Differing in nationality and era, many would be quick to suggest that Aaron Copland ’s Ballet, “Billy the Kid”, and Bedrich Smetana’s symphonic poem, “Vltava”, have no similarities. However, despite the difference in time period and nationality, Copland and Smetana were both nationalistic composers, meaning that they incorporated musical ideas and motifs commonly identified within a specific country, including folk tunes, melodies, rhythms, and harmonies. Due to this, there are both similarities and differenced present when comparing the two pieces. The tempo, time signature, dynamics, rhythm, structure, harmony, and melody of both compositions where analyzed in order to determine how similar the pieces were.
Titled as “father of Czech music,” Bedrich Smetana was a famous Czech composer in the nineteenth century who pioneered the development of a musical style in his country. His style of composing became closely identified with Czech’s aspirations for an independent statehood. A naturally gifted pianist, Smetana was deemed as a child prodigy who gave his first public performance at the age of six. Smetana enjoyed more respect and popularity than his contemporaries. Though often described as frail and unimpressive, he enjoyed a great fan following and was regarded as the most talented and popular musician Czech has ever had. His piece, The Moldau, is the most popular six works comprising collection of symphonic poems assembled under the title Má Vlast, which means “my country”. It is, one of the most widely performed symphonic poems ever written. One of the six compositions, “Vltava” describes the course of the Vltava, a river that runs through rural Czechoslovakia and Prague. Starting from two small springs, the Cold and Warm Vltava, the song portrays the unification of both streams into a single current, the course of the Vltava through woods and meadows, a farmer's wedding, the round dance of the mermaids in the moonlight and other events that occur on the river’s journey.
Aaron Copland, on the other hand, was a twentieth century American composer who achieved a distinctive musical characterization of American themes in an expressive modern style. Copland was one of the most respected American classical composers of the twentieth century. Copland was born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 14, 1900. The child of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania, he first learned to play the piano from his older sister. By incorporating popular forms of American music such as jazz and folk into his compositions, he created pieces both exceptional and innovative. As a spokesman for the advancement of indigenous American music, Copland made great strides in liberating it from European influence. His composition “Billy the Kid” was designed as a one-act ballet with choreography by Eugene Loring, an American dancer. Based on a semi-fictional story of outlaw Henry McCarty the ballet presents Billy as a romanticized symbol dangers of the Wild West. Copland structures the story with spread out harmonies that vividly invoke a sense of the open prairie.
The first element of music analyzed was Tempo. The tempo of a piece of music is the speed of the underlying beat. Both Copland and Smetana’s compositions have similar original tempos. “Vltava” has an initial speed of Allegro commodo non agitato, meaning the piece should be played in a fast, yet leisurely tempo that is neither too fast nor too slow, and should be performed in a manner that is not agitated. Whereas “Billy the Kid” is solely marked with Allegro, instructing that it needed to be play at a brisk tempo. As both of these works are relatively long, they inevitably fluctuate in speed. This fluctuation creates a distinction in the piece and is utilized in a way that effectively captures the audience’s attention.
Despite the similarity in tempo indications, the illusion produced is that “Vltava” is substantially faster paced than “Billy the Kid”. This is created through the time signatures utilized at the beginning of each piece. “Billy the Kid” begins in simple duple time, whereas “Vltava” begins in compound duple. Having a beat split up into three instead of two contributes to the feeling of “Vltava” being at a quicker tempo than “Billy the Kid”. In addition, particularly at the beginning of the piece, “Vltava” constantly has at least one instrument playing in continuous semi-quavers. This helps to create the illusion of “Vltava” being quicker.
The romantic era, unlike that of the modern, was known for its simplicity; as such, the time signatures and tempo markings, more often than not, remained the same throughout an entire piece of music. Smetana’s composition slightly deviates from this, introducing new time signatures and tempo markings every time a new theme was presented. Moreover, the incessantly frequent tempo and time signature changes in “Billy the Kid” are truly representative of the less structural and unpredictable compositional style of 20th century composers.
Another element of music is dynamics. Dynamics refers to the volume of a sound or note, a wide range of which has been utilized in both “Billy the Kid” and “Vltava”. This creates contrasts within the pieces and makes the compositions more captivating. Both of these arrangements begin softly, with “Billy the Kid” marked mezzo piano and “Vltava” marked piano and gradually increase, ultimately ending on fortissimo. Both pieces make constant use of dynamic changes throughout. However, Copland uses these more aggressive and abruptly, whereas Smetana uses more gradual changes, which effectively represent waves and surges in the river that he is describing. Furthermore, composers tend to utilize the natural dynamics of individual instruments and their ranges in order to obtain the necessary dynamic. This is a technique that both Copland and Smetana skillfully use. Therefore, at the beginning of “Vltava”, only the flutes and pizzicato violins are used to portray the piano dynamic. Similarly, at the beginning of “Billy the Kid”, only the piccolo, tin whistle, violins and violas are used.
