Hoe-Down from Rodeo

To complete the circuit, it is time to fly north for the cowboy music of an composer whose family and cultural roots stretch right back to Europe and beyond. As a musician born in Brooklyn of Russian-Jewish parents and trained in Paris, Copland was not at all sure that he was not the right composer for a ballet set in the Wild West. He didn’t even like cowboy tunes. Although that proved to be no disadvantage when he wrote Billy the Kid for the Ballet Caravan in 1938, he was still very reluctant to commit himself when the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo approached him with a project for Rodeo. But the choreographer Agnes de Mille convinced him that what she had in mind was “going to be different." Rodeo, which is indeed more entertaining if less dramatic than Billy the Kid, proved to be even more successful than its predecessor when it was first performed at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, in 1942.

The scores of Rodeo and Billy the Kid, both of which make liberal use of authentic cowboy tunes, are remarkable for their athletic rhythms and for their lean orchestral textures with not an ounce of fat on them. Hoe-Down, the final dance of Rodeo, is a particularly vigorous example. It makes a prominent feature of country fiddles, first of all in a square-dance tune called “Bonyparte” and then in an acrobatic version of “McLeod’s Reel,” the choreographic brilliance wittily offset by some clumsy vamping from the piano and an apparently sleepy trombone.

As a musician born in Brooklyn of Russian-Jewish parents and trained in Paris, Copland was not at all sure that he was not the right composer for a ballet set in the Wild West. He didn’t even like cowboy tunes. Although that proved to be no disadvantage when he wrote Billy the Kid for the Ballet Caravan in 1938, he was still very reluctant to commit himself when the Ballet russe de Monte Carlo approached him with a project for Rodeo. "Oh no!” he said to the choreographer, Agnes de Mille, “I’ve already composed one of those. I don’t want to do another cowboy ballet! Can’t you write a script about Ellis Island?" But she convinced him that what she had in mind was “going to be different" and Rodeo - which is more entertaining if less dramatic than Billy the Kid - proved to be even more successful than its predecessor when it was first performed at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, in 1942.

The scores of Rodeo and Billy the Kid, both of which make liberal use of authentic cowboy tunes, are remarkable for their athletic rhythms and for their lean orchestral textures with not an ounce of fat on them. Hoe-Down, the final dance of Rodeo, is a particularly vigorous example. It makes a prominent feature of country fiddles, first of all in a square-dance tune called “Bonyparte” and then in an acrobatic version of “McLeod’s Reel,” the choreographic brilliance wittily offset by some clumsy vamping from the piano and an apparently sleepy trombone. Virtuoso exercise for upper strings though it is, wind instruments are by no means excluded from the celebration, trumpets and clarinets least of all.