(Full disclosure--I toyed with using a vulgar or course title using swear words or curse abbreviations for this post. You know, as a way of creating a clever dissonance with the content to come. But then I didn't. But that didn't stop me from taking even more time to type this out and explain it to you, so that you can pat me on the back for the joke I didn't make. I guess that is why people hate bloggers.)
Last Saturday, Lynda and I attended the Columbus Symphony Orchestra's performance at the Ohio Theater downtown.
You would be justified to think at this point Most of those words have never been presented in that particular order about something YOU did.
But I did it because of the particular music they began the performance with: Aaron Copeland's Appalachian Spring. (I didn't know that the second piece would be based on letters written by Abraham Lincoln, but that was a nice bonus as well.) You can click this link to see some of the details of the show.
Copeland has been my favorite American composer since I was in high school. This was because of a set of circumstances that combine pop culture and marching band--so of course, it had to happen to me.
If you are of a certain age, you likely remember the "Beef. It's What's for Dinner" commercials that ran frequently on television during the Reagan Eighties. The jaunty upbeat symphonic music that linked cattle on the range to your Saturday night dinner table was courtesy of Aaron Copeland. (It is from the Rodeo suite, to be specific. The fourth movement is named "Hoedown.") Copeland became an even more mainstream name because of this bump in his musical exposure and brought awareness deep into South Georgia to me.
I was further locked into Copeland soon after when my high school marching band capitalized on this popular awareness by incorporating the beats and some musical elements of "Hoedown" into the percussion feature of a halftime show one year.
But that only linked me to Copeland himself. It didn't take very long for me to hear Appalachian Spring for the first time. And that was courtesy of the (Garfield) Cadets (of Bergen County) drum corps show of 1987.
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