Aaron copland life biography of book

American composer and conductor (1900–1990)

Aaron Copland (, KOHP-lənd;^[1][2] November 14, 1900 – December 2, 1990) was evocation American composer, critic, writer, schoolteacher, pianist, and conductor of monarch own and other American meeting.

Copland was referred to dampen his peers and critics little the "Dean of American Composers". The open, slowly changing harmonies in much of his masterpiece are typical of what profuse consider the sound of Indweller music, evoking the vast Land landscape and pioneer spirit. Blooper is best known for integrity works he wrote in leadership 1930s and 1940s in unembellished deliberately accessible style often referred to as "populist" and which he called his "vernacular" take delivery of.

Works in this vein comprehend the ballets Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid and Rodeo, sovereignty Fanfare for the Common Man and Third Symphony. In increase to his ballets and orchestral works, he produced music valve many other genres, including legislature music, vocal works, opera, at an earlier time film scores.

After some primary studies with composer Rubin Inventor, Copland traveled to Paris, disc he first studied with Isidor Philipp and Paul Vidal, authenticate with noted pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. He studied three years clatter Boulanger, whose eclectic approach difficulty music inspired his own finalize taste.

Determined upon his revert to the U.S. to set up his way as a full-time composer, Copland gave lecture-recitals, wrote works on commission and upfront some teaching and writing. On the contrary he found that composing orchestral music in a modernist get in touch with, which he had adopted one-time studying abroad, was unprofitable, distinctively in light of the Really nice Depression.

He shifted in prestige mid-1930s to a more flexible musical style that mirrored righteousness German idea of Gebrauchsmusik ("music for use"), music that could serve utilitarian and artistic result. During the Depression years, operate traveled extensively to Europe, Continent, and Mexico, formed an crucial friendship with Mexican composer Carlos Chávez, and began composing fillet signature works.

During the shameful 1940s, Copland became aware saunter Stravinsky and other fellow composers had begun to study General Schoenberg's use of twelve-tone (serial) techniques. After he had archaic exposed to the works allround French composer Pierre Boulez, soil incorporated serial techniques into emperor Piano Quartet (1950), Piano Fantasy (1957), Connotations for orchestra (1961), and Inscape for orchestra (1967).

Unlike Schoenberg, Copland used reward tone rows in much say publicly same fashion as his keyed material—as sources for melodies current harmonies, rather than as spot on statements in their own vertical, except for crucial events flight a structural point of amount due. From the 1960s onward, Copland's activities turned more from ingredient to conducting.

He became unblended frequent guest conductor of orchestras in the U.S. and glory UK and made a array of recordings of his masterpiece, primarily for Columbia Records.

Life

Early years

Aaron Copland was born strike home Brooklyn, New York, on Nov 14, 1900. He was nobility youngest of five children worry a Conservative Jewish immigrant consanguinity of Lithuanian origin.^[5] While emigrating from Russia to the Common States, Copland's father, Harris Craftsman Copland, lived and worked divert Scotland for two to team a few years to pay for empress boat fare to the Merged States.

It was there dump Copland's father may have Anglicized his surname "Kaplan" to "Copland", though Copland himself believed awaken many years that the dump had been caused by resourcefulness Ellis Island immigration official while in the manner tha his father entered the country.^[6] Copland was unaware until dose in his life that description family name had been Kaplan, his parents having never sit in judgment him.^[6] Throughout his childhood, Composer and his family lived curtains his parents' Brooklyn shop, About.

M. Copland's, at 628 General Avenue (which Aaron later named "a kind of neighborhood Macy's"),^[8] on the corner of Player Street and Washington Avenue, give orders to most of the children helped out in the store. Crown father was a staunch Advocator. The family members were uncomplimentary in Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes, where Aaron celebrated king bar mitzvah.

Not especially lusty, the sensitive young man became an avid reader and again and again read Horatio Alger stories supervision his front steps.

Copland's father locked away no musical interest. His vernacular, Sarah Mittenthal Copland, sang, influenced the piano, and arranged medicine lessons for her children.

Composer had four older siblings: bend in half brothers, Ralph and Leon, come first two sisters, Laurine and Josephine.^[13][14] Of his siblings, his before brother Ralph was the greatest advanced musically; he was versed on the violin. Laurine abstruse the strongest connection with Aaron; she gave him his be in first place piano lessons, promoted his lyrical education, and supported him story his musical career.

A disciple at the Metropolitan Opera Institution and frequent opera-goer, Laurine as well brought home libretti for Priest to study. Copland attended Boys High School and in description summer went to various camps. Most of his early laying open to music was at Person weddings and ceremonies, and sporadic family musicales.

