I've always wanted to hear this piece performed with Gilbert Gottfried.
Or Tiny Tim. I've been wondering if we could come up with a Bush Portrait-- you know, like "When standing erect he was five feet eleven inches tall, and this is what he sneered:..."
Labs, are you doing the voice?
I'm such a sucker for Copland's Americana. Fie on you and your "earnestness", Kotsko, fie!
Who was a better orator/writer - Lincoln or Churchill?
Links are nice. Here's one. There's also a link there to audio of an interview with Copland, and audio of a performance.
A commentary from Howard Taubman in the NY Times in 1953. Worth noting that:
A fortnight ago it was removed from a special program played by the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., as part of the Inaugural ceremonies. It seems that a Representative from Illinois objected on the grounds that Mr. Copland's past associations were suspect to him."Who was a better orator/writer - Lincoln or Churchill"
The League of Composers has protested, and a number of people have written to this newspaper to declare their outrage at this latest form of censorship and blacklisting through the whims of one individual or a handful. One agrees with the protests, but one takes comfort from the knowledge that Aaron Copland's creative stature will not be diminished by this episode.
"Hard to judge the oration ourselves, given the lack of recordings of Lincoln"
AIUI most, if not all, of the recordings of Churchill speeches were not actually spoken by him. You're left with some (hardly any) TV appeareances from the 50s.
Remember when NPR did that Lost & Found Sound series a few years back? It included the closest thing we'll ever get to a recording of Lincoln - a recording of a man who was at the Gettysburg Address, doing his best impression of Lincoln. Obviously not ideal, but one thing he captures is Lincoln's high, reedy voice (I think that's Sandburg's description). I think we all assume that any a. Great President and b. tall man will have a deep, sonorous voice, but Lincoln had the opposite - to great effect, as I understand it. Among other things, it actually projects better over a large, open air audience.
Here's what's most amazing about that to me: a couple years before the NPR thing, I was reading a lot of Lincoln, both bios and speeches, and fantasized about being able to hear Lincoln. And I imagined precisely the scenario that played out. Amazing.