In 1943 the great American dancer and choreographer, Martha Graham, armed with $500 from a prominent patron, approached Copland with the idea to write some music for her ballet company. He had already garnered success with Billy the Kid, and Rodeo—Copland was a lifelong aficionado of dance—and soon produced a half-hour or so of music appropriate to a story quite unlike that with which we now are familiar. He simply entitled the work, “Music for Martha.” Dissatisfied with the original story, Graham completely reworked it into a scenario (following the published score) that concerns a pioneer celebration:
” . . . in spring around a newly-build farmhouse in the Pennsylvania hills in the early part of the last century. The bride-to-be and the young farmer-husband enact the emotions, joyful and apprehensive, their new domestic partnership invites. An older neighbor suggests now and then the rocky confidence of experience. A revivalist and his followers remind the new householders of the strange and terrible aspects of human fate. At the end the couple are left quiet and strong in their new house.”
Needless to say, Copland’s music was conceived with none of this in mind, moreover, the title that Graham chose originated in a Hart Crane poem about a mountain rivulet, not the season of renewal. Copland was often amused later at plaudits accorded him for evoking the “hope” inherent in simple people in the “spring” season. Nevertheless, his angular melodies, spare textures, and relatively simple harmonies were brilliantly exploited by Graham in her appropriation of his music for her choreography. While much of Copland’s earlier work consciously had used folk melodies as part of his musical resources, Appalachian Spring is based around original material that seems to evoke folk simplicities. The major, important exception is his use of the Shake dance tune, ‘Tis a Gift to be Simple,’ around which he builds a set of variations that lead to the climax of the work. His rhythms echo the muscular, almost jerky, movements that—as every serious dancer knows—are characteristic of Graham’s choreographic style. Metrical shifts and constantly changing accents inform most of the livelier sections.
This little gem of a ballet has assumed a place of favored—almost iconic—status for American audiences. It, along with Fanfare for the Common Man, Lincoln Portrait, Rodeo (Beef—It’s What’s for Dinner!), and other brilliant compositions have all come to help inform our sense of who we are as Americans. And, it is a comment upon the great, sprawling, diverse nature of our country that one of its most eloquent creators of that image was a gay, leftist, son of Brooklyn Jewish immigrants.
–Wm. E. Runyan
© 2026 William E. Runyan