INSCRIBED BY AARON COPLAND

COPLAND, Aaron. Music for the Theatre Suite in Five Parts for Small Orchestra. New York: Cos Cob Press Inc., circa 1932. Folio, original wrappers, pp.71. $700.

Early edition, full score, inscribed on the title page by Aaron Copland, "For Phillip / 'than whom'… / Aaron C / '67."

Copland spent the early 1920s in Paris studying composition with Nadia Boulanger; "the summers were spent, on Boulanger's advice, in Berlin, Vienna and Salzburg, where he responded to what he heard of Webern, Bartók, Hába, Hindemuth, Weill and many others. Mahler he took as a useful model of counterpoint as well as orchestration. He began to cultivate an interest in jazz. Wishing to be as recognizably American as Musorgsky and Stravinsky were Russian, Copland applied some syncopated and polymetric rhythms and some 'blue' intervals in his next works, most memorably in the suite Music for the Theatre (1925)," which premiered in Boston with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Serge Koussevitzky in 1925 (New Grove 4:719). The recipient of this copy was Phillip Ramey, a composer and writer who was also one of Copland's closest friends. With "#1 N.Y. Copy" written on front wrapper.

Interior fine, wrappers mildly toned with a bit of wear to spine. A near-fine copy.