Not Like This

Today I went into my iTunes to find some fun stuff to put on the new iPod. (the other one didn't like repeated dunkings in water and olive oil) I needed classical music, since I can't do computer work to anything with words, and I happened to turn on Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man. Instantly I was a sophomore in high school band, first chair flute, looking at a Copland medley we'd decided to play. For whatever reason the arrangers had taken that beautiful trumpet fanfare and turned it into a flute/clarinet solo, and I had it. I remember very clearly playing that fanfare, backing off on the high notes, shaping the phrases with my entire body, the different ways you can do accents. I've always loved fanfares, but I looked at that sheet music, played that solo, and thought: this is big. this is something for forever.

I've loved Copland ever since. No one can strip-mine a musical history and turn it into their own like him. He's American to the core--so much so that whenever people hear his music, they always wonder "what is this? I've heard this!" Everything he's ever written is part of our collective subconscious.