As a young musician, I thought Aaron Copland
composed the tune, coming as it does a good
way into his “Appalachian Spring,”

but there on the stage only a baker’s dozen
of musicians and a conductor, a double string
quartet, actually, playing melodies and variations

I hadn’t remembered. No brass. No percussion.
And it took a long time to get to the “simple gifts”
melody, deep into the piece, which I chalked up

to faulty memory. My little-footed former flutist
friend next to me, surprised as I by the small
number onstage, later read in the program

that we had just heard the composer’s original
version of the piece, a ballet composed for
Martha Graham. A year later, 1945, the suite

for full orchestra debuted, with plenty of
brass and percussion. And the composer grew it
again in the 1950s, adding the tympani part

I remember playing long ago. For years
I thought Copland wrote “simple gifts,” only
to learn in a music history class that

a mid-19th century Shaker minister from
Maine wrote the hymn. Like all good artists,
Copland borrowed it, no doubt inspired

by its message of simplicity and humility
that he wove into his composition, so smoothly
danced by, among others, Graham herself.

After the concert I came home happy
to find the elegant dancer on what must
have been live TV in 1959, delivering

the simplest of gifts unadorned—as
the best ones are, if we allow ourselves
to perceive them—as the song says,

“in the place just right,
in the valley of love and delight.”

•••

With appreciation to the Sacramento Philharmonic for its wonderful Feb. 28
performance of, among other pieces, Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring.”

“Simple Gifts” was composed in 1848 by Elder Joseph Bracket, a member
of the Shaker community in Alfred, Maine.

You can watch Martha Graham as the bride and Stuart Hodes as the husband
dancing this “simple gifts” section of “Appalachian Spring” for live television
in 1959 (though all parts of the ballet are also available on youtube).