Copland - Quiet City
AARON COPLAND 1900 - 1990
QUIET CITY
Until his recent death, Aaron Copland was arguably the foremost, and certainly one of the best loved, American composers of modern times.
Quiet City, a short continuous suite for trumpet, cor anglais, and strings, was written in 1939 as incidental music for a play by Irwin Shaw concerning the night thoughts of solitary people in a great city. Not the peaceful solitude, however, as in Vaughan Williams "London" symphony, but a haunting desolation in which Copland's particularly American voice seems to speak of empty streets and cold grey skyscrapers.
Two particular images from Shaw's play are evident in the music; a lonely jazz trumpet played by a young Jewish boy, and a figure for strings, depicting, in Copland's words, "the slogging gait of a dispossessed man".
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