15 pieces about US states

From Alaskan glaciers to Florida plantations, Brian Wise explores how composers have depicted the American landscape

- ILLUSTRATION: DAVID LYTTLETON

There was once a time when native New Yorkers like Aaron Copland and Ferde Grofé composed odes to the American West; when Europeans like Darius Milhaud and Frederick Delius extolled the deep South; and when the Atlanta-bred Jennifer Higdon was surveying the wilds of Wyoming's Teton Range.

In today's America of blue and red states, such musical postcards are perhaps less welcome. But the works - and the ideas that inspired them - still stand. Below are 15 key examples. Note that some entries focus on cities more than states, but these inevitably say something greater about regional identity and folklore.

1 Alaska John Luther Adams

In the White Silence

John Luther Adams has captured the windswept panoramas of rural Alaska in several pieces, but none feels so lonely as In the White Silence. A longtime environmental activist, Adams lived for decades in the 49th state. This chamber work, completed in 1998, uses plunking harp and percussion tones to suggest an Alaska in the grip of climate change: melting ice droplets patter against gentle, doleful string quartet melodies.

2 Arizona

Ferde Grofé Grand Canyon Suite

American's most celebrated natural wonder was curiously neglected by composers until Ferde Grofé completed his Grand Canyon Suite in 1931. A native New Yorker who lived in Los Angeles for much of his career, Grofé began making a series of trips to the canyon in his twenties, jotting down impressions of bird songs and sunrises over the painted desert. The technicolour suite quickly caught on, thanks in part to its use in Philip Morris cigarette adverts and in a 1958 Academy Award-winning Disney live action short.

3 California John Adams

The Dharma at Big Sur