Added: 4 years ago
From: jaxdriver
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  • Clearly that dude is just staing a quote if you people would understand reality these days you would know that sometimes people do the right things at the wrong times and visa versa :P

  • Our music teacher at my school taught us this amazing song my favorite part is the beginning the clarinet plays wich I play in our band... Tis a gift to be simple this a gift to be #3

  • You have to wonder why Miss Sontag hasn't killed herself yet

  • They are wonderful AAron and the love of his life Peter! How can you Evangelicals hate them? They created such beauty! I think they are closer to God than you will ever be!

  • Very good video :D

  • Ooo oo io jp oo opp oo kk klj pippo io oo

  • The tune is the old Shaker hymn "It is a Gift To Be Simple and To Be Free".

  • All of that debate is irrelevant. Aaron Copland and Susan Sontag were both European Jews, not Anglo-Saxon white people. Of course Susan Sontag would single out the white race and ignore what Jews have done.

  • LETS GO MOUNTAINEERS!

  • @rsranger2201 @jjbinks3 @EricTheYounger @TheIrieFeeling @noeffeks @77scapegoat @rsranger2201

    Your collective, anti-white sentiments reveal that you are all philistines. Thank you for your time, kudos pending, and Good Day.

  • @keepcalmycarryon - All whom have graced this earth, past, present, and yet to be are mortals emerging into an infinite realm put forth by a power that is greater than us all.

  • @keepcalmycarryon i think there's been a misunderstanding...I'm not anti white nor do i support Sontag's views. I was trying to acknowledge that you were satirizing Sontag in your post, which i gave you a thumbs up on. others misinterpreted you and i tried to tell them what you were actually doing.

    in any case, "Simple Gifts" is a wonderful piece.

  • 1:33 is my absolute favorite ansel adams photograph. its just beautiful

  • i have ansel adams all over my house. my dad collected his photography samples and blew them up for wall frame size back in like the 70's and we still have them now. they're magnificent pictures

  • great thanks

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  • With all due respect to Copland, he is the arranger, not the composer, of this particular section. It was composed by a few anonymous Shakers in the 1820s.

  • 2:24 Shit just got real in my tear ducts.

  • Hola, un video excelente, enhorabuena.

  • The main theme they play here - the one that keeps getting played in variation..it sounds familiar, almost like a folk song or something...anyone know the name of the song it came from?

  • @JVerusSAnimusA It originally was a hymn from the sect called the Shakers. The hymn is called "Tis the Gift to be Simple", more commonly shortened to "Simple Gifts".

  • would have preferred views of Appalachia.

  • Shouldn't the Appalacian Mountains be pictured instead of the Rockies?

  • Did they fake this at Obama's inauguration? As I have been told many times. I am distraught. An all-time best sing.

  • I am so moved! I cry when I hear this!

  • 2:24. There is a God.

  • Ansel and Aaron-two of the great American artists of the last century-great combination

  • "Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Balanchine ballets, et al. don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history." - Susan Sontag

    Thoughts?

    Good day.

  • @keepcalmycarryon Since you disrupted my enjoyment of music with an irrelevant and rather simple-minded quote, let me give you my thoughts: shut up you twit.

    I presume Sontag says what she says because she thinks "the white race" (idiotic classification) has subjugated and killed more than any other races?

  • @jjbinks3 ...If you're talking about modern history, then yes, the "white race" has--but it has also had more power, thus opportunity, to act out basic human evils.

    Instead of bringing up the "white race" and civilization as if they are specially flawed and other races and civilizations aren't, why not simply say that humans are the cancer of human history?

  • @jjbinks3 oh i just looked up your profile

    teenage troll pseudo-intellectual with strange upclose videos of your turtleneck

    shoulda known

  • @jjbinks3 if you took the time to think for one second, you would realize that he's AGAINST sontag, not supporting her.