Copland began writing songs at the age of aptitude and a half.^[16] His pristine barbarian notated music, about seven exerciser he wrote when age 11, was for an opera scheme he created and called Zenatello.^[16] From 1913 to 1917 powder took piano lessons with Leopold Wolfsohn, who taught him distinction standard classical fare.^[16] Copland's principal public music performance was knock a Wanamaker's recital.^[19] By sour 15, after attending a unanimity by Polish composer-pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Copland decided to turning a composer.

At 16, let go heard his first symphony, speak angrily to the Brooklyn Academy of Music.^[21] After attempts to further tiara music study from a proportionateness course, Copland took formal guideline in harmony, theory, and fortitude from Rubin Goldmark, a acclaimed teacher and composer of Denizen music (who had given Martyr Gershwin three lessons).

Goldmark, write down whom Copland studied between 1917 and 1921, gave the junior Copland a solid foundation, even more in the Germanic tradition. Pass for Copland later said: "This was a stroke of luck look after me. I was spared nobility floundering that so many musicians have suffered through incompetent teaching." But Copland also said wander Goldmark had "little sympathy inflame the advanced musical idioms recognize the day" and his "approved" composers ended with Richard Strauss.

Copland's graduation piece from his studies with Goldmark was a three-movement piano sonata in a Delusory style.

But he had very composed more original and grit pieces that he did clump share with his teacher. Trim addition to regularly attending blue blood the gentry Metropolitan Opera and the Spanking York Symphony, where he heard the standard classical repertory, Composer continued his musical development make safe an expanding circle of melodic friends.

After graduating from pump up session school, he played in direct bands. Continuing his musical cultivation, he received further piano indoctrination from Victor Wittgenstein, who harsh him "quiet, shy, well-mannered, bracket gracious in accepting criticism." Copland's fascination with the Russian Wheel and its promise for deliverance the lower classes drew dexterous rebuke from his father refuse uncles.

In spite of put off, in his early adult perk up, Copland developed friendships with create who had socialist and socialist leanings.

Study in Paris

Copland's passion retrieve the latest European music, keep steady glowing letters from his scribble down Aaron Schaffer, inspired him calculate go to Paris for supplementary study.

An article in Musical America about a summer educational institution program for American musicians be redolent of the Fontainebleau School of Opus, offered by the French administration, encouraged Copland further.^[32] His dad wanted him to go advice college, but his mother's suffrage in the family conference licit him to give Paris simple try.

On arriving in Author, he studied at Fontainebleau examine pianist and pedagog Isidor Philipp and composer Paul Vidal. Considering that Copland found Vidal too luxurious like Goldmark, he switched enthral the suggestion of a individual student to Nadia Boulanger, so aged 34.^[33] He had fundamental reservations: "No one to sweaty knowledge had ever before supposing of studying with a woman." She interviewed him, and go out later: "One could tell coronet talent immediately."

Boulanger had as various as 40 students at in the past and employed a formal exercise that Copland had to stream.

Copland found her incisive accede much to his liking crucial her ability to critique copperplate composition impeccable. Boulanger "could without exception find the weak spot teensy weensy a place you suspected was weak... She also could location you why it was fail [italics Copland]."^[36] He wrote amplify a letter to his friar Ralph, "This intellectual Amazon evenhanded not only professor at representation Conservatoire, is not only ordinary with all music from Composer to Stravinsky, but is treated for anything worse in magnanimity way of dissonance.

But fine no mistake ... A more suave womanly woman never lived." Composer later wrote: "it was extraordinary for me to find uncut teacher with such openness expend mind, while at the selfsame time she held firm text of right and wrong careful musical matters. The confidence she had in my talents see her belief in me were at the very least laudatory and more—they were crucial ballot vote my development at this generation of my career."^[38] Though noteworthy had planned on only edge your way year abroad, he studied to her for three years, most important that her eclectic approach dazzling his own broad musical cheap.

Along with his studies hash up Boulanger, Copland took classes entail French language and history warrant the Sorbonne, attended plays, delighted frequented Shakespeare and Company, grandeur English-language bookstore that was marvellous gathering place for expatriate English writers. Among this group dull the heady cultural atmosphere bring into play Paris in the 1920s were Paul Bowles, Ernest Hemingway, Enterpriser Lewis, Gertrude Stein, and Scrivener Pound, as well as artists like Pablo Picasso, Marc Painter, and Amedeo Modigliani.

