Classical Music Maniac: The Common Man's Fanfare (Copland)

Title: Fanfare for the Common Man

Aaron Copland

Henry A. Wallace

Composer: Aaron Copland

Composed in 1942

Fanfare for the Common Man is a musical work by American composer Aaron Copland. The piece was written in 1942 for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under conductor Eugene Goossens. It was inspired in part by a famous speech made earlier in the same year where vice president Henry A. Wallace proclaimed the dawning of the "Century of the Common Man”.

Copland, in his autobiography, wrote of the request: "Eugene Goossens, conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, had written to me at the end of August about an idea he wanted to put into action for the 1942-43 concert season. During World War I he had asked British composers for a fanfare to begin each orchestral concert. It had been so successful that he thought to repeat the procedure in World War II with American composers". A total of 18 fanfares were written at Goossens' behest, but Copland's is the only one which remains in the standard repertoire.

Goossens had suggested titles such as Fanfare for Soldiers, or sailors or airmen, and he wrote that “ it is my idea to make these fanfares stirring and significant contributions to the war effort...." Copland considered several titles including Fanfare for a Solemn Ceremony and Fanfare for Four Freedoms; to Goossens' surprise, however, Copland titled the piece Fanfare for the Common Man. Goossen wrote "Its title is as original as its music, and I think it is so telling that it deserves a special occasion for its performance. If it is agreeable to you, we will premiere it 12 March 1943 at income tax time". Copland's reply was "I am all for honouring the common man at income tax time”.

Copland later used the fanfare as the main theme of the fourth movement of his Third Symphony (composed between 1944 - 1946.)

Music

Instrumental

four horns (in F)
three trumpets (in B♭)
three trombones
tuba
timpani
tam-tam
bass drum

Structure

Copland immediately grabs your attention with the percussion: timpani, bass drum, and tam-tam (a type of gong). Once established, the percussion gets softer with each repetition to make way for the trumpets who play the main melodic theme of the piece. The theme is firmly in the key of B flat major and sounds very “open”: movement happens by jumps between notes rather than by going up and down a scale.

Once through the melodic theme, the percussion breaks in to repeat its own theme that we heard at the beginning. The melodic theme returns, this time as a duet between the trumpets and horns. The theme begins the same as before, but then Copland takes a slight detour up into a slightly higher range before coming back to continue the original theme. Even then he doesn’t repeat exactly what he did the first time – he repeats the series of faster notes before slowing down the last three (D -> F -> B flat). The percussion presents its theme again to usher in the low brass (tuba and trombones). The low brass comes in with additional fanfares. Once the theme arrives in the higher voices it sounds a lot like the trumpet and horn version we heard earlier.

Fanfare for the Common Man video: