BBC Music Magazine

BACKGROUND TO… Copland’s Quiet City

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‘My career in the theatre has been a flop!’ That’s what Aaron Copland told fellow composer Virgil Thomson when Quiet City didn’t make it past three performanc­es in the spring of 1939. He penned the score of Irwin Shaw’s play about a man who turns his back on his dreams and Jewish heritage, only to be brought back to his senses by the sound of a distant trumpet – the instrument his brother played. Originally scored for trumpet, sax, clarinet and piano, Copland re-worked his music for trumpet, cor anglais and strings. It received its premiere in January 1941 in New York City.

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