  • @EricTheYounger I took the time to think for one second, and it told me that keepcalmcarryon was a little kid trying to be controversial by posting a comment inferring "white" civilization is the cancer of humanity, despite its cultural highlights, on a video of music that might be considered a "white" cultural highlight

    why the hell else would anyone dig up an irrelevant Sontag quote and dump it on this video?

    not hard to figure out, man

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  • @keepcalmycarryon Wasn't she white?

  • @keepcalmycarryon dont forgetfootball(soccer)

  • @keepcalmycarryon So because some bad people who happend to be the same race as me that makes me part of a cancer. All races have bad people. You can't blame everyone who has the same skin color as evil person.

  • @keepcalmycarryon Yes. Susan Sontag is a moron.

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  • @keepcalmycarryon As if the whole world were a huge tit for tat game -as if Shakespeare, algebra, Mozart et al were *also* responsible for the depredations of imperialism. Sontag couldn't tell from history or nuance if it bit her on the nose.

  • @keepcalmycarryon

    Humanity is the cancer of human history :)

  • @keepcalmycarryon Exactly what does this comment have to do with this piece of music?

  • There should be some Smokey Mountain and Appalachian of North Carolina around Boone including the Blue Ridge Mountains.....then it is Appalchian Spring which I have enjoyed skiing where Daniel killed that thar bear......CBS used this for their documentaries narrated by Walter Cronkite

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  • I'm sorry. I'm crying again!

  • THIS SONG IS SO AMERICAN I mean all the things that are so good about America. there are no politics involved. It makes me pround to be an American because there is hope for our wonderful country. I mean Aaron Copland is from here. It can't be all bad!!

  • @RImusclebear1 Can i join? I want off this craphole island.

  • I feel like I've heard this song in movies but don't remember which ones. I think the New World but I'm not sure. Also not sure again but I have heard this song or something very very similar in a recent pbs documentary about the American Revolution. I hope someone can help me out and tell me where its from.

  • I am so moved by the beauty of this amalgamation of musical notes I cry when I hear it! It is so beautiful!

  • @RImusclebear1 im crying now

  • Que pasada de composición, me encanta!!

    Vídeo genial

  • America's greatest composer paired with it's greatest photographer. Win/win. Enjoy!

  • love this song-- but those Ansel Adams pics are from the Rockies---- wrong mountain range (though still appropriate)

  • Amazing song, I play alto saxophone and our band is playing part of this piece.

  • Thanks for posting this excerpt. It's the perfect length for exposing children to Copland's music. A request: please correct the spelling of Aaron Copland's last name to make your already excellent video perfect.

  • how can you dislike this ?

  • Glorious! Thank you!

  • cool video, i really like music, tanks

  • Tis the gift to be simple, Tis the gift to be free

    Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be

    And when we find ourselves in the place just right

    Twill be in the valley of love and delight

    When true simplicity is gained

    To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed

    To turn, turn will be our delight

    Tilll by turning, turning we come round right

  • This tune lifts my spirits! 

  • I so do enjoy Aaron Copland. it calms the spirit to hear his work. great video and great photos. Great Job all around!!!

  • How can you go wrong: Great American Conductor, Great American Photographer, Great American Landscapes, and A Great American Song . Bring tears to the eyes.!

  • I've been in love with simple gifts as long as I can remember and the ansel Adams photos make it that much better

  • Wow! This just blows me away.

  • thumbs up for clarinets!:D

  • @dauiske79 If I could I would thumbs up a million times!! Flute, Clarinet, and Piano! I also like guitars, and violens. :) I like MUSIC is the main thing.

  • This music seems like it would be a good score for E. A. Poe's short story, "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains"- how he descibes "the breathing of the gentle breeze coming from the forest, the quivering of a leaf... looking in any direction the sheer beauty brought a whole universe of joyous and immethodical thought. The Ragged Mountains are foothills of the Appalachians.

  • If this is a dedication to Appalachian Spring,... then why not some photos of there rather than the Rockies,... of course unless that's what Copeland meant to do in the first place,... sorry the old boy got it sooooo wrong.

