SIGNED AND DATED BY AARON COPLAND

COPLAND, Aaron. An Outdoor Overture. Full Score. (New York): Boosey & Hawkes, circa 1952. Quarto, original printed wrappers; pp. 44. $500.

Later edition of the full score, signed and dated 1977 by the composer above his printed name on the first page of music.

Copland interrupted the composition of Billy the Kid to write this work for the school orchestra of the High School of Music and Art in New York city. The director requested “a single movement composition somewhere between five and ten minutes in length. I think it should be an overture or rhapsody, rather optimistic in tone, which would have a definite appeal to the adolescent youth of this country”: as Copland notes, “the composition was an overture, about nine and a half minutes long, definitely optimistic in tone” (from the Program Notes).

Price stamp to front wrapper. A fine inscribed copy.