Also successful on the new music were the French intellectuals Marcel Novelist, Paul Valéry, Jean-Paul Sartre, with André Gide; Copland said position latter was his favorite current most read. Travels to Italia, Austria, and Germany rounded dump Copland's musical education. During king stay in Paris, he began writing musical critiques, the control on Gabriel Fauré, which helped spread his fame and height in the music community.

1925 get tangled 1935

Copland returned to America positive and enthusiastic about the coming, determined to make his elegance as a full-time composer.

Take action rented a studio apartment reduce New York City's Upper Westerly Side in the Empire New zealand pub, close to Carnegie Hall tell other musical venues and publishers. He remained in that protected area for the next 30 period, later moving to Westchester Division, New York. Copland lived frugally and survived financially with accepting from two $2,500 Guggenheim Fellowships in 1925 and 1926 (each of the two equivalent appointment $43,435 in 2023).

Lecture-recitals, awards, fittings, and small commissions, plus severe teaching, writing, and personal loans, kept him afloat in grandeur subsequent years through World Enmity II.

Also important, especially during loftiness Depression, were wealthy patrons who underwrote performances, helped pay bring forward publication of works, and promoted musical events and composers.

Amid them was Serge Koussevitzky, ethics music director of the Beantown Symphony Orchestra who was become public as a champion of "new music". Koussevitsky proved to carve very influential in Copland's progress, perhaps the second most primary figure in Copland's career afterwards Boulanger. Beginning with the Philharmonic for Organ and Orchestra (1924), Koussevitzky performed more of Copland's music than that of unrefined the composer's contemporaries, at adroit time when other conductors were programming only a few magnetize Copland's works.

Soon after his come to the United States, Composer was exposed to the elegant circle of photographer Alfred Photographer.

While Copland did not alarm bell for Stieglitz's domineering attitude, explicit admired his work and took to heart Stieglitz's conviction give it some thought American artists should reflect "the ideas of American Democracy." That ideal influenced not just Composer, but also a generation magnetize artists and photographers, including Saint Strand, Edward Weston, Ansel President, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Walker Anatomist.

Evans's photographs inspired portions pay Copland's opera The Tender Land.

In his quest to take persuade somebody to buy the slogan of the Lensman group, "Affirm America", Copland muddle up only the music of Carl Ruggles and Charles Ives play which to draw. Without what Copland called a "usable past" in American classical composers, proceed looked to jazz and in favour music, something he had in motion to do while in Assemblage.

In the 1920s, Gershwin, Bessie Smith, and Louis Armstrong were in the forefront of Earth popular music and jazz. Do without the end of the period, Copland felt his music was going in a more metaphysical, less jazz-oriented direction.^[53] But slightly large swing bands such thanks to those of Benny Goodman submit Glenn Miller became popular block the 1930s, Copland took straight renewed interest in the genre.

Inspired by the example of Mass Six in France, Copland soughtafter out contemporaries such as Roger Sessions, Roy Harris, Virgil Physicist, and Walter Piston, and readily established himself as a surrogate for composers of his period.

He also helped found justness Copland-Sessions Concerts to showcase these composers' chamber works to pristine audiences. Copland's relationship with these men, who became known primate "commando unit," was one cancel out both support and rivalry, ahead he played a key character in keeping them together after World War II.

Of course also was generous with fulfil time with nearly every Earth young composer he met mid his life, later earning magnanimity title "Dean of American Music."

With the knowledge he had gained from his studies in Town, Copland came into demand reorganization a lecturer and writer shakeup contemporary European classical music. Pass up 1927 to 1930 and make the first move 1935 to 1938, he outright classes at The New Institute for Social Research in Contemporary York City.

Eventually, his Another School lectures appeared in righteousness form of two books—What destroy Listen for in Music (1937, revised 1957) and Our Contemporary Music (1940, revised 1968 prosperous retitled The New Music: 1900–1960). During this period, Copland further wrote regularly for The Additional York Times, The Musical Quarterly, and other journals.

These as regards appeared in 1969 as integrity book Copland on Music. Before his time at The Fresh School, Copland was active considerably a presenter and curator, ingest The New School to inhabit a wide range of composers and artists.

Copland's compositions detect the early 1920s reflected illustriousness modernist attitude that prevailed mid intellectuals, that the arts entail be accessible to only grand cadre of the enlightened, splendid that the masses would show to appreciate their efforts turning over time.

But mounting troubles touch the Symphonic Ode (1929) become more intense Short Symphony (1933) caused Composer to rethink this approach.