Most pieces, particularly orchestral pieces, in the 19th and 20th centuries tend to tell a story. Rather than the need to begin abruptly with a loud dynamic marking, both “Billy the Kid” and “Vltava” use the technique of a subtle introduction. The aim of the beginnings of these pieces is not to immediately capture the audience’s attention, but to ease them into the story line and ultimately engage them by taking them on a musical journey.
Another similarity between these two pieces is the use of syncopation. Syncopation is a disturbance of the regular flow of rhythm. Although Copland uses this effect much more frequently than Smetana, both composers have used this technique to drive the music forward, and intensify sections. Syncopation plays a large part of modern music while early Romantic compositions barely demonstrated this feature. Syncopation helps give the music a sense of unpredictability and unevenness at the necessary times. Copland has used relatively short note values combined with syncopation to capture the laidback atmosphere of the Wild West. In comparison, Smetana is cautious in his use of syncopation.
In addition to syncopation, “Billy the Kid” and “Vlatava” have similar structures. Both compositions make use of different themes, and re-introduce the ideas throughout the piece. The imagery created by Smetana is very clear, and is strongly represented by each individual section names. These section titles perfectly resemble the imagery produced by the music. The structure of Copland’s ballet is much more vague in comparison to Smetana’s incontrovertible Rondo form. This rondo form used by Smetana consists of a theme A that is frequently repeated throughout the piece in variations.
Structure of compositions began to become less apparent nearing the Twentieth century. Compositions from the modern era tend to be more focused on expansion of themes in order to tell stories with them, rather than on composing within a set structure. Twentieth century music was all about innovations, creativity, and exploration, and Copland exemplifies this in “Billy the Kid”.
One way Copland demonstrates creativity in “Billy the Kid” is through the harmony. The harmony of a piece is the combination of simultaneously sounded musical notes to produce chords and chord progressions. “Billy the Kid” begins in the major key, which helps portray its happy and carefree nature. Contrastingly, “Vltava” begins in a minor key, producing a more serious and vehement nature. The string section produces the harmonies heard in “Vltava”, by playing single low-pitched notes of short value. These notes are based on broken chords that signify the key and harmony. Comparatively, “Billy the Kid” forms their harmonies with chords, spread over a number of instruments. In doing this, the texture appears to be thinner, with an exposed sound that corresponds with the Wild West atmosphere. Furthermore, the intonations used by Smetana are much more clear and evident in contrast to those written by Copland. This is an aspect that is typical of compositions from the Romantic eras, as opposed to the inharmonious and unpredictable key changes utilized in modernistic compositions. In other terms, “Billy the Kid” is more dissonant than “Vltava”, and experiments with different keys and sounds, typical of the twentieth century.
The final component of music analyzed was melody. Simply put the melody of a song is its tune. There is one main similarity evident in the melodic lines between “Billy the Kid” and “Vltava”, bot constantly return to a melodic idea. In “Billy the Kid”, the first theme presented returns numerous times in the first half of the piece, and the fifth theme returns regularly in the second half of the piece. In comparison, in “Vltava”, Smetana clearly utilizes the return of the flowing river theme throughout. In addition to this, both pieces contain embellishment within their melodic lines.
Despite the similarity in how often the melody repeats, the melodic lines highly contrast between these two pieces. The melodies used by Smetana are fast flowing and energetic, while Copland’s melodies are light, laid back. Once again, this contrast is used to represent the different themes and ideas intended, as well as the storylines being portrayed. Additionally, Smetana incorporates a larger range of notes in his melodic lines in comparison to the smaller range used in Copland’s melodies. The fact that Copland doesn’t use the entire range possible on each instrument is somewhat alternate to the traditional modernistic compositions. Perhaps Copland intended to limit the ranges of the instruments in order to keep in touch with the nationalistic side of his work and to help portray the Wild West image.
Overall, despite the many differences in time and nationality, Aaron Copland and Bedrich Smetana have several similarities when it comes to two of their compositions, “Billy the Kid” and “Vltava”. There are parallels between these two arrangements when it comes to the tempo, time signature, dynamics, rhythm, structure, harmony, and melody. Throughout each of these, however, there are small differences such as, one song beginning in a minor key rather then major. Both Copland and Smetana’s styles were revolutionary to their time; paved the way for the music and composers that followed them. This goes to prove that music is constantly evolving and composers are always building off of each other.