Analysis Of Hoedown By Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland’s “Hoedown” from Rodeo incorporates several elements of music to further its ideas. The “Hoedown” is peppy and in duple meter. It is program music, using traditional American folk tunes and an impressively diverse range of high and low pitches to convey a sense of vastness, representing the immense American frontier. The movement’s beginning uses consonance as all the notes seem to mesh well with each other, but the middle shows some dissonance, as the notes seem harshly unrelated to each other. The genre of the overall piece, Rodeo, is a ballet, and it is choreographed with five movements. “Hoedown” begins with a recurring theme of the entire ballet, but then introduces a square-dance theme in the tonic. The timbres of the orchestral instruments are mostly cheerful and clear, but the percussion instruments seem to have more musical dominance, probing into the listener. …show more content…
They both share the same genre of ballet. Both also seem to incorporate some form of nationalism. Copland seeks to inspire thoughts of the open American plains using his expansively free music, while Stravinsky evokes Pagan Russia using tribal, haunting notes. However, both pieces are also uniquely different. The Rite of Spring has diverse movements, each introducing a new rhythm and sounding completely unlike the last. In contrast, “Hoedown” begins with Rodeo’s central theme before introducing a new one in the tonic. Another contrast is that the Rite of Spring is polytonal, while “Hoedown” has only one tonal center. The Rite of Spring, unlike “Hoedown,” also comprises of a pentatonic scale and irregular rhythm Furthermore, while “Hoedown” uses conventional bright musical timbres, Rite of Spring plays with the instruments, creating extreme timbres like high bassoon