Scenes of America
Essay by Matthew Mugmon
The iconic scenery of the American West has served as a prominent and poignant starting point for this endeavor. The three movements of Sean Shepherd’s orchestral work Tuolumne were inspired by Yosemite National Park and by three Ansel Adams photographs of the region. Steven Mackey’s Red Wood, for electric guitar and orchestra, honors the redwoods of Northern California, where he grew up. Berkeley-based composer John Adams captured aspects of the Golden State in the concerto The Dharma at Big Sur, and Carlisle Floyd’s opera Of Mice and Men brings John Steinbeck’s classic California-set novel to life.
The cities and towns of the East Coast (and elsewhere) have been just as powerful an inspiration. David T. Little’s CHARM, composed for a Baltimore Symphony Orchestra gala, reflects what the composer called Baltimore’s “unseen energies.” Aaron Copland’s Quiet City, Meredith Monk’s Ellis Island, and Virgil Thomson’s Crossing Brooklyn Ferry (the latter after Walt Whitman’s poem) contend with New York City in different ways. Tod Machover’s Philadelphia Voices for orchestra and choruses captures, literally, the sounds of Philadelphia—in part through audio provided to the composer by users of a mobile app. And for some composers, depicting American places and spaces has served as a running theme. Michael Daugherty has composed an entire series of works inspired by these locations: Philadelphia Stories, Motor City Triptych (Detroit), Sunset Strip (Los Angeles), Route 66, and Mount Rushmore.
One of this country’s most recognized composers for the voice was Ned Rorem, and his final opera, Our Town, is based on Thornton Wilder’s classic three-act play set in the fictional Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire. Rorem captures Wilder’s archetypical depiction of small-town America from the initial church bell-like orchestral flourishes and the opening hymn, “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.” A vivid sense of this country’s spaces and places emerges here as compellingly as it does in the many American works about monumental landmarks.
Matthew Mugmon is Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of Arizona. He has served as the New York Philharmonic’s Leonard Bernstein Scholar-in-Residence, and his research appears in the Journal of Musicology, Music & Letters, the Journal of Musicological Research, and the essay collection Rethinking Mahler. His monograph Aaron Copland and the American Legacy of Gustav Mahler was published in 2019 by the University of Rochester Press.