Stephen E. Bacher replies to me:

>>The opinion may not be familiar, but the rhetoric surely is -
>>the classic whine and metaphor of listeners up against the new.
>
>I'm not familiar with Lazare Saminsky, but I wouldn't necessarily
>classify this review as "running from ...  Ugly and Modern" music.  Quite
>the opposite, perhaps.  In less charitable moods I can imagine dismissing
>Copland's more well-known works as tending toward the triumphalistic and
>overstated, with an overreliance on the stratagem of dissonant
>diatonicity.
>Perhaps the formula, so characteristically American in its clear-eyed
>optimism and devoutness, has worn too well with countless lesser
>imitators.

Yes, I can not only imagine that, but I've actually read it from people
who nevertheless like other modern music.  Like any composer, Copland
has both fans and detractors.  I happen to be a fan (surprise, surprise).
You give a distinct reason, which I can respect without agreeing with,
especially as it pertains to the scores in question.  However, if you
re-read the quote, you'll notice Saminsky gives no such reason, although
he does make an interesting point about Copland's relation to Stravinsky
(whom he also, incidentally, doesn't like).

>It would be instructive to know what composers Saminsky enthused about.

Well, they weren't moderns, by and large.  His two major opera, Music
of Our Day and Living Music of the Americas, are diatribes against just
about everybody who's lasted (David Diamond and Miriam Gideon - if you
can say her music's lasted - might have been exceptions).  For him, music
essentially stopped with his teachers, Rimsky-Korsakov and Liadov.  He
was, in a sort of way, interested in music that used Jewish cantorial
modes (he was the music director of New York's Temple Emanu-el) and
composed several works in this vein.  In fact, I first heard Mussorgsky's
cantata Joshua on an extended-play record (EP) conducted by Saminsky.

Steve Schwartz