Modern Americana with Portland Spirit

Aaron Copland (1900–1990) 
Lincoln Portrait (1942)  

It wasn’t going to be about Lincoln at first. When in 1942 André Kostelanetz asked Aaron Copland to contribute to a musical portrait gallery of great Americans, Copland opted for texts by Walt Whitman. But the temper of the times, inflamed by the bombing of Pearl Harbor, mandated a more compelling hero: Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president and the author of some of this nation’s most inspiring prose. Lincoln Portrait, premiered under Kostelanetz’s direction in Cincinnati in 1943, immediately entered the repertory as an outstanding expression of national honor.  

Copland’s musical idiom has become so firmly associated with traditional Americana that it’s easy to overlook that he himself was trained in the European style. The Jewish son of Eastern European immigrants, Copland was raised in New York City and received his musical education in France, where he soaked up the styles of Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Ravel, and other such modernists. He returned to America in the mid-1920s as the composer of sparse, abstract works that carry their European heritage proudly. That lean and buff idiom persisted throughout his career despite such approachable “American” works as Appalachian Spring, Rodeo, Billy the Kid, Fanfare for the Common Man, and Lincoln Portrait. It is sometimes said that there were two Coplands—i.e., the modernist and the populist. In reality there was always only one; his musical language was not only sinewy, but it was also flexible enough to take on a variety of personas.  

For Lincoln Portrait, Copland drew on excerpts from the Gettysburg Address, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and a State of the Union speech. To complement those, he threaded several American folk tunes into his musical tapestry—“Camptown Races” and "Springfield Mountain." The Portrait is in two broad sections: the first acts as a prelude and includes vignettes of Lincoln’s upbringing and journey to the White House. The second incorporates Lincoln’s own words, in slowly-intensifying music that expresses both the heroism of those texts and, as Copland put it, “the mysterious sense of fatality that surrounds Lincoln’s personality.”  

Copland wasn’t always given his due, and starting with the 1950s he became something of a pariah due to his having supported socialist causes during the 1930s. McCarthyism took a heavy toll on his social standing as well as his career. His works thereafter were severe, abstract, and dissonant; no more Americana. He stopped composing altogether after 1972 and gradually retreated into the shadows of Alzheimer’s disease. But his posthumous legacy has, if anything, improved with the passing of time: not only ranked as a leading modern composer, he is cherished as a defining voice of the American experience.

Gabriel Kahane (b. 1981)
every love song is a protest (2026)

Diversity is the name of the game for Gabriel Kahane. He has created albums as a singer-songwriter. He has recorded chamber music. He has written orchestral works. He’s worked with artists as diverse as the Danish String Quartet, Caroline Shaw, Pekka Kuusisto, Rufus Wainwright, and Sufjan Stevens. He performs in rock clubs, concert halls, off-Broadway theaters. And particularly he is noted for tackling politically tricky subject matter with a certain grace—a rare quality in today’s world. 

As a composer, he aims to dissolve boundaries between genres and idioms, as he brings his voice as a songwriter to his chamber and orchestral works. Among his many compositions we find a piano concerto written for his father, the pianist and conductor Jeffrey Kahane. Just to keep things even more interesting, he also works as a conductor. 

As he began work on what would become every love song is a protest for the Oregon Symphony, Kahane wrote eloquently and honestly about his process: 

“This song cycle I am trying to write: it is neither ‘clear’ nor ‘utterly free.’ In its current state, it might be more aptly described as ‘bowel-dark’ and ‘steel-shackled.’ I know what I am trying to write about. And yet even this ostensibly straightforward statement of intent is a minefield. The poet Matthew Zapruder, in his memoir, Story of a Poem, described the evolution of his process: as a young writer, he knew what he wanted to say, and set about to express it as beautifully as possible. That is, he aestheticized a pre-existing set of ideas or claims. But as he matured, he began to allow the process of writing to teach him, or to reveal, what it was he sought to express.” 

“This new piece of mine is animated by a slew of non-musical impulses: I am trying to write about the disciplining force of love in social movements, and the peril of a politics devoid of love; about my own life, fatherhood, and aging parents (though they would bristle at the adjective); about individual and collective responsibility in this nightmarish era of fear and contempt, slop and misinformation; about the unruly intersection of all of the above.” 

As the work reaches its completion, this statement might help to sum it all up: 

“Can an ethic of love—unconditional love for all of mankind—help to build the solidarity necessary to create a better world? This question sits at the root of Gabriel Kahane’s new orchestral work every love song is a protest, an impassioned cry aimed at the heart of America’s toxic political culture. Kahane braids original songs of love, witness, and protest for an evening animated by a belief in our inescapable interconnectedness.”

William Grant Still (1895–1978)
Symphony No. 4 “Autochthonous” (1947)

Much of William Grant Still’s story waits to be told. A pathfinder who pushed past the barricades that barred Black composers from America’s concert halls and opera houses, he had the vision and courage to write symphonies, tone poems, operas, chamber music, and instrumental pieces. Apart from one period during the 1930s when he was able to focus exclusively on composition, Still was always worried about money, which came mostly from commercial music jobs. In that he was like most concert composers, who generally can’t make a living writing the music of their dreams and must acquire funding elsewise. But Still’s race made everything exponentially more difficult. 

He kept at it, and in the process amassed an impressive list of credits that bear witness to a musical polymath in the grandest manner. He studied with Edgard Varèse and George Whitefield Chadwick. He was the first Black composer to have a symphony performed by a major orchestra and the first Black conductor to lead a major orchestra.  He played the oboe in theater ensembles for Eubie Blake, Sophie Tucker, Artie Shaw, and Paul Whiteman. He arranged music for NBC radio shows. He wrote nine operas. His work can be heard in Dmitri Tiomkin’s score for Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon. Some of his music was used on the TV show Perry Mason. And he wrote prolifically for the concert hall—so much so, in fact, that much of his output awaits broader discovery. 

Still’s 1947 Symphony No. 4, “Autochthonous” belongs in the company of those rare symphonies such as Tchaikovsky’s Sixth and Mahler’s Ninth that end with a slow movement. Still has described the seldom-played work as “having its roots in our own soil, but rather than being aboriginal or indigenous, it is intended to represent the spirit of the American people.” Written in the neo-Romantic language that Still employed during his maturity—in contrast to the sharply dissonant style he had acquired in his early days as a Varèse student—it provides an excellent entrée to Still’s lyricism, imaginative use of evocative harmony, and technical control over large-scale forms. 

About fifteen seconds into the first movement we hear a critical bit of material, a bluesy yet urgent “motto theme” that will serve as an organizational element throughout the entire symphony. Listen for it at the start of the expansive second movement, before the oboe enters with the exquisite main theme, followed by further references, some significantly extended. It’s there, albeit somewhat disguised, in the happy-go-lucky third movement with its swingy big-band vibe. Then it makes an unmistakable appearance starting about four minutes into the finale, providing an upbeat central interlude that contrasts with the overall mood of rapt reverence that carries the symphony to its conclusion in dignified exaltation. 

Still’s daughter Judith tells us that the work expresses “praise for people who came ‘from the soil,’ abused and enslaved, and recognizes the power of those who had been so mightily put upon when they triumphed with honor over a difficult past. Out of the soil of oppression and forced degradation they rose up and acquitted themselves, bringing along their unique songs, humor, and distinctive, vibrant culture.”