Music from Manhattan

Since the work was commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra, it was only right and proper that Aaron Copland should entitle it Music for a Great City--diplomatically leaving the city's precise locale to the imagination of his audience. But Copland had no more than struck the downbeat at his new work's premiere last week when it was obvious to everyone in the packed house at Royal Festival Hall just what city they were hearing about. Great City is an unmistakable evocation of Manhattan. It might well be titled "An American in New York."

In an intricate play of rhythm and unabashed melody, Copland caught Manhattan's very voice, from staccato bleats suggesting the cry of the streets to the muffled roar of the subway. The music moves from an almost literal description of the skyline to deeper, moodier explorations that offer Copland's own comment on life in the city. Even the lightest passages have ominous undertones, and in the soaring sonorities and wailing dissonances that punctuate the work, there is a darkness that some critics took to be "a terrifying hopelessness."

Great City is not great music, even by Copland's own standards; it is a symphonic expansion of his score for the film Something Wild, and it shows a little too much of his tendencies to ward musical reportage. But when Copland had led the orchestra through the explosions of sound that bring the 20-minute work to its sudden, shouted conclusion, the audience greeted him with a standing ovation. Looking lean and youthful at 63, Copland grinned like a boy.

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