Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland (
November 14 1900 –
December 2 1990) was an
American composer of concert and film music. Instrumental in forging a uniquely American style of composition, he was widely known as "the dean of American composers." Copland's music achieved a difficult balance between
modern music and American folk styles, and the open, slowly changing harmonies of many of his works are said to evoke the vast American landscape. He incorporated percussive
orchestration, changing
meter,
polyrhythms,
polychords and
tone rows. Outside of composing, Copland often served as a teacher and lecturer. During his career he also wrote books and articles, and served as a conductor, most frequently for his own works.
Copland was born in
Brooklyn,
New York, of
Lithuanian
Jewish descent. His father's surname was "Kaplan" before he
anglicized it to "Copland" while in England, before immigrating to the United States. He spent his childhood living above his parents' Brooklyn shop. Although his parents never encouraged or directly exposed him to music, at age 15 he had already taken an interest in the subject and aspired to be a composer. His music education included time with
Leopold Wolfsohn,
Rubin Goldmark (also one of
George Gershwin's teachers), and
Nadia Boulanger at the
Fontainebleau School of Music in Paris from
1921 to
1924. He was awarded a
Guggenheim Fellowship in
1925 and again in
1926.
Upon his return from his studies in Paris, he decided that he wanted to write works that were "American in character" and thus he chose jazz as the American idiom. His first significant work was the
necromantic ballet
Grohg which contributed thematic material to his later
Dance Symphony. Other major works of his first (austere) period include the
Short Symphony (
1933),
Music for Theater (
1925) and
Piano Variations (
1930). However, this jazz-inspired period was brief, as his style evolved toward the goal of writing more accessible works.
Many composers rejected the notion of writing music for the elite during the
Depression, thus the common American folklore served as the basis for his work along with revival hymns, and cowboy and folk songs. Copland's second (vernacular) period began around
1936 with
Billy the Kid and
El Salón México.
Fanfare for the Common Man, perhaps Copland's most famous work, scored for
brass and
percussion, was written in
1942 at the request of the conductor
Eugene Goossens, conductor of the
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. The
fanfare was also used as the main theme of the fourth movement of Copland's
Third Symphony. The same year Copland wrote
Lincoln Portrait which became popular with the wider public, leading to a strengthening of his association with American music. He was commissioned to write a ballet,
Appalachian Spring, which later he arranged as a popular
orchestral suite. The ballet
Rodeo, a tale of a ranch wedding, written around the same time as
Lincoln Portrait (1942) is another enduring composition for Copland, and the "Hoe-Down" from the ballet is one of the most well-known compositions by any American composer, having been used numerous times in movies and on television. In the early to mid 1990s, the
National Cattlemen's Beef Association used Hoe-Down as the background music to their "Beef, it's what's for dinner" marketing campaign, and it was also used during the
78th Academy Awards as background music.
Copland was an important contributor to the genre of
film music; his score for William Wyler's
The Heiress (1949) won an
Academy Award. Several of the themes he created are encapsulated in the suite,
Music for Movies, and his score for the film of
Steinbeck's novel
The Red Pony was given a suite of its own. This suite was one of Copland's own favorite scores. Posthumously, his music was used to score
Spike Lee's
1998 film,
He Got Game, which included a basketball game in a neighborhood court being set to
Hoe-Down.
Having defended the
Communist Party USA during the
1936 presidential election, Copland was investigated by the
FBI during the
red scare of the 1950s. He was
blacklisted, and in
1953 his music was pulled from President
Eisenhower's inaugural concert due to the political climate. That same year Copland testified before
Congress that he was never a Communist. The accusation outraged many members of the musical community, who claimed Copland's patriotism was clearly displayed through his music. The investigation ceased to be active in
1955 and was closed in
1975. Copland's membership in the party was never proven.
A friend of the late
Leonard Bernstein, Copland exerted a major influence on Bernstein's composing style. Bernstein was considered the finest conductor of Copland's works. British
progressive rock band
Emerson, Lake & Palmer recorded two songs based on Copland works: "
Fanfare for the Common Man" and "Hoe-Down." Several of their live recordings of "Fanfare for the Common Man" incorporated the closing of the second movement of Copland's Third Symphony as well.
Copland died in
North Tarrytown, New York (now Sleepy Hollow), on December 2, 1990.
*Copland, Aaron.
What to Listen For in Music. A book for all music-lovers,
What to Listen For in Music is about sensitivity to music and how to absorb music fully in general.
Scherzo Humoristic: The Cat and the Mouse (
1920)
Four Motets (
1922)
Passacaglia (piano solo) (1922)
Symphony for Organ and Orchestra (
1924)
Music for the Theater (
1925)
Dance Symphony (
1925)
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (
1926)
Symphonic Ode (
1927-
29)
Piano Variations (
1930)
Grohg (1925/32) (
ballet)
Statements for orchestra (1932-35)
The Second Hurricane, play-opera for high school performance (1936)
El Salón México (
1936)
Billy the Kid (
1938) (ballet)
Quiet City (1940)
Our Town (1940)
Piano Sonata (
1941)
Fanfare for the Common Man (
1942)
Lincoln Portrait (
1942)
Rodeo (1942) (ballet)
Danzon Cubano (1942)
Music for the Movies (1942)
Sonata for violin and piano (1943)
Appalachian Spring (
1944) (ballet)
Third Symphony (1944-
46)
In the Beginning (
1947)
The Red Pony (
1948)
Clarinet Concerto (commissioned by
Benny Goodman) (
1947-
48)
Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson (
1950)
Piano Quartet (1950)
Old American Songs (
1952)
The Tender Land (
1954) (
opera)
Canticle of Freedom (
1955)
Orchestral Variations (
1957)
Piano Fantasy (
1957)
Dance Panels (
1959; revised
1962) (ballet)
Connotations (
1962)
Music for a Great City (
1964)
Emblems, for wind band (
1964)
Inscape (
1967)
Duo for flute and piano (
1971)
Three Latin American Sketches (
1972)
*Kamien, Roger.
Music: An Appreciation. McGraw-Hill College; 3rd edition (August 1, 1997). ISBN 0070365210.
*Pollack, Howard. "Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man". New York, New York; 1st edition (1999). ISBN 0805049096
*
Aaron Copland: A Self-Portrait (1985). Directed by Allan Miller. Biographies in Music series. Princeton, New Jersey: The Humanities.
*
Appalachian Spring (1996). Directed by Graham Strong, Scottish Television Enterprises. Princeton, New Jersey: Films for the Humanities.
*
Copland Portrait (1975). Directed by Terry Sanders, United States Information Agency. Santa Monica, California: American Film Foundation.
*
Fanfare for America: The Composer Aaron Copland (2001). Directed by Andreas Skipis. Produced by Hessischer Rundfunk in association with Reiner Moritz Associates. Princeton, New Jersey: Films for the Humanities & Sciences.
*
Samuel Adler*
Paul Bowles*
Mario Davidovsky*
Jacob Druckman*
Halim El-Dabh*
Karl Korte*
Yehoshua Lakner*
Ben-Zion Orgad*
Ned Rorem*
Robert Ward*
Copland House*
Audio (.ram files) of a 1961 interview for the BBC*
Audio (.smil files) of a 1980 interview for NPR*
American Masters "Aaron Copland" at www.pbs.org*
The Aaron Copland Collection, 1900-1990, Music Division, Library of Congress*
American Composers - Aaron Copland Centennial*
Review of "Howard Pollack, Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man" by R. James Tobin*
Who Was That Masked Composer? by David Schiff*
How a composer cowed McCarthy*
Aaron Copland and His World*
Brief Copland BioListening
*
Art of the States: Aaron Copland