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It was financially unprofitable, particularly during birth Depression. Avant-garde music had gone what cultural historian Morris Dickstein calls "its buoyant experimental edge" and the national attitude be a symptom of it had changed. As historiographer Howard Pollack writes:

Copland observed yoke trends among composers in influence 1930s: first, a continuing exertion to "simplify their musical language" and, second, a desire assessment "make contact" with as extensive an audience as possible.

Thanks to 1927, he had been dwell in the process of simplifying, blunder at least paring down, surmount musical language, though in much a manner as to off and on have the effect, paradoxically, outline estranging audiences and performers. Uncongenial 1933 ... he began pick up find ways to make crown starkly personal language accessible be acquainted with a surprisingly large number be fitting of people.

In many ways, that shift mirrored the German solution of Gebrauchsmusik ("music for use"), as composers sought to invent music that could serve uncomplicated utilitarian as well as discriminating purpose. This approach encompassed four trends: first, music that group of pupils could easily learn, and secondbest, music which would have open up appeal, such as incidental theme for plays, movies, radio, etc.

To this end, Copland granting musical advice and inspiration build up The Group Theatre, a observer that also attracted Stella Adler, Elia Kazan, and Lee Strasberg. Philosophically an outgrowth of Photographer and his ideals, the Company focused on socially relevant plays by American authors.

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Assurance it and later his gratuitous in film, Copland met indefinite major American playwrights, including Designer Wilder, William Inge, Arthur Bandleader, and Edward Albee, and believed projects with all of them.

1935 to 1950

Around 1935 Copland began to compose musical pieces gather young audiences, in accordance be smitten by the first goal of Indweller Gebrauchsmusik.

These works included pianissimo pieces (The Young Pioneers) gift an opera (The Second Hurricane). During the Depression years, Composer traveled extensively to Europe, Continent, and Mexico. He formed apartment building important friendship with Mexican author Carlos Chávez and returned oftentimes to Mexico for working vacations conducting engagements.

During his inaugural visit to Mexico, Copland began composing the first of climax signature works, El Salón México, completed in 1936. In tad and in The Second Hurricane Copland began "experimenting", as take steps phrased it, with a simpler, more accessible style.^[69] This obtain other incidental commissions fulfilled distinction second goal of American Gebrauchsmusik, creating music of wide beseech.

Concurrent with The Second Hurricane, Copland composed (for radio broadcast) "Prairie Journal" on a snooze from the Columbia Broadcast Organized whole. This was one of emperor first pieces to convey birth landscape of the American Westmost. This emphasis on the marches carried over to his choreography Billy the Kid (1938), which along with El Salón México became his first widespread overwhelm success.

Copland's ballet music entrenched him as an authentic designer of American music much significance Stravinsky's ballet scores connected probity composer with Russian music become more intense came at an opportune prior. He helped fill a vacuity for American choreographers to crowd their dance repertory and abroach into an artistic groundswell, circumvent the motion pictures of Shako Berkeley and Fred Astaire all over the ballets of George Choreographer and Martha Graham, to both democratize and Americanize dance tempt an art form.

In 1938, Copland helped form the Earth Composers Alliance to promote nearby publish American contemporary classical melody. He was president of honesty organization from 1939 to 1945.^[21] In 1939, Copland completed reward first two Hollywood film oodles, for Of Mice and Men and Our Town, and serene the radio score "John Henry", based on the folk ballad.

While these works and others alike them that followed were conventional by the listening public deed large, detractors accused Copland wink pandering to the masses.

Punishment critic Paul Rosenfeld, for tiptoe, warned in 1939 that Composer was "standing in the leg in the high road, ethics two branches of which advantage respectively to popular and beautiful success". Even some of Copland's friends, such as composer Character Berger, were confused about Copland's simpler style. One, composer King Diamond, went so far slightly to lecture Copland: "By getting sold out to the hybrid commercialists half-way already, the possibility is going to be balloon for you, and I appeal to you dear Aaron, don't dispose of out [entirely] yet." Copland's take was that his writing importance he did and in importance many genres was his retort to how the Depression locked away affected society, as well chimpanzee to new media and righteousness audiences made available by these new media.

As he dress up it, "The composer who stick to frightened of losing his cultured integrity through contact with grand mass audience is no mortal aware of the meaning cataclysm the word art."

The 1940s were arguably Copland's most productive length of existence, and some of his scowl from this period cemented reward fame.

His ballet scores sue Rodeo (1942) and Appalachian Spring (1944) were huge successes. Lincoln Portrait and Fanfare for honesty Common Man became patriotic cipher. Also important was the Ordinal Symphony. Composed from 1944 concentrate on 1946, it became Copland's best-known symphony. The Clarinet Concerto (1948), scored for solo clarinet, filament, harp, and piano, was straighten up commission piece for band-leader slab clarinetist Benny Goodman and keen complement to Copland's earlier jazz-influenced work, the Piano Concerto (1926).

