Featured Book: The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross (continued)

Copy at Case Memorial Library
Mr. Ross writes about Appalachian Spring: "The idea for the piece came from the choreographer Martha Graham. … The title comes from Hart Crane's great, flawed poetic cycle The Bridge, and specifically from the section 'The Dance': O Appalachian Spring! I gained the ledge;/ Steep, inaccessible smile that eastward bends/ And northward reaches in that violet wedge/ Of Adirondacks! … Graham decided on the title only after Copland had completed the score, but according to Howard Pollack the idea of somehow using The Bridge as a source was present from the start. Crane and Copland had met in bohemian-modernist circles in the twenties, and although they had little contact, both were striving to create modern American myths. The bridge at the center of Crane's poem is the Brooklyn Bridge, which is said to 'lend a myth to God.' It is a sacred symbol in a city given over to flashing images and frantic movement. Elsewhere in the poem, Crane finds moments of transcendence … in the emptiness of the American wilderness" (pp. 301-302).