Rodeo (1942),[10][11] both of which used cowboy songs and fit with the popular stereotypes about the Wild West.

[11][12] In addition, Lincoln Portrait (1942) and Fanfare for the Common Man (1942) received widespread acclaim for their American themes, distinguishing Copland's versatility as a composer.

Copland revised the scenario before composing the music, though his occupation with the score for The North Star caused the beginning of his work to be delayed.

[21] During the 1940s, Copland spent much of his time on the West Coast scoring Hollywood films; as a result, he composed the music for Appalachian Spring far from Graham's East Coast-based work.

[27] The original scenario, "House of Victory", used characters based on common American archetypes and was set during the Civil War, but also drew from Greek mythology and French poetry.

The Native American girl was meant to act as a theatrical device, interacting with everyone in the ballet without being acknowledged, but the idea was scrapped in Copland's final composition.

While planning, she took Noguchi to the Museum of Modern Art and showed him Alberto Giacometti's sculpture The Palace at 4 a.m.[f] as a reference for what she wanted:[48] something depicting the inside and outside of a house without actually dividing it, a sort of blurred mix.

[49][50] The set featured the outline of a house, part of a porch with a ledge, a rocking chair, a small fence, and a tree stump (serving as the Revivalist's pulpit).

The Younger Sister, the Two Children, and the Neighbors were all cut, and the rest of the cast was renamed: the Daughter to the Bride; the Citizen to the Husbandman; the Mother to the Pioneer Woman; and the Fugitive to the Revivalist.

[55] The choreography often deviated from both the final scenario and Copland's annotations in the score; for example, the closing love duet between the Bride and the Husbandman became a dance between the Revivalist and his four Followers.

[69] One reviewer pointed out the solitude of the characters and its manifestation in their movements, writing, "The separateness of still figures... which their poses emphasize, suggests that people who live in these hills are accustomed to spending much of their time alone.

[58][71][77] The New York Times critic John Martin wrote of the music, "Aaron Copland has written a score of fresh and singing beauty.

"[71] The dance was also praised; Martin continued, "There is throughout the work a very moving sense of the future, of the fine and simple idealism which animates the highest human motives.

Howard Pollack argued that this scene represented the spirit of John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, something that could cause the Husbandman to be drafted in the Civil War.

[i][108] Copland had decided to use "Simple Gifts" early on; by extracting a basic melodic motif from the tune, he created variations on it throughout the composition, first referring to it in the opening measures.

[119][120] Copland conjures images of a pastoral scene by ending the chords with a deep tonic in the piano and following it with a shepherd flute-like reiteration of the triad.

[54] The two-minute opening has set up the themes present throughout the ballet, and Copland employed the upwards building of chords to depict a "nonmilitant fanfare", as Graham described in the early scripts.

This section is reminiscent of the Cowgirl's music from Rodeo, or the soft parts of Lincoln Portrait for the love theme; near the end, the clarinet brings back the chorale, and the flute answers, a call and response between the Bride and the Husbandman.

Graham wanted the first part to have "a little sense of a County Fair, a little of a revival meeting, a party, a picnic"; Copland achieves this by relating the music to square dancing and fiddling.

The uneven rhythms are replaced by consistent eighth notes, starting a light presto; here, Stravinsky's influence on Copland is evident in the Petrushka-like ascending and descending scales.

A reprise of the calm opening (marked as at first) follows the characters as they exit for a walk; the light focuses on the Pioneer Woman's face, then fades into darkness as "Simple Gifts" begins.

[139] During the half-speed fourth variation played as a canon in the woodwinds, the Revivalist dominantly watches the couple's high-spirited duet, and follows them as they walk into the home.

[137] In "Day of Wrath", Copland was "riffing rather aimeously of the arpeggiated polychord of the opening ... strengthened by an elusive displacement of the beat", Fauser wrote.

Another variation of "Simple Gifts" underlines the Husbandman's slow drift away, and a grand, final restatement of the Shaker tune signals the end of the fear as the Pioneer Woman dances with the Followers.

[157] Its great success made the (then on-tour) ballet even more popular, establishing Copland and Graham as highly regarded artists.

[159][160] In January 1946, the Martha Graham Dance Company presented a new run of shows in New York, including Appalachian Spring on the program.

[40] In the suites, Copland omitted the conflict of the story ("Fear in the Night", "Day of Wrath", and "Moment of Crisis"), making these episodes unfamiliar to the public and seldom recorded.

Nathan Kroll, a musician who had a good understanding of the score, directed the film and consulted Louis Horst (the conductor of the premiere) to ensure the music was just as Copland wanted.