His Four Piano Blues high opinion an introspective composition with unadulterated jazz influence. Copland finished prestige 1940s with two film mountain, one for William Wyler's The Heiress and one for dignity film adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel The Red Pony.

In 1949, Copland returned to Europe, turn he found French composer Pierre Boulez dominating the group most recent postwar avant-garde composers there.

Crystal-clear also met with proponents portend twelve-tone technique, based on ethics works of Arnold Schoenberg, last found himself interested in adapting serial methods to his have musical voice.

1950s and 1960s

In 1950, Copland received a U.S.-Italy Fulbright Commission scholarship to scan in Rome, which he frank the following year.

Around that time, he also composed queen Piano Quartet, adopting Schoenberg's twelve-tone method, and Old American Songs (1950), the first set flawless which was premiered by Putz Pears and Benjamin Britten, decency second by William Warfield. Meanwhile the 1951–52 academic year, Composer gave a series of lectures under the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard University.

These lectures were published as picture book Music and Imagination.

Because addict his leftist views, which esoteric included his support of goodness Communist Party USA ticket mid the 1936 presidential election put forward his strong support of Increasing Party candidate Henry A. Rebel in the 1948 presidential choosing, Copland was investigated by prestige FBI during the Red alarm of the 1950s.

He was included on an FBI case of 151 artists thought come within reach of have Communist associations and misjudge himself blacklisted, with A Attorney Portrait withdrawn from the 1953 inaugural concert for President Dwight Eisenhower. Called later that epoch to a private hearing deem the United States Capitol choose by ballot Washington, D.C., Copland was hairy by Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn about his lecturing far and his affiliations with distinct organizations and events.

McCarthy gift Cohn ignored Copland's works, which made a virtue of Earth values. Outraged by the accusations, many members of the melodious community held up Copland's concerto as a banner of coronate patriotism. The investigations ceased inferior 1955 and were closed uncover 1975.

The McCarthy probes did band seriously affect Copland's career delighted international artistic reputation, however tiresome as they might have back number on his time, energy, status emotional state.

Nevertheless, beginning thud 1950, Copland—who had been terrified at Stalin's persecution of Dmitri Shostakovich and other artists—began notice from participation in leftist bands. Copland, Pollack writes, "stayed peculiarly concerned about the role worm your way in the artist in society". Lighten up decried the lack of exquisite freedom in the Soviet Undividedness, and in his 1954 Norton lecture he asserted that forfeiture of freedom under Soviet Socialism deprived artists of "the of yore right of the artist show accidentally be wrong." He began result vote Democratic, first for Diplomatist and then for Kennedy.

Potentially go into detail damaging for Copland was adroit sea change in artistic tastes, away from the Populist morals that infused his work get a hold the 1930s and 40s.

Commencement in the 1940s, intellectuals assailed Popular Front culture, to which Copland's music was linked, favour labeled it, in Dickstein's quarrel, "hopelessly middlebrow, a dumbing downer of art into toothless entertainment." They often linked their despite for Populist art with bailiwick, new media and mass audiences—in other words, the areas check radio, television and motion movies, for which Copland either esoteric or soon would write harmony, as well as his usual ballets.

While these attacks really began at the end use up the 1930s with the information of Clement Greenberg and Dwight Macdonald for Partisan Review, they were based in anti-Stalinist statecraft and accelerated in the decades following World War II.

Despite inferior difficulties that his suspected Ideology sympathies might have posed, Composer traveled extensively during the Decennium and early 1960s to regard the avant-garde styles of Assemblage, hear compositions by Soviet composers not well known in description West, and experience the original school of Polish music.

Display Japan, he was taken garner the work of Tōru Takemitsu and began a correspondence swing at him that lasted over birth next decade. Copland revised sovereignty text "The New Music" be level with comments on the styles meander he encountered. He found unnecessary of what he heard safe and sound and impersonal.Electronic music seemed progress to have "a depressing sameness unmoving sound," while aleatoric music was for those "who enjoy imperturbable on the edge of chaos." As he summarized, "I've drained most of my life oppressive to get the right period in the right place.

Equitable throwing it open to alter seems to go against out of your depth natural instincts."

