Short Symphony
The composition contains complex rhythms and polyharmonies, and it incorporates the composer's emerging interest in serialism as well as influences from Mexican music and German cinema.
The symphony was not widely performed during Copland's lifetime, largely due to the piece's challenging rhythmic variations.
After Serge Koussevitzky and Leopold Stokowski both declined to conduct the premiere, Chávez agreed to deliver it in 1934 in Mexico City.
[3] While staying at the Yaddo estate during the summer of 1932, Copland wrote to the pianist John Kirkpatrick that the composition of the Short Symphony had been disrupted because he was simultaneously working on Statements for Orchestra.
The trip inspired Copland to incorporate traditional Mexican elements into the finale of the Short Symphony, as well as begin the symphonic piece El Salón México.
[5] Work on the Short Symphony extended into the next year; Copland explained the delay in a 1969 radio program, saying that he "was intent on writing as perfected a piece of music as I possibly could".
When Copland asked the conductor if the piece was too difficult, Koussevitzky allegedly replied, "Non ce n'est pas trop difficile, c'est impossible!"
[7] The scoring of woodwinds, brasses, and strings in pairs also resembles the instrumentation found in Classical symphonies by Haydn and Mozart.
[24][25] The movement's opening five-note motive (see below) implies the triads of both D major and D minor,[26] creating the first of numerous tonal ambiguities found throughout the work.
[44] Such a form was devised by the composer César Franck and reuses related thematic material from other movements for structural unity.
The first theme (see below) with a D-flat tonal center is then introduced by a variety of instruments beginning with the flutes, while accompanied by a rhythmic ostinato in the second violins.
"[6] The finale also quotes a Werner R. Heymann song featured in Erik Charell's German film operetta Der Kongress tanzt (The Congress Dances), which Copland had seen in a 1931 visit to Berlin.
[6] Pollack considers the Short Symphony to be "sprightly and charming", and its "sharp dissonances" and "rhythmic jolts" to be of a humorous nature.
The rhythmic difficulties of the Symphonic Ode reappear in the Short Symphony, which presents not only rapid meter changes but also irregular beat divisions and polyrhythms.
[57] The wariness of conductors towards the challenges of the Short Symphony's rhythm led Copland to temper such complexities in his later works.
In 1967, when asked by the composer Edward T. Cone whether his music in works like the Short Symphony became more international in style, Copland responded: Perhaps, but nonetheless I like to think of them as being in some way American.
[61] He also once told the musicologist Vivian Perlis: [Serialism] forced me into a different, more fragmented kind of melodic writing that in turn resulted in chords I had rarely used before.
[62]The musicologist Bryan R. Simms believes Copland's interest in Schoenberg's methods began in the early 1920s while studying under Nadia Boulanger.
By 1928, Copland had analyzed Schoenberg's Suite for Piano and began experimentally composing with tone rows and other serial methods.
[67] In his review of the 1944 U.S. premiere for The New York Times, Noel Straus reports that the Short Symphony was "warmly received".
While the critic Edmund Tracey reports that the concert delighted the audience, he assesses that the Short Symphony revealed the "genius" of Stravinsky in contrast to the "inadequacy" of Copland.
Tracey writes that the Short Symphony "made claims that it never fulfilled" and "raised topics that it appeared to discuss while not really doing so".
[69] The composer and critic Arthur Berger commends the work in his review of the 1944 premiere in The New York Sun, admiring that the symphony had "feelings in their essence", though he notes that many of the dissonances were "accidentally interpolated" during the performance.
[6] In a 1981 interview with John Callaway, Copland said that he had always considered the Short Symphony "one of the best things I ever wrote", although "it has never caught on, for reasons not quite clear to me".
[72] Despite the symphony's technical difficulties which initially turned away conductors like Leopold Stokowski, the piece became a favorite of younger composers including Leonard Bernstein and Elliott Carter.
In a 1980 letter to Copland, the American minimalist composer Steve Reich described his Octet as "perhaps a distant cousin of your wonderful Sextet".
