Fanfare for the Common Man

From a Fanfare for the Common Man you might expect something, well, common – nothing vulgar, of course, but something to indicate that this particular tribute is directed not at princes or presidents but ordinary people. Commissioned by Eugene Goossens in 1942, as one of no fewer than ten patriotic fanfares for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man is in fact as grandiloquent as any of its kind and longer than most. The alternative subjects of the tribute to be seen in the composer’s sketches – A Solemn Ceremony, A Day of Victory, The Rebirth of Lidice, The Spirit of Democracy, The Paratroops, The Four Freedoms - all say more about the piece than the title it ended up with. Copland used the fanfare again, incidentally, without a title, in the last movement of his Third Symphony.