Fanfare for the Common Man

Aaron Copland at the piano
Aaron Copland at the piano

In honor of Labor Day, here is a great performance of Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, featuring the New York Philharmonic brass and percussion sections with conductor James Levine.

In 1942, as the US entered the Second World War, Cincinnati Symphony music director Eugene Goossens commissioned eighteen composers to write fanfares. The title of Copland’s Fanfare was inspired by a speech, given by Vice President Henry Wallace, called Century of the Common Man. A few years later, the same music found its way into the final movement of Copland’s Third Symphony. 

The spirit of this piece embodies something uniquely American. The unison trumpet voice emerges out of the solemn percussion, suggesting the bravery and dignity of the individual. It reaches into the highest register, as if aspiring to something mythical and unattainable. Then we hear two voices, the trumpets and horns, and finally the trombones and tuba.

Listen to the power and ring of overtones which result from perfectly focused intonation:

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So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning.

To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.

-Aaron Copland