Commentary: A ballet for us all: How 'Appalachian Spring' carries promise for a new beginning
When Martha Graham's ballet "Appalachian Spring" had its premiere on Oct. 30, 1944, in Washington, D.C., Aaron Copland was the voice of America. He had the gift to be simple. He wrote music that served the essential need for wartime American unity.
Among Copland's wartime efforts had been "Fanfare for the Common Man" and "Lincoln Portrait," patriotic music that miraculously avoided sentimentality and reminded us of what we were supposed to have evolved into being as a nation. Five months after D-Day, "Appalachian Spring" then became the parable of a struggle that leads, with humility and grace, to a new beginning. With the premiere of an orchestral suite derived from the ballet score a year later, with the war over, "Appalachian Spring" attained a mystic glow.
It has long been a cultural mystery how Copland,
