Letter from Home

Composer: COPLAND, Aaron
  • Letter from Home was commissioned by Paul Whiteman for his radio orchestra to play in the American Broadcasting System’s Philco Radio Hour.1 They premiered the piece in a broadcast from New York 1944.2
  • Letter from Home depicts the emotions of an American soldier at the front reading a letter sent from home.3
  • When he wrote this piece, Copland was living in Mexico and dealing with his own homesickness. To add to the stress, his mother had recently passed away, his father was ill, and he had family fighting in the war.4

Sources

  1. Vivian Perlis, “Copland, Aaron: Letter from Home (1944, rev. 1962),” Boosey and Hawkes (1998), accessed August 22, 2019, https://www.boosey.com/cr/music/Aaron-Copland-Letter-from-Home/5264.
  2. Howard Pollack, “Copland, Aaron,” Grove Music Online (2013), accessed August 22, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002249091.
  3. William A. Young and Nancy K. Young, Music of the World War II Era (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008), 181.
  4. Ibid.

Cut IDs

42433, 45512