188
PARTISAN REVIEW
have composed without such concessions, we might even find that it
profited from their inclusion.
In Copland's case, it would seem that his more immediately appealing
efforts have actually exerted a favorable influence on the
Sonata
in
return for the sensitivity and ingenuity which invest the "workaday"
music as a residue of the "serious" style. For example, the
Sonata
has
some tunes which are like those we normally whistle or hum. That
is,
the tunes do not exceed average vocal range, nor are the skips too eccen–
tric. The ease with which a tune may be reproduced or retained or merely
apprehended depends on its resemblance to ordinary non-musical, vocal
experience (speech, sighs, shouts). A means is thus provided for touching
upon commonly felt emotions; for one way in which music imitates
feeling is by analogy with vocal inflection, and the commonly felt emotions
are obviously embodied in inflections experienced in daily life. And,
provided with this means, Copland has caught intensely human attitudes
to animate the "tonal edifices" which Paul Rosenfeld once found to
"resemble nothing so much as steel cranes, bridges and the frames of
skyscrapers."
There is still another aspect in which the
Sonata
reflects Copland's
recent concern with what psychologists would call "audience preference":
the sonorous texture. Listeners like to abandon themselves in an aura of
sound and in the
Our Town
music,
Quiet City,
and the
Lincoln Portrait,
Copland shows an awareness of this. At the other extreme is the
Variations
with its sparse chords, the gaunt exposed dissonances, its theme starkly
disengaged from the quickly released harmonies (except in the fifth
variation and the closing section). The
Sonata
lies somewhere between.
There is still the pervading gloom of the
Variations,
the same bleakness
in the constricted theme and its unvoluptuous harmonies; but there is
an alleviating warmth and at times a cosy resonance. The chords ·do not
leave us abruptly, but linger as
if
to plead a sorrowful case to evoke pity,
or as if partly content in a certain resignation. This makes for an im–
portant difference between the two piano works which touches seriously
upon their performance. There is a tendency of pianists to approach
and leave the chords of the
Sonata
with a percussive sharpness appropriate
to their treatment in the
Variations.
When Copland plays the
Sonata,
however, he has a way of resting in the keys as if to urge the maximum
resonance out of them, and he encourages the listener to make much of
the sonorous moment between the striking of one chord and the next.
I do not think the
Sonata
achieves "a language which satisfies both
us and them," nor do I think Copland consciously sought it. . The tunes
are far from obvious enough for your "average listener," and while he
will prefer the protracted chords to the ascetic single tones prolonged
in the
Variations,
he will crave a prettiness to relieve the gloom. (And
your average listener is also likely to lose patience at the extension of
certain attitudes, unless he is sensitive to the subtle harmonies through
which the attitudes are projected.) But more lyricism and greater sonority
