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

Copy at Case Memorial Library
Mr. Ross writes in Chapter 11, "Brave New World": "Howard Pollack, in his biography of Copland, declares that the composer's political ordeal … did not bring about a dramatic change in his style. … Only four certifiably dodecaphonic pieces ensued. … In other works, Copland still employed one form or another of his populist manner. His most ambitious project of the fifties was the opera The Tender Land, which applied the language of Billy the Kid and Appalachian Spring to a quietly moving tale of life on the open prairie. Erik Johns's scenario had undercurrents of social protest: the community becomes irrationally suspicious of two strangers in their midst, enacting in microcosm the paranoias of McCarthyite America. Open-interval melodies and spare instrumentation bathe the scene in the familiar Edenic light. Copland hoped that The Tender Land would be broadcast on television, but the networks took no interest. New York City Opera presented it instead. Copland's thousand-dollar commissioning fee was a gift from Rodgers and Hammerstein, the creators of Oklahoma!" (p. 381).