Copland – Billy the Kid (2025 Aiden Magley)

Aaron Copland was born in 1900 to Russian-Jewish immigrants in New York City and quickly took after music, beginning his illustrious composition career at age 15. He honed his abilities in Paris under the tutelage of esteemed composer and conductor Nadia Boulanger and began to craft his own style that would come to be known for its folk influences and encapsulations of 20th century americana. Copland’s affinity for different instrument timbres are highly observable in this piece as he often trades similar, or even identical, rhythmic and harmonic figures between sections and solo instruments of different families. His careful use of each instrument’s unique resonance gives the piece incredible breadth, allowing him to conjure a wide variety of musical colors and images that evoke powerful nostalgia for a time passed.

Billy the Kid was one of three musical suites composed by Copland to accompany ballet productions in the mid-20th century. These ballets, beginning with Billy the Kid in 1938 and followed quickly by Rodeo in 1942 and Appalachian Spring in 1944, would become the composer’s most famous works. The Billy the Kid ballet adaptation follows the turbulent life of the infamous American gunslinger and its reflection of life on the American western frontier in the 19th century.

The suite is split into eight parts, the first of which introduces the audience to the geographical background of the ballet, the open prairie. It begins with a soft, simple melody in the winds section that builds energy and passes into the brass and strings before returning to a serene flute solo. A mournful call in the horns is echoed by solo oboe and other solo instruments before the section climaxes with percussion and brass. II. Street in a Frontier Town comes next, kicked off by a jolly prairie tune played by the piccolo and passed through other sections of the orchestra. A dance feel quickly comes in the brass and string sections, grounded by the rustic sounds of the time-keeping woodblock. The similar musical motifs traded back and forth between different solo instruments and section ensembles introduce a wide cast of characters and give the audience a taste of the chaos of life in the American Wild West.

Copland then takes his listeners further south, the Mexican Celebration & Finale section kicked off by a broad trumpet solo over an alternating two-three feel in the woodblock played underneath. The melodic and rhythmic shapes written here by Copland reflect his time in Mexico in the 1930’s where he found traditional Mexican melodies to infuse with American folkiness and country charm. The section is interrupted abruptly by menacing chords in the brass and celli that announce the death of Billy’s mother, as well as his retaliation against her killer. An apprehensive call recognizable from the first section reappears in the solo oboe and is echoed by the bassoon, segueing nicely into the slow, serene next section, Prairie Night. Listeners here escape the disarray of frontier life for a soft, reflective pause wherein Billy mourns his mother and reckons with his newfound loneliness. Solo flute passes a lamenting motif along to solo trumpet, whose simple phrases soar over a thin accompaniment in the rest of the orchestra, capturing the glory and despair of a cowboy’s life on the prairie. The audience can almost feel the nip of the cold in this moment of stillness under the pastoral stars.

The section’s moment of tranquility and contemplation is soon interrupted by fast hits in the percussion and sharp muted interjections in the trumpet section as Billy is discovered and caught by a rival gang following a gunfight. A tentative motif in the winds builds into the celebration of the next section as the town rejoices the capture of the famous buckaroo. A chaotic and dissonant march ensues, ending with an abrupt diminuendo and fading note in the trumpet that articulates Billy’s death. A slow, mournful string section captures the aftermath of Billy’s execution. After the procession, the finale is opened by the same, though now more sinister, call in the horns from the first section. This motif is similarly traded among sections and solo instruments and builds to a climatic brass fanfare that captures the short-lived fame of the American cowboy and his tumultuous life in the territories. So ends Aaron Copland’s tour through the Wild West and the tale of one of the most wild to ever come through it.

• Aiden Magley, ’25

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