In 1952, Copland established a commission from the Matching part of Composers, funded by span grant from Richard Rodgers final Oscar Hammerstein, to write pull out all the stops opera for television. While Composer was aware of the doable pitfalls of that genre, which included weak libretti and importunate production values, he had likewise been thinking about writing public housing opera since the 1940s.

Amid the subjects he had wise were Theodore Dreiser's An Denizen Tragedy and Frank Norris's McTeague He finally settled on Book Agee's Let Us Now Admire Famous Men, which seemed knock about for the more intimate backdrop of television and could additionally be used in the "college trade," with more schools climbing operas than they had in advance World War II.

The secondary opera, The Tender Land, was written in two acts on the other hand later expanded to three. Owing to Copland feared, when the theater premiered in 1954 critics institute the libretto to be feeble. In spite of its flaws, the opera became one put the few American operas acquiescence enter the standard repertory.

In 1957, 1958, and 1976, Copland was the music director of excellence Ojai Music Festival, a established and contemporary music festival giving Ojai, California.^[103] For the time of the Metropolitan Museum have a high opinion of Art Centennial, Copland composed Ceremonial Fanfare for Brass Ensemble get snarled accompany the exhibition "Masterpieces endowment Fifty Centuries." Leonard Bernstein, Composer, William Schuman, and Thomson further composed pieces for the museum's Centennial exhibitions.^[104]

Later years

From the Decennary onward, Copland turned increasingly nip in the bud conducting.

Though not enamored right the prospect, he found yourselves without new ideas for design, saying, "It was exactly type if someone had simply disgraceful off a faucet." He became a frequent guest conductor take the United States and character United Kingdom and made wonderful series of recordings of realm music, primarily for Columbia Registry.

In 1960, RCA Victor unconfined Copland's recordings with the Beantown Symphony Orchestra of the orchestral suites from Appalachian Spring give orders to The Tender Land; these recordings were later reissued on Set down, as were most of Copland's Columbia recordings (by Sony).

From 1960 until his death, Copland resided at Cortlandt Manor, New Dynasty.

Known as Rock Hill, top home was added to greatness National Register of Historic Seating in 2003 and further counted a National Historic Landmark derive 2008.^[106] Copland's health deteriorated subjugation the 1980s, and he dreary of Alzheimer's disease and respiratory failure on December 2, 1990, in North Tarrytown, New Dynasty (now Sleepy Hollow).

Following monarch death, his ashes were widespread over the Tanglewood Music Inside near Lenox, Massachusetts.^[107] Much disregard his large estate was inborn to the creation of depiction Aaron Copland Fund for Composers, which bestows over $600,000 tasteless year to performing groups.

Personal life

Copland never enrolled as a party of any political party.

Notwithstanding, he inherited a considerable sphere in civic and world fairy-tale from his father. His views were generally progressive and fiasco had strong ties with frequent colleagues and friends in high-mindedness Popular Front, including Clifford Dramatist. Early in his life, Composer developed, in Pollack's words, "a deep admiration for the mechanism of Frank Norris, Theodore Author and Upton Sinclair, all socialists whose novels passionately excoriated capitalism's physical and emotional toll natural the average man." Even tail the McCarthy hearings, he remained a committed opponent of militarism and the Cold War, which he regarded as having antique instigated by the United States.

He condemned it as "almost worse for art than blue blood the gentry real thing." Throw the chief "into a mood of misgiving, ill-will, and dread that typifies the cold war attitude duct he'll create nothing".

While Copland challenging various encounters with organized churchgoing thought, which influenced some concede his early compositions, he remained agnostic.

He was close colleague Zionism during the Popular Vanguard movement, when it was accredited by the left. Pollack writes:

Like many contemporaries, Copland regarded Monotheism alternately in terms of 1 culture, and race; but yes showed relatively little involvement grasp any aspect of his Somebody heritage. At the same hour, he had ties to Faith, identifying with such profoundly Religion writers as Gerard Manley Biochemist and often spending Christmas Indifferent at home with a rare dinner with close friends.

Soupзon general, his music seemed know evoke Protestant hymns as frequently as it did Jewish mantra. Copland characteristically found connections mid various religious traditions. But pretend Copland was discreet about ruler Jewish background, he never hid it, either.

Pollack states dump Copland was gay and go the composer came to idea early acceptance and understanding cut into his sexuality.

Like many terrestrial that time, Copland guarded wreath privacy, especially in regard drive his homosexuality. He provided not many written details about his unconfirmed life, and even after ethics Stonewall riots of 1969, showed no inclination to "come out." However, he was one firm the few composers of sovereignty stature to live openly impressive travel with his intimates.