  • @BillTheDullard Oh thank you for bringing that up. I was thinking the same. I'm from western North Carolina and I believe that pictures of the mountains here, north Georgia, and Virginia would have been far more fitting.

  • Absolutely beautiful! Great job!

  • That was wonderful ! I'll have to watch that a good number of times to fully enjoy the Ansel Adams works too! What a treat! They go so well together!

  • Lord of the Dance...mhm I kinda want too watch some Michael Flatley now

  • copland is awesome but the face in the clouds at 33 is pretty sick

  • It's strange to read all the comments about nationalism. The Shakers who wrote the tune and lyrics were hardly motivated by nationalism as we think of it today. I like to think that this video is motivated by the original spirit of the song.

  • @factChecker01 I love the orchestra but it has the same individual spirit as I remember.

  • Very nice. Does justice to the song, the performance, and the photography; all of which are top notch.

  • This is jackpot great, but a slower version would be nice for variety.

  • Theres a parody of this song called its ok to be gay

    awkward,.

  • Do you know who conducted and performed this specific recording?

  • @NatanyaRox This is the New York Philharmonic

  • Yeah, it's called Appalachian Spring but many of these pictures are in the Rockies and Southern Utah...

  • 0:51 Nothing says spring in the appalachains than illigel mexican aleins

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  • Copland is fantastic, one of my favorites.

  • lol you guys are such music nerds

  • Nothing against Copland, but he didn't write this tune. It was written by a shaker in the 1700's.

  • @davidrodgersNJ Copland did write this. This is his "Variations on a Shaker Melody".

  • @AustinDaStarWarsGeek Right. My point is that he didn't write the underlying "shaker melody."

    look up "Simple Gifts," which is a very old shaker song.

  • @davidrodgersNJ Right. It's terrific that Copeland saw the beauty in the song and felt it was a quintessential representation of American spirit at it's best, but the core melody was written by Elder Joseph Brackett in 1848– so he should get some serious credit here.

  • I read about this song in the book "Disturbances In the Field" years ago, and I have been dying to hear it since then, and it's beautiful !

  • Is this considered Americana??

  • @Correctivemind Yes, Copland's work is hailed as ultimate Americana music.

  • @Correctivemind Yes, Copland is considered the preeminent composer to have created a truly authentic American sound, a sound that has been the basis of most modern patriotic and American compositions, and this is one of his most recognizable pieces. This is probably one of the most defining pieces of Americana music.

  • Wonderful video. Interesting that most if not all the scenes are from the Western mountains and the music is "Simple Gifts From Appalachian Spring".

  • @lordcargo well, those things are puny! haha

  • Wonderful video. Interesting that most if not all the scenes are from the Western mountains and the music is "Simple Gifts From Appalachian Spring".

  • Nicely done, jaxdriver! Adams was the perfect compliment!

  • I rock a solo for this in band on the baritone =P

  • @xtremechaos575 heck yea you do

  • I can't hear this without thinking of the movie Milo and Otis. This plays in the end, when it's spring time and all the baby animals are coming out. Milo and Otis each have families, and they're reuniting and going back home to their farm. It's extremely bittersweet.

  • The first classical piece that brought tears to my eyes... great stuff

  • Thank you.

  • Ansel Adam's photographs are a perfect accompaniment to this beautiful piece of music.

  • Thank you ever so much for creating this great video!! Bless you!!

  • @JaiYen1287

    I really feel sorry for you if this score and these photos make you think of Pizza Hut...!

  • This is why I get annoyed at the idea of driving through God's country, watching a DVD or fiddling with your ipod or Gameboy or whatever else you have, instead of appreciating the world you live in.

  • @greekteka What about listening to amazing music like this whlie admiring the world around you?

  • Simply beautiful!

