Copland and Stravinsky

Extract

I recently heard Sir Michael Tippett acknowledge Stravinsky as his master. I think Aaron Copland would do the same: for both men Stravinsky is in many ways an ideal, a hero-figure. He has shown that it is possible for the twentiethcentury composer to create his own tradition; both Tippett and Copland have succeeded in creating their own traditions, the one against the background of an English musical life still very insular in its outlook, the other against the musically barren background of American urban society, and both must have drawn strength and direction from Stravinsky's example. For Copland (as for many of us) Stravinsky is also an enigma, his music a mystery: it ‘seems to exist on a suprapersonal plane, in an aural world of its own … One thinks of the Mass, the Canticum Sacrum, or of Threni… these works, in some curious way, seem strangely removed from everyday ‘events’, and yet they remain for the most part profoundly human.’ Copland concludes ‘The essence of the man… the sum total of his extraordinary individuality, has never to my knowledge been adequately described, let alone imitated. Despite the widespread influence of his music Stravinsky as a composer remains a singularly remote and removed figure, a composer whose passport to the future needs no signature other than his own.’