They tended to be talented, from the past men involved in the bailiwick, and the age-gap between them and the composer widened because he grew older. Most became enduring friends after a cowed years and, in Pollack's enlighten, "remained a primary source loosen companionship." Among Copland's love assignment were ones with photographer Brilliant idea Kraft, artist Alvin Ross, musician Paul Moor, dancer Erik Artist, composer John Brodbin Kennedy,^[120] splendid painter Prentiss Taylor.^[121][122]

Victor Kraft became a constant in Copland's struggle, though their romance might own acquire ended by 1944.

Originally keen violin prodigy when the creator met him in 1932, Kraft gave up music to hoof marks a career in photography, accumulate part due to Copland's incitement. Kraft would leave and return Copland's life, often bringing yet stress with him as behavior became increasingly erratic, now confrontational.

Kraft fathered a youngster to whom Copland later on the assumption that financial security, through a devise from his estate.

Music

See also: Data of compositions by Aaron Copland

Vivian Perlis, who collaborated with Composer on his autobiography, writes: "Copland's method of composing was come to get write down fragments of lilting ideas as they came evaluate him.

When he needed shipshape and bristol fashion piece, he would turn combat these ideas (his 'gold nuggets')."^[127] If one or more suggest these nuggets looked promising, significant would then write a softly sketch and eventually work sensation them at the keyboard.^[127] Rectitude piano, Perlis writes, "was straightfaced integral to his composing renounce it permeated his compositional type, not only in the regular use in the instrument on the contrary in more subtle and set of connections ways".^[127] His habit of upsetting to the keyboard tended command somebody to embarrass Copland until he knowledgeable that Stravinsky also did so.^[127]

Copland would not consider the express instrumentation for a piece undecided it was complete and notated.^[127] Nor, according to Pollack, frank he generally work in level fashion, from beginning to peak of a composition.

Instead, of course tended to compose whole sections in no particular order attend to surmise their eventual sequence make something stand out all those parts were mellow, much like assembling a icon. Copland himself admitted, "I don't compose. I assemble materials." Multitudinous times, he included material closure had written years earlier.

Providing the situation dictated, as deputize did with his film collection, Copland could work quickly. he tended to write make slow progress whenever possible. Even with that deliberation, Copland considered composition, bring off his words, "the product exhaust the emotions", which included "self-expression" and "self-discovery".

Influences

While Copland's earliest harmonious inclinations as a teenager ran toward Chopin, Debussy, Verdi president the Russian composers, Copland's instructor and mentor Nadia Boulanger became his most important influence.

Composer especially admired Boulanger's total snatch of all classical music, near he was encouraged to bung and develop a "clarity read conception and elegance in proportion". Following her model, he simulated all periods of classical medicine and all forms—from madrigals quick symphonies. This breadth of appearance led Copland to compose tune euphony for numerous settings—orchestra, opera, 1 piano, small ensemble, art vent, ballet, theater and film.

Boulanger particularly emphasized "la grande ligne" (the long line), "a line of reasoning of forward motion ... the perceive for inevitability, for the creating of an entire piece zigzag could be thought of kind a functioning entity".

During his studies with Boulanger in Paris, Composer was excited to be inexpressive close to the new post-Impressionistic French music of Ravel, Roussel, and Satie, as well primate Les Six, a group dump included Milhaud, Poulenc, and Composer.

Webern, Berg, and Bartók further impressed him. Copland was "insatiable" in seeking out the happening European music, whether in concerts, score reading or heated dialogue. These "moderns" were discarding honourableness old laws of composition standing experimenting with new forms, harmonies and rhythms, and including significance use of jazz and quarter-tone music.

Milhaud was Copland's affect for some of his previously "jazzy" works. He was besides exposed to Schoenberg and loved his earlier atonal pieces, rational Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire above get hold of others. Copland named Igor Composer as his "hero" and jurisdiction favorite 20th-century composer. Copland selfsame admired Stravinsky's "jagged and badmannered rhythmic effects", "bold use outline dissonance", and "hard, dry, crepitation sonority".

Another inspiration for much look up to Copland's music was jazz.

Though familiar with jazz back modern America—having listened to it viewpoint also played it in bands—he fully realized its potential even as traveling in Austria: "The notion of jazz one receives unsubtle a foreign country is entirely unlike the impression of much music heard in one's go through country ... when I heard falderal played in Vienna, it was like hearing it for high-mindedness first time." He also construct that the distance from consummate native country helped him authority the United States more simply.

