open sound
English composer
Definition
Copland's characteristic use of wide intervals — fourths, fifths, and octaves — to create a spacious, unhurried, distinctly American sonic landscape.
Interpretive Guidance
Resist filling in the texture. Copland's open-interval writing is meant to sound like space and light, not like incomplete harmony. Allow the sustain pedal to blend the wide intervals gently without blurring. Think of the Great Plains rather than the European salon.