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Start Date
12-6-2025 11:30 AM
Description
A tender orchestral introduction is followed by a biographical sketch of the sixteenth President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln; then comes a succession of quotations from Lincoln’s most famous speeches, each more impassioned than the last; finally, a soaring crescendo as the orchestra brings the proceedings to a rousing conclusion.
For some, this description will call to mind Aaron Copland’s 1942 work for narrator and orchestra, Lincoln Portrait. For others, it will seem obviously to describe Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, an audio-animatronic attraction created by Walt Disney for the 1964 World’s Fair, which was installed at Disneyland the following year. In fact, Copland’s work and Disney’s attraction are so similar in their structure that it is almost hard to believe the parallels have gone unnoticed until now.
In this paper, I investigate the possibility that Disney, who admired Copland’s music, may have modelled Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln on Lincoln Portrait. I document the parallels between the two and argue that they were successful because of the calming, hopeful message they delivered at moments of national crisis (the Second World War and the Cold War, respectively). Finally, I query the relevance of that message to contemporary audiences, as Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln continues to play at Disneyland and Lincoln Portrait remains a fixture of the modern classical music canon, and I consider how theme parks and concert halls alike serve as sites at which middlebrow aesthetics are joined to mainstream political ideals.
Transcript
Recommended Citation
Miller, David, "Disney, Copland, and Lincoln" (2025). Theme Park Music and Sound. 5.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/tpms/2025/thursday/5
Disney, Copland, and Lincoln
A tender orchestral introduction is followed by a biographical sketch of the sixteenth President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln; then comes a succession of quotations from Lincoln’s most famous speeches, each more impassioned than the last; finally, a soaring crescendo as the orchestra brings the proceedings to a rousing conclusion.
For some, this description will call to mind Aaron Copland’s 1942 work for narrator and orchestra, Lincoln Portrait. For others, it will seem obviously to describe Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, an audio-animatronic attraction created by Walt Disney for the 1964 World’s Fair, which was installed at Disneyland the following year. In fact, Copland’s work and Disney’s attraction are so similar in their structure that it is almost hard to believe the parallels have gone unnoticed until now.
In this paper, I investigate the possibility that Disney, who admired Copland’s music, may have modelled Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln on Lincoln Portrait. I document the parallels between the two and argue that they were successful because of the calming, hopeful message they delivered at moments of national crisis (the Second World War and the Cold War, respectively). Finally, I query the relevance of that message to contemporary audiences, as Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln continues to play at Disneyland and Lincoln Portrait remains a fixture of the modern classical music canon, and I consider how theme parks and concert halls alike serve as sites at which middlebrow aesthetics are joined to mainstream political ideals.