Joan Tower vs Aaron Copland

In class this week we had an interesting juxtaposition of Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" and Joan Tower's "Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman" It is obvious that when looking at only the titles the latter is quite possibly in direct response to the former. This would seem obvious to the uniformed reader however our text book states the opposite is actually the case.

"[Her piece] began as a tribute to Aaron Copland but is now generally perceived to be a feminist response to his "Fanfare for the Common Man."

The general public dictates the accepted interpretation of a work of art such as music. Much of this music is played out of context of their original intended purpose. An example would be any one of thousands of songs played on the radio that do not get a proper introduction. In addition, artists like Girl Talk, where one man takes clips from other songs and pastes them digitally to create one new song of his own. When this happens people are forced to make their own interpretations of those songs.

The way this all relates is that, according to the quote, the purpose for Joan Tower's composition was to tribute Aaron Copland, not this specific work of his, and it was not a feminist response. When I listen to the two and compare them, it seems as if Joan took some themes and motives and wrote a fun and very honest response.

We need to listen with a close sense of artists' intensions in order to fully understand the stories they are telling and the message they're passing on.