  • Copland's compilation of Simple Gifts has been a heart Stirring memory for generations of West Virginia Mountaineers. The WVU band adopted this as their theme song when I was a child and It brings back many sweet memories every time I hear it!

    God Bless Aaron Copland

  • New England National Anthem!!!!

  • It's funny, because when he wrote Appalachian Spring, he didn't have the Appalachians, or Spring in mind! You would never say though!

  • I am the greatest man that ever liver, I was born to give...

  • i love this song i have to play it today at my school i hope my sound as good as yours

  • Aaron Copland was an American who wrote unabashedly American music. Many see him as the father of the distinctly American orchestral sound. Listen to Rodeo, or Billy the Kid and you will hear something entirely different from European music. It is not "nationalistic" to claim that which is rightly ours to claim. I have heard enough ignorant Europeans on these posts claiming that Fanfare for the Common Man was not written by an American to be a little impatient with snobby European hubris.

  • @Ravenguard100 This is nationalistic music because this piece is a response to WWII and to progressivism. In response to WWII Copland changed his abstract neoclassic ways towards Nationalistic type music. Using techniques he learned from Nadia Boulanger, he did incorperate his ideas into his music but his aim was again, a nationalistic approach and to reach bigger audiences... Check Bulkholder "A History of Western Music" for more information

  • @Ravenguard100 Also if you listen to this work, you will hear elements of nationalistic type music such as: rapid melodies for country fiddling, wide spacing of chords for open landscape, and guitarlike chords for American folk music. Nationalistic music takes folk songs from the country and incorporates it into large works such as this one

  • this is such a beautiful piece of art work and music, and the pictures are gorgeas

  • omg goosebumps all over!!!

  • if you ever went to church on easter you know this tune.

  • Very nice but a suggestion. If you're doing a cut try doing it on the beat, if your transition is off the beat use a dissolve. This music is better suited to dissolves.

  • This is beautiful, but I wish you had used pictures of Appalachia instead of the mountains out west.

  • Magic happens at around 1:30

    .. beautiful, lifts your spirit..

    And then again at 2:27..

  • great Ansel Adams photos

  • VVV Betthovin...really?

  • VVV Betthovin...really?

  • this is the best video ever!

    and please make another on Betthovin. please

    :)

  • @lillybird this is not betthovin! This is Copland!

  • @Tinkerbird Beethoven*

  • @Tinkerbird Simple Gifts is a song written in the 19th century by Joseph Brackett, a Shaker. This is a Shaker hymn. Aaron Copland just adapted it.

  • America can be very proud of its composers. Actually a lot of the great composers of the last fifty years are americans- think of Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, John Adams, Morton Feldman, William Schuman, Aaron Copland etc. etc

    I know there is a lot of blind anti-americanism sometimes here in Europe. But most people with a functioning brain would never deny the impact americans had on serious culture.

  • @playingmusiconmars Not to mention two of my favorites: Samuel Barber and Leonard Bernstein.

  • @Windstorm 1000 no one person or race owns music, it just is.

  • @Windstorm1000 You have to remember, as talented as our American composers were/are, your Beethovens and your Mozarts set the standards by which all music that followed them are compared to. Not saying that Copland can't stand with them, but in the grand scheme of things, many people still consider the music of the Classical/Romantic period European composers to be superior to anything American. But we can always put a big smile on our faces when we hear something like that knowing it's American

  • I love this piece--especially this part of it--as do many of you. When I hear this masterwork, it makes me really proud to be an American. But tell me you classical music lovers, why are so FEW classical American pieces played in concert halls these days? Why are we so dominated by Beethoven, Mozart and Bach when we have hundreds of works by our AMERICAN composers just waiting to be played? Why?

  • if only i was as awesome as aaron copland, then my life would be complete, full of harmony, love, and beauty

  • @999gandalfthekid and beard

  • @JaiYen1287 lol Why?? haha

  • this is so hard to play man

  • Lord of the Dance!

  • Lulz i came here looking for Simple Gifts in particular. Moving on...

