大象传媒

On a cold, gusting morning of January 1961 the poet Robert Frost set out to read a specially composed poem at the inauguration of John F Kennedy, the man on whom all America芒聙聶s hopes were pinned. But the sun芒聙聶s glare and the newness of the poem robbed Frost of his ability, his confidence, to read. He fell back on a poem he芒聙聶d written in 1942. The Gift Outright explores in its few lines one of the deepest and darkest matters facing Americans: the nature of their brief relationship with the land, a land once occupied by others. The poem, read by Jeff Perry is followed by Virgil Thomson芒聙聶s film score The Plow That Broke the Plains, which was sponsored by the United States Resettlement Administration.

As the orchestrator of Gershwin芒聙聶s Rhapsody in Blue, Ferde Grof脙漏 couldn芒聙聶t have been closer to the heart of American music. In 1916, Grof脙漏 drove across the Arizona desert with a group of friends to watch the sun rise over the Grand Canyon. He was later inspired by the experience to compose his famous Grand Canyon Suite.

Some years before, in the late 1860芒聙聶s John Wesley Powell, a soldier turned naturalist embarked on the first geological survey of the Grand Canyon. His journal, which starts as a dry analysis of rock samples and description of geological formations finally becomes a painting and a hymn of praise to this unique American landscape. I found writer and composer speaking in one language in their breathless excitement in the presence of the Grand Canyon. I think you芒聙聶ll agree that Grof脙漏芒聙聶s music and Powell芒聙聶s journal exactly describe each other.

Etta Baker's Appalachian guitar music is followed by Copland芒聙聶s take on the same region: part of his ballet score Appalachian Spring. The White Mountains, part of the Appalachian mountains, the most rugged in New England, were visited in the 1830s by the novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne who wrote an awe-inspiring account of his trip. His connection with the area was forever sealed by his death there on a subsequent visit many years later. Copland芒聙聶s classic orchestration of the Shaker hymn Simple Gifts ends this section and is itself topped off by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir芒聙聶s own version of the original hymn.

The composer Philip Glass has composed America with a photographer芒聙聶s eye, his unique, self-styled voice, mapping America and American life and shipping it across the world as the soundtrack of numerous films. His early score to The Photographer, unswerving in its forward drive is the adjunct to Robert Lowell芒聙聶s haunting poem, The Mouth of the Hudson, a description of a man standing on an outcrop above a railroad siding and watching the trains switching beneath him. It芒聙聶s a neutral description until the word 芒聙聵unforgivable芒聙聶 at the end.

The 20th century American composer Roy Harris was born in 1898 to poor parents, in a log cabin in Oklahoma, on Abraham Lincoln's birthday. He had the perfect opportunity to survey the American landscape as he worked for many years as a trucker, criss-crossing the continent. You can hear the lie of the land in his masterpiece Symphony No.3. I mixed the symphony with John Ashbery芒聙聶s poem Pyrography, an elliptical commentary of America, written to accompany a travelling exhibition of American landscape paintings.

We end with Charles Ives, possibly the composer who captured the spirit of America better than any other. Whilst Harris was a trucker, Ives芒聙聶s main job was in insurance. That was no bar to him writing his totally original and uncompromising musical reflection of the America he saw and heard. His Three Places in New England here prepares the way for Henry James芒聙聶s reflection on the New England landscape, which I have mixed with Ives芒聙聶s contemplative masterpiece The Unanswered Question. Appropriately, that piece ends the programme.

Paul Frankl
Producer