Answer:
Hope this helps. I highly recommend rephrasing everything if you are going to use it though.
Explanation:
The most quintessential of Antonin Dvorak’s works is Appalacian Spring. This is the music that is most associated with Copland - open and expansive like the landscape he depicts, yet personal and intimate. With folk tunes as his inspiration, Copland defined post-Jazz American music.
The ballet depicts the day of a wedding celebration at a Pennsylvania farmhouse in the early 20th century. It opens at dawn with a gentle theme for strings and winds. The characters are introduced: the revivalist preacher, the pioneer woman, the young couple to be married, and the preacher’s followers. There is a lively general dance, then a prayer scene, and then a pas de deux danced by the young couple.
The sweet interlude erupts into joyous dancing as the wedding is celebrated. Still, the couple remains apprehensive about their new life, and the music carries a somber undertone. Only the strength of their older neighbors and the faith of a revivalist meeting (conveyed by Copland’s direct quotation of the hymn “Simple Gifts”) provide reassurance. At last, taking courage from those around them, the bride and groom stand in their new home. Copland’s score concludes as serenely as it began, ending the day with the same chords with which dawn was evoked.
The original ballet version is divided into 14 movements. The movements that do not appear in the orchestral suite occur mostly between the 7th and last movement as variations on the Shaker melody Simple Gifts (1848). The second variation provides a lyrical treatment in the low register while the third contrasts starkly in a fast staccato. The last two variations of this section use only a part of the folk tune, first an extraction treated as a pastoral variation and then as a majestic closing. In the ballet, but not the suite, there is an intermediary section that moves away from the folk tune preceding the final two variations.
