Saturday, October 24, 2015

More Relevant To Today Than You'd Think At First Glance: The Cummington Story (1945) Music by Aaron Copland


I hadn't ever heard of this music by Copland before or the movie he wrote it for.  I figured the best way to hear it was in the context in which he composed it and intended it to first be heard.   The movie is a re-enactment of the integration of a group of World War Two refugees in a small Massachusetts town.  It is a bit on the romantic side, for example, I don't remember anyone ever wearing suits and ties to sit in a town meeting or them being so congenial.  But, then, my first town meeting was about seventeen years after this one and maybe they were more formal about it than we were in Maine.  Other than that a lot of it looks quite familiar to me.

Note the sermon on the text from Leviticus 19:34 " the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself"  something that still hasn't taken in the United States.

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