The Compositional History of Aaron Copland's Symphonic Ode

In 1928 Aaron Copland read an announcement in the New York Times of a competition sponsored by RCA Victor. A board of judges, including conductors Leopold Stokowski and Serge Koussevitzky, was to award $25,000 to "the best work of symphonic type, in any form which the composer may employ or develop, within the playing scope of the full symphony orchestra."1 Composers had until May 27, 1929, to enter. Thinking "it would have been a shame not to submit anything to the competition," Copland submitted excerpts from an early, unperformed ballet as the Dance Symphony.2 The judges did not award a first prize; rather, the monies were divided among Copland and three other composers.3 Copland had hoped to submit the Symphonic Ode for the Victor prize but did not complete it in time. The Ode represented more than a competition piece, however, and he continued to work on it even after missing the deadline. He was "attempting something different," trying to write "a piece of music with an unbroken logic so thoroughly unified that the very last note bears a relation to the first."4 This sense of formal unity is integral to his general conception of the symphonic form, as is a grandiose and dramatic tone, and the Symphonic Ode fulfills these generic criteria.5 Copland intended it as an important statement of his artistic majority, his first purely symphonic work of weightier tone than the youthful Symphony for Organ and Orchestra or Music for the Theater. The Ode was, he wrote to Serge Koussevitzky in 1929, "the best thing that I have done up to now."6