  • You surely cut and adjust the best part and put it in a great video, thanks for sharing!

  • this is a fun tune to listen to, bright in tonality.

  • Aaron Copland, wonderful American.

    This man left a mark on musical energy, I don't think can be matched.

    The energy of the song is that same energy that gives us identity and passion for who we are.

    "tis the gift to be simple, tis the gift to be FREE"

    And Coplands adaptation of that tune embodies everything that is the enduring American spirit, and in a way more grand...the spirit of mankind.

  • Wait, there was a transition in here? 0_o Sounds perfectly fine to me. lol

  • if like the world is new again no pollution or something bad and mother earth is good

  • Beautiful music and beautiful vid!

  • The person who compiled this video with this music needs a geography lesson. Those mountains look more like Rockies to me considering I live next to the Appalachians. I would think more scenes from ME, NH, VT, NY, WV.... would make more sense.

  • @will01960 Copland: "Don't forget I gave voice to that region (the Appalachians) without knowing that I was giving voice to it since I didn't know what it was going to be called, and I was not thinking about the Applachian Mountains when I wrote it."

    Actually this presentation is much more akin to what Copland actually did think when he wrote the ballet... an "Americana" of the "ideal America" for a Martha Graham ballet. It is no more "Appalachian" in his original mind than say, Denver.

  • i looove this non-lyrical piece of americana copeland is my hero

  • A true compositional master of American origin. Hat off to Copeland.

  • @tommerrigan1956: Thanks for your comments.

  • These photographs are not from Appalachia, they are from Ansel Adams and from the American West and have nothing to do with Appalachian Spring. Who did this? If you are going to use photographs of America, there are plenty to tell this story but these are not those. These are American West. So many miles are between the east and the west. Use what is appropriate or let it go.

  • @yorkclassof65

    There are some decent bluegrass/string band treatments of this tune on YouTube if you look around.

    I searched and wound up thinking this was one of the best. Favorite'd and featured for the holidays!

    Here's a good one if you like banjo:

    watch?v=myoxYVtui5Q

  • @yorkclassof65 hey man, thats just citing the music, the pictures are meant to go with Appalachian Spring exactly, its a free-form imagery and music accompanyment. so stop trying to be a geographical dick and listen to the music

  • These photographs are not from Appalachia, they are from Ansel Adams and from the American West and have nothing to do with Appalachian Spring. Who did this? If you are going to use photographs of America, there are plenty to tell this story but these are not those. These are American West. So many miles are between the east and the west. Use what is appropriate or let it go.

  • @yorkclassof65 Or you could piss off and not be a jackass and realize they're just pretty pictures to accompany pretty music.

  • Unfortunately, the people who wrote this song were foolish and they are extinct now.

  • Lyrics from an American Shaker community in Maine. Written by Elder Joseph Brackett in 1848:

    "Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,

    'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

    And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

    'Twill be in the Valley of love and delight.

    When true simplicity is gain'd,

    To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,

    To turn, turn will be our delight,

    Till bt turning, turning we come round right.

    Enjoy Yosemite pics, quit nitpicking.

  • thanksgiving embodied in music. lovely.

  • We still are like this, the real gift of freedom is actually within, to express yourself and to give without hurting others-to love and be loved. America has many available acres of land, it is it's greatest resource and something to be grateful for too!

  • Simply glorious.

  • This is my favorite part of Appalachian Spring! My only complaint is that your pics are of the Rockies and the Sierras, not of the Appalachians.

  • Happy Birthday Aaron Copeland (Nov. 14)

  • I played this song in my high school wind ensemble in sophomore year

    the central melodic theme is very catchy and naturally American

  • Playing A Copland Tribute in band... this is definitely my favorite part.

  • Beautiful music and pictures but the pix are not the Apalachains!

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  • To have one of my favorite pieces set to pictures of the beautiful state of Arizona where I live is just a simple gift. Thank you SO much!