Portrait for Orchestra (Mark Twain)

Composer: KERN, Jerome
  • Jerome Kern’s Portrait for Orchestra (Mark Twain) was commissioned by Conductor Andre Kostelanetz, alongside Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait and Virgil Thomson’s The Mayor LaGuardia Waltzes.
    • The concert of musical “portraits” where the three works premiered took place in 1942 with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and was produced to improve national morale as a response to the United States’ entrance into WWII.1
  • Kern had been a Mark Twain enthusiast since boyhood. Fun fact – the first book he ever owned was Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.2

Sources

  1. Dr. Jacques Dupuis, “Aaron Copland: Lincoln Portrait,” Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, accessed February 11, 2025, https://audienceaccess.co/bio/HNCR-61926.
  2. “Music: Portraits in Tone,” Time (1942), accessed February 11, 2025, https://time.com/archive/6781362/music-portraits-in-tone/.

Cut IDs

16914