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Ian Carey's avatar

Thanks for these—the Blue & Gold piece is great. I had to revisit some Copland to check whether I could agree your dig on his counterpoint was justified, and I get your point, he doesn't really do a lot of dense contrapuntal textures, certainly nowhere near as much as say, Hindemith or Shostakovich, but the fact that he was such a gifted texture-painter says to me that the fact he didn't use that texture more was a stylistic choice rather than any deficiency—It's kind of like dinging Bach's kids for not writing as many fugues as he did, when they were really just doing a different style. Also: the finale to the third symphony has some ripping counterpoint, so he could certainly do it when he wanted to!

(Trivia note: my dad interviewed Copland in 1966, with mic operated by his friend the young Steve Martin!)

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