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Morton Gould (1913–1996)
Morton Gould was born in Queens, New York City, in 1913. His
father was born in Australia and his mother was an immigrant
from Russia. He began to play the piano by ear when he was four,
and wrote and published his first melody when he was six—it
was called “Just Six.” He won a scholarship to the Institute
of Musical Art (now the Juilliard School) when he was eight,
and went on to additional studies at New York University. During
his teens he gave piano recitals, and his program would always
include a spot where audiences would suggest themes and phrases
which he would use as the cues for elaborate improvisations—a
feature he incorporated into recitals and lectures all his life.
At the age of 18, he published his first substantial composition,
a suite for piano called 3 Conservative Sketches.
During the Depression Gould worked in vaudeville, developing
his gift for improvisation into a popular novelty act, and
toured as one half of the piano duo of Gould and Shefter.
When Radio City Music Hall opened in 1932, the 21-year-old
Gould joined the staff. For the next eight years he worked
as a conductor, composer, and arranger on the weekly radio
show Music for Today, and in 1943 he was appointed
director of “The Chrysler Hour.” Working in radio meant a
series of weekly deadlines; this taught Gould discipline.
He worked fast, and developed an unerring instinct for what
his audience wanted: civilized light entertainment, popular
music with “class.” The short orchestral works that he called
“symphonettes” were devised for radio format, and the “Pavane,”
from his Symphonette No.2 (1935), became a great hit.
The many symphonettes, serenades, and rhapsodies that he composed
in these radio years integrated elements of jazz, blues, gospel,
country and western, and folk tunes, while nodding respectfully
at the European classical tradition.
During World War II, Gould composed music that was patriotic
and inspirational, band music, marches, and orchestral celebrations
of American life. His most popular work, American Salute,
was composed in 1943. American Salute is a series of
charming, cleverly worked variations on the Civil War song,
“When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” It is superbly orchestrated
and strikes precisely the emotional note that America wanted
to hear—it was unashamedly sentimental without being sappy.
In the same year, he composed the rousing “Fanfare for Freedom”
for brass band, and the marches “Bombs Away,” “American Legion
Forever,” and “March of the Leathernecks.” In 1945, he created
another celebration of Americana in the form of a series of
orchestral variations on the traditional song, “Yankee Doodle.”
Gould worked fluently in a wide spectrum of musical forms.
He wrote Broadway scores (most notably Billion Dollar Baby,
1945), and music for movies (Delightfully Dangerous,
1945; Cinerama Holiday, 1955; Windjammer, 1958).
When television emerged as the most powerful entertainment
medium in American life, Gould was ready to meet the challenge.
Most memorably, he provided the music for the epic TV war
documentaries, World War I (1964) and Holocaust
(1978). Gould’s unerringly accurate ear for the sounds and
resonances of American life and history led to three commissions
for the United States Bicentennial. Again, the compositions
he produced—American Ballads, Symphony of Spirituals
and Something to Do—had precisely the qualities the
occasion demanded: solemnity without pomposity, levity without
frivolity, and a wide appreciation of the bustling multiculturalism
of America.
In 1945, Gould collaborated with the choreographer Jerome
Robbins (1918–98) on the ballet Interplay, and a number
of fruitful dance collaborations followed. He worked with
Agnes De Mille (1905–1993) on Fall River Legend (1948),
and with Eliot Feld (b. 1942) on Santa Fe Saga (1956)
and Half Time (1964). His distinguished collaboration
with George Balanchine at the New York City Ballet began in
1964 with Clarinade, and continued with Audubon
(1969–83). He renewed his association with Robbins in
1983, with I’m Old Fashioned, subtitled The Astaire
Variations.
Perhaps it was Morton Gould’s fluency, ability to produce
commissioned works rapidly, ease with various musical forms,
and sheer popularity that made it difficult for him to gain
acceptance as a “serious” composer. His career as a symphonic
composer began in 1933, when Leopold Stokowski (1882–1977)
conducted his Chorale and Fugue in Jazz with the Philadelphia
Orchestra. Spirituals, which Gould himself conducted
in New York in 1941, has a firm place in the orchestral repertory.
From 1945 on, he wrote chamber music that included both popular
American thematic material, like Boogie the Woogie
(1941), and traditionally classical material, like the Prelude
and Toccata (1945). While he never attained the respect
that was accorded to other twentieth-century American composers—such
as Charles Ives (1874–1954), Aaron Copland (1900–1990), and
George Gershwin (1898–1937)—the breadth and fertility of his
musical imagination, his mastery of orchestration, and his
fluent manipulation of formal structures are unequaled in
American music. Gould’s willingness to embrace and explore
new forms continued right up to his death. The Jogger and
the Dinosaur, commissioned in 1992 by the Pittsburgh Youth
Symphony, incorporated a rapper as narrator.
In his long career, Gould conducted every reputable American
orchestra, as well as those of Canada, Australia, Mexico,
Japan, and Europe. He won a Grammy Award in 1966 for his recording
of Ives’s First Symphony with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra,
and the American Symphony Orchestra League’s 1983 Gold Baton
Award. In 1986 he was elected to the American Academy and
Institute of Arts and Letters. A longtime member of the American
Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, Gould was elected
president of ASCAP in 1986, a post he held until 1994. The
same year, he was awarded a Kennedy Center Honor for his contributions
to American culture, and the following year, his final orchestral
work, Stringmusic, written for the farewell of Msitslav
Rostropovich from the National Symphony Orchestra, won him
a Pulitzer Prize.
“Composing is my life blood,” Morton Gould once said. “That
is basically me, and although I have done many things in my
life—conducting, playing piano, and so on—what is fundamental
is my being a composer.” |
