Aaron Copland envisioned bringing honor to “the common man, who, after all, was doing all the dirty work in the war and in the army.”Īmerican Overture was the first work for band by Joseph Wilcox Jenkins, who was at the time twenty-five years old and working in his first military stint as an arranger for the U.S. Instead of showcasing a military branch or an ally, however, the mostįamous and lasting of these fanfares surprised Goossens when he first learned the title: Fanfare for the Common Man. He explained “it is my idea to make these fanfares stirring and significant contributions to the war effort.” There are many famous names among that list of eighteen Darius Milhaud, William Grant Still, Virgil Thomson, Morton Gould, Howard Hanson contributed, respectively, Fanfares for Liberte, American Heroes, France, Freedom, and the Signal Corps.
In early 1942, Eugene Goossens, conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony, commissioned eighteen fanfares by eighteen different composers.
This giant war would become the most widespread and destructive conflict in human history and required participation from nearly every part of American society-including artists, filmmakers, and musicians.
On December 7, 1941, the attack at Pearl Harbor forced a theretofore reluctant United States into World War II.
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