{"id":645,"date":"2025-06-28T13:20:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-28T17:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.courtneylewis.com\/blog\/?p=645"},"modified":"2026-11-13T14:41:07","modified_gmt":"2026-11-13T19:41:07","slug":"pride-copland-3-and-trumps-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.courtneylewis.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/pride-copland-3-and-trumps-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Pride, Copland 3 and Trump’s America"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last year I spoke about my Pride in Jacksonville as a progressive city. Although we haven\u2019t changed since then, today it seems almost impossible to feel optimistic about anything political in the wake of the election, and the seemingly endless assaults on the personal liberty of anyone who is not a native-born, rich, white Anglo-Saxon cis heterosexual male.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amidst this depressing political landscape, at the Jacksonville Symphony we launched our most ambitious season ever in celebration of our 75th<\/sup> anniversary. Without stretching musical metaphors too far, we pulled out all the stops and presented a series of concerts, each of which would have been the highlight of any other season. Mahler\u2019s Second Symphony, Mozart\u2019s Requiem, Strauss\u2019s massive tone poem Ein Heldenleben and Beethoven\u2019s Emperor Concerto sat beside four world premieres from living composers, not one of whom was an Anglo-Saxon, white, cis heterosexual male. We ended a few weeks ago with an enormous concert celebrating American music that culminated in Aaron Copland\u2019s Third Symphony. We were so happy our Mayor was there at the season\u2019s first and last concerts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written in 1945, Copland\u2019s Third is a post-war victory ode to the best American values. It\u2019s a piece that sounds like America at its finest: as enormous and optimistic as the architecture of Chicago, as noble as Yosemite\u2019s Half-Dome, generous, wholesome, international, powerful but benevolent, welcoming. It\u2019s often referred to as \u201cthe greatest American Symphony\u201d, and yet it was written by a diffident, gay, second-generation Jewish immigrant from Brooklyn, who had recently been dragged in front of the McCarthy Senate hearings because of his socialist beliefs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The finale of Copland 3 reuses one of his most famous compositions, already well-known at the symphony\u2019s premiere \u2013 The Fanfare for the Common Man. By using it as the basis for the symphony\u2019s triumphant end, Copland proclaims one his central beliefs \u2013 that the greatness of America lies in its inclusion of everyone; that diversity is its greatest strength.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But towards the end of the finale something very unsettling happens \u2013 the piece grows more and more boisterous, full of hubris, kind of drunk on its own success and prowess. The Fanfare for the Common Man is trampled down amidst a barrage of aggressive, noisy confidence and chauvinism. The music crashes to a garish halt, and everything stops dead in its tracks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t understand what was happening in this passage until performing the piece for the first time a few weeks ago \u2013 in fact before the first concert I really hated this part \u2013 it felt cheap and hokey and didn\u2019t seem to make any sense amidst the surrounding optimism. But once I\u2019d lived through it in concert, I suddenly realized that Copland was making a prescient point. Amidst the atmosphere of glory the country was experiencing having won the Second World, he wrote a musical warning to the America of the future: if you get too pleased with yourself, if you cut yourself off from others and forget that your founding values are about ordinary people, you\u2019ll lose your way, and disaster will strike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After this warning, a terrified, whispering piccolo begins a plaintive solo \u2013 perhaps a musical picture of a citizen who doesn\u2019t know who is going to help them. But the Fanfare for the Common Man returns very quietly, hidden under a series of woodwind calls. The Fanfare regrounds the music, and gradually brings the symphony back to its original message: the very best music for ordinary people, of all kinds, creeds and colours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re in the disaster moment right now. We\u2019ve lost our way. Everywhere we turn we hear hatred, hubris, strong-arming and ignorant aggression, and celebrations of mean-spirited provincialism. Our country needs the correction of Copland\u2019s Fanfare \u2013 a clarion call to remind to us what we\u2019re all about. I\u2019m reminded of some of the most inspiring words ever written in our country. Also writing in a time of rising autocracy, Abraham Lincoln\u2019s address at Gettysburg sought to reaffirm and reset the central idea behind American democracy: \u201cthat this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom\u2014and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what\u2019s all this got to do with Pride, I hear you ask. Well, I think all of us in this room now have a special opportunity to lead. We have experience dealing with oppression. We know how to fight the system. We know how to persevere, and we know how to triumph over adversity. There are many people in America today without our experience, who are feeling scared, disenfranchised and \u201cOthered\u201d. But just as we know over 70% of Americans support marriage equality, we know that the vast majority do not support the illegal actions of the current administration in its deportation practices, its willful disregard for the Judiciary and its cruel axing of the programs that help the neediest in our society. Adversity breeds Unity. We can use our experience to build new bridges and find new allies in our fight against discrimination and oppression. We can lead. We\u2019re a progressive city, after all. I have Pride in Jacksonville. I was proud of city and especially our Mayor this week when she vetoed Ordinance 025-0138. Her words could have been written by Aaron Copland himself: \u201cthis bill is not rooted in the common good\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So as we celebrate our achievements this month and plan our fights to preserve and expand our freedoms as LGBTQ people, let\u2019s share our hard-won skills with others experiencing political persecution in our city, let\u2019s lead the opposition and help to start healing our country. Sometimes it takes the immigrants, of which I am one, the people who\u2019ve chosen to be here, to remind us of what is fundamentally good and unique about the American Experiment, even in times like this. This year, let\u2019s not dwell on how terrible everything is. Instead, let\u2019s bring the Pride we have won in ourselves to others and fight for the America we believe in. Happy Pride!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given as a speech on Friday, June 27, 2025, during Pride celebrations at Jacksonville City Hall, at the invitation of Mayor Donna Deegan<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watch the speech here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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