The City: The Classic 1939 Documentary with a newly recorded soundtrack of the score by Aaron Copland

A Fascinating Copland Score for a Depression Era Documentary
This DVD rescues a virtually forgotten documentary from the Depression Era: 'The City', made for the 1939 New York World's Fair. The primary reason for releasing it, it would seem, is that it is Aaron Copland's first movie score which has languished virtually unplayed for these many years. That is largely because, unlike for some of his other movie scores, Copland never made a concert suite from the music. Credit goes, then, to Joseph Horowitz, the artistic director of D.C's Post-Classical Ensemble, for seeing that this release was made. The DVD includes two presentations of the documentary, one with the score newly recorded as played by the Post-Classical Ensemble under Angel Gil-Ordóñez, and another of the documentary with its original score, recorded in mono and conducted by Max Goberman.

The documentary was made by filmmakers Ralph Steiner and Willard Van Dyke with a narration written by Lewis Mumford, the distinguished city planner and read by the...

Can too much of a nice dream (come true) turn into a nightmare?
This is a piece of late-depression American propaganda referencing the result of FDR's (one) take on urbanism. Greenbelt was a newly developed community in Maryland, whereby a public works program and some bright minds in architecture and urbanism were giving an enlightened answer to the blithe of the industrial habitat characterized by smoke and dark gray tones, lifeless if not for the hopeless children acting rather like animals in a zoo. I hold the "lifeless" back for Greenbelt was conceived also in contrast to the massified urbanity of places like New York City.

Greenbelt, MD, was intended to show the way to a new type of urbanism, children-, and eye-friendly, surrounded by nature and away from the means of industrial production. And what a way it showed! Indeed, I don't know how much of the urban sprawl can be attributed to this pre-war episode of planned urbanism (more debt going to 1947-51 Levittown NY), nonetheless it was a seed to a lot we've come to despise...

The City - Copland's little know score brought to life !!
This is a wonderful piece of American film history which stands the test of time. Aaron Copland's music written for the documentary film is simply as good as it ever gets. The story line of the documentary takes the life of a city and tells it in an interesting set of visually telling scenes full of vintage and 20th Century Modern images. The footage is true Americana. The music written in segments for each section of the 43:40 minute film is diverse and surprising. It shows many sides of Copland of compositional style and a few which are very surprising. It's obvious that much of the music and images in Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance, a 1982 film directed by Godfrey Reggio with music composed by Philip Glass was inspired by this documentary. The music to the coffee shop theme is a forerunner of the incessant movement of Glass' and Adam's music. The first time I heard it -- I had an "Aha Moment" -- So that's where they got the idea. The Naxos DVD production seems to be...

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