Billy the Kid (ca. 188)

The American tragedy these days is gun violence and how it has become a part of the familiar scene. It seems like most films from the US have a gun in the imagery and the news is filled with today’s mass annihilation of the innocent.

When you look at American history, it’s the gunfighters who still live in modern history and one of them as Henry McCarty. Don’t recognize the name? How about his pseudonym of William H. Bonney? Still nothing? How about Billy the Kid? How do you remember someone who died, age 21, in the New Mexico Territory 140 years ago?

Aaron Copland, ca. 1936

His story was picked up by American composer Aaron Copland and made into a ballet in 1938. The music was first arranged for 2 pianos, and then orchestrated in 1939, and the 7-movement orchestral suite was given its debut in New York in 1940. The ballet received its debut in Chicago in 1938 with Lincoln Kirstein’s Ballet Caravan company.

Billy was born in New York City before his family moved to Indiana when his father died and then to what was then New Mexico Territory, where his mother remarried. When Billy was 15, his mother died of tuberculosis and his stepfather abandoned Billy and his 11-year-old brother. Billy took up a life of crime and, although he was soon caught, he escaped prison and joined a gang. His famous boast was that he ‘killed 21 men, not counting Indians.’

Copland’s suite opens with a view of the open prairie. it’s a view that seems melancholic and fraught with portent. It’s characteristically Copland, but without the joy he seems always to imbue into so much of his music.

Aaron Copland: Billy the Kid Suite – I. Introduction: The Open Prairie (National Symphony Orchestra, Gianandrea Noseda, cond.)

We come into a town and the street fills with people of all kinds – going about their business, looking for business, or looking to steal someone’s business.

Jared French: Costume design for Billy (1938) (MoMA)

Now we get some local colour – Copland had been to Mexico many times in the early 1930s, and his first work that brought his name to the world’s attention was the 1936 El Salón México. This kind of music is ideal for ballet companies as it permits them to show off all their dancers in a colourful style. Two fighters stage a duel and in a snap of gunshot, Billy’s mother is dead and he attacks the killer with a knife and starts his own killing career.

Jared French: Costume design for Mexican Girl (1938) (MoMA)

Next, we have scenes from Billy’s life: back out beyond below a sea of stars. In the background, you’ll hear traditional cowboy songs.

Billy the Kid (production shot) (1938)

Another scene from the life: Billy is pursued by a posse led by Pat Garrett that ends in a running gun battle. In the end, Billy is captured.

Jared French: Costume design for Pat Garrett as Sheriff (1938) (MoMA)

Billy in prison quickly becomes Billy out prison, having escaped and now celebrating.

Aaron Copland: Billy the Kid Suite – VI. Celebration: After Billy’s Capture (National Symphony Orchestra, Gianandrea Noseda, cond.)

In the end, the posse catches up with him again for the very last time.

Jared French: Design for Billy’s Last Act Costume (1938) (MoMA)

And, in the end, we return to the stage upon which the short, brief life of Billy the Kid, died age 21, is set: the open prairie. Do we hear this differently than we did the first time, knowing what secrets are buried under those vast expanses of the plains?

Aaron Copland: Billy the Kid Suite – VIII. The Open Prairie again (National Symphony Orchestra, Gianandrea Noseda, cond.)

When he was commissioned for the project by the impresario Lincoln Kirstein (1907-1996), Copland wasn’t sure he wanted to write cowboy music. Kirstein gave him a sheaf of songs, and some of them appear in the work, such as ‘Great Grandad,’ ‘Git Along, Little Dogies,’ ‘The Old Chisholm Trail,’ and ‘Goodbye Old Paint.’ Copland said he didn’t include ‘Home on the Range’ because he ‘had decided to draw the line someplace.’ Copland said it was a ‘…delicate operation … to put fresh and unconventional harmonies to well-known melodies without spoiling their naturalness.’

Encapsulating a brief and tumultuous life in a ballet is difficult – squeezing it down to a shorter suite condenses it even more. In Billy the Kid, Copland presents the great American tragedy – short, memorable, seemingly heroic, fleeting, and filled with gun violence.

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