Quiet City

• Aaron Copland composed incidental music for Irwin Shaw’s play The Quiet City in 1939.¹ In 1940, he extracted a suite for chamber orchestra from the material.²
  • The play was not a success. It ran for only two Sundays. 
• The prominent solo trumpet in the score is a reflection of the play, which featured a lead character who was a trumpet player and liked to wander about New York. 

“Quiet City didn’t work. Shaw gave up on it. 

The score survives, as “Quiet City,” a fantasia for orchestra, and is often played. I find it moving because I was the trumpeter in the play; the part was that of a kid wandering around New York, wanting to be a trumpet player like Bix Beiderbecke.”

Norman Lloyd, from the cast of Quiet City³

1. “The Quiet City: Incidental Music for a Play by Irwin Shaw,” Aaron Copland, accessed August 13, 2021, https://www.aaroncopland.com/works/the-quiet-city-incidental-music/.
2. “Quiet City: Suite from the Incidental Music to the Play,” Aaron Copland, accessed August 13, 2021, https://www.aaroncopland.com/works/quiet-city/.
3. Norman Lloyd, Stages of Life in Theatre, Film and Television (New York: Limelight, 1993), 60.