SIGNED AND DATED BY AARON COPLAND

(LINCOLN, Abraham) COPLAND, Aaron. Lincoln Portrait. U.S.A.: Boosey & Hawkes, circa 1955. 12mo, original wrappers, pp. 44. $650.

Hawkes Pocket Scores edition, signed and dated on the title page, "Aaron Copland / 1983"

“A still different kind of success was the result of a commission from André Kostelanetz for one of a series of musical portraits of American heroes by various composers… his friend [Randall] Thomson, long practiced at musical portraiture, tried to dissuade him from anything so exalted. (Thomson’s choice was Fiorello LaGuardia.”) But Copland was well enough aware of the dangers… Copland proceeded to make a new kind of portrait: his music, borrowing some American tunes of Lincoln’s time and earlier, became the humble prelude and accompaniment for spoken excerpts from Lincoln’s addresses and letters… Among the most celebrated readers of the Lincoln text, the best was the Lincolnian Illinois statesman and Copland’s exact contemporary, Adlai Stevenson” (New Grove 4:720-21). First performed in 1942 and published a year later.

Fine condition.