Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/Short Symphony

Short Symphony edit

This is the archived discussion of the TFAR nomination for the article below. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests). Please do not modify this page.

The result was: scheduled for Wikipedia:Today's featured article/November 23, 2021 by Gog the Mild (talk) 22:46, 17 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

 
Carlos Chávez, the symphony's conductor and dedicatee

The Short Symphony or Symphony No. 2 by the American composer Aaron Copland is a symphony written from 1931 to 1933. Its short length of only 15 minutes led to its name. The work is dedicated to Copland's friend, the Mexican composer and conductor Carlos Chávez. The composition contains complex rhythms and polyharmonies, and it incorporates the composer's emerging interest in serialism and Mexican music. Copland later arranged the work as a sextet. The symphony was not widely performed during Copland's lifetime, largely due to the piece's rhythmic difficulties. After Serge Koussevitzky and Leopold Stokowski both declined to conduct the premiere, Chávez agreed to deliver it in 1934 in Mexico City. Though Copland thought of the Short Symphony as "one of the best things I ever wrote", some critics found it to be fragmented and cacophonous. Others agreed with Copland's assessment, describing the symphony as a masterpiece and a significant work in both Copland's career and modernist music. (Full article...)