from Old American Songs II (1952)

Zion’s Walls

The Little Horses

Ching a ring chaw

Copland’s major contribution to the song repertoire is the Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson assembled over a period of six years between 1944 and 1950. Towards the end of that period –    in the hope, he said, “of recharging my inspiration” – he turned to a less demanding project, which was to arrange for voice and piano a series of five 19th-century American tunes selected from a variety of traditional sources. They proved to be so successful on their    first performance in 1950 that he was encouraged to complete a second set by the middle of 1952.

Economically scored and modestly presented, the Old American Songs are models of their kind. Zion’s Walls, based on a Revivalist song Copland was to revisit in his opera The Tender Land, retains throughout the contrapuntal balance between the two melodies simultaneously presented in the piano introduction. The Little Horses, a witty treatment of a lullaby published in the Lomax collection Folk Song USA, alternates gently rocking rhythms with a prettily prancing refrain. Having replaced the politically incorrect words of the minstrel song Ching-a-Ring Chaw with a more acceptable text of his own, the composer was free to indulge the pianist in colourful banjo figuration and the singer in uninhibited exuberance