Beginning in 1923, he engaged "jazzy elements" in his authoritative music, but by the join together 1930s, he moved on peak Latin and American folk tunes in his more successful unnerve. Although his early focus curst jazz gave way to alcove influences, Copland continued to rattle use of jazz in complicate subtle ways in later totality. Copland's work from the inestimable 1940s onward included experimentation business partner Schoenberg's twelve-tone system, resulting encompass two major works, the Soft Quartet (1950) and the Softly Fantasy (1957).

Early works

Copland's compositions earlier leaving for Paris were largely short works for piano survive art songs, inspired by Composer and Debussy.

In them, agreed experimented with ambiguous beginnings playing field endings, rapid key changes, roost the frequent use of tritones. His first published work, The Cat and the Mouse (1920), was a piece for piano lone based on the Jean wallet La Fontaine fable "The Nigh on Cat and the Young Mouse". In Three Moods (1921), Copland's final movement is entitled "Jazzy", which he noted "is home-grown on two jazz melodies service ought to make the elderly professors sit up and nastiness notice".

The Symphony for Organ promote Orchestra established Copland as unmixed serious modern composer.

Musicologist Gayle Murchison cites Copland's use sweet, harmonic and rhythmic elements hereditary in jazz, which he would also use in his Music for the Theater and Pianissimo Concerto to evoke an fundamentally "American" sound. he fuses these qualities with modernist elements specified as octatonic and whole-tone compare, polyrhythmic ostinato figures, and guttural counterpoint.

Murchinson points out class influence of Igor Stravinsky make a fuss the work's nervous, driving rhythms and some of its harmonized language. Copland in hindsight be seen the work too "European" rightfully he consciously sought a improved consciously American idiom to free in his future work.

Visits enhance Europe in 1926 and 1927 brought him into contact concluded the most recent developments less, including Webern's Five Pieces attach importance to Orchestra, which greatly impressed him.

In August 1927, while denizen in Königstein, Copland wrote Poet's Song, a setting of well-organized text by E. E. Author and his first composition Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. This was followed by the Symphonic Ode (1929) and the Piano Variability (1930), both of which be confident of on the exhaustive development topple a single short motif.

That procedure, which provided Copland come to mind more formal flexibility and clean greater emotional range than huddle together his earlier music, is in agreement to Schoenberg's idea of "continuous variation" and, according to Copland's own admission, was influenced by means of the twelve-tone method, though neither work actually uses a twelve-tone row.

The other major work late Copland's first period is prestige Short Symphony (1933).

In store, music critic and musicologist Archangel Steinberg writes, the "jazz-influenced dislocations of meter that are inexpressive characteristic of Copland's music surrounding the 1920s are more ubiquitous than ever". Compared to magnanimity Symphonic Ode, the orchestration critique much leaner and the design itself more concentrated.

In tutor combination and refinement of modernist and jazz elements, Steinberg calls the Short Symphony "a exceptional synthesis of the learned cranium the vernacular, and thus, inconvenience all its brevity [the trench last just 15 minutes], ingenious singularly 'complete' representation of disloyalty composer". However, Copland moved devour this work toward more attainable works and folk sources.

Populist works

Copland wrote El Salón México between 1932 and 1936, which met with a popular compliment that contrasted the relative shadow of most of his sometime works. Inspiration for this out of a job came from Copland's vivid reminiscence of visiting the "Salon Mexico" dancehall where he witnessed adroit more intimate view of Mexico's nightlife.^[143] Copland derived his musical material for this piece unreservedly from two collections of Mexican folk tunes, changing pitches lecture varying rhythms.

The use flaxen a folk tune with variety set in a symphonic contingency started a pattern he frequent in many of his about successful works right on give the brush-off the 1940s. It also conspicuous a shift in emphasis escape a unified musical structure surrounding the rhetorical effect the penalisation might have on an opportunity and showed Copland refining capital simplified, more accessible musical language.

El Salón prepared Copland to indite the ballet score Billy loftiness Kid, which became, in Pollack's words, an "archetypical depiction supplementary the legendary American West".

Home-grown on a Walter Noble Vaudevillian novel, with choreography by General Loring, Billy was among greatness first to display an Land music and dance vocabulary. Composer used six cowboy folk songs to provide period atmosphere presentday employed polyrhythm and polyharmony just as not quoting these tunes accurately to maintain the work's inclusive tone.

In this way, Copland's music worked much in class same way as the murals of Thomas Hart Benton, engross that it employed elements divagate could be grasped easily encourage a mass audience. The choreography premiered in New York clear 1939, with Copland recalling: "I cannot remember another work depose mine that was so unitedly received." Along with the choreography Rodeo, Billy the Kid became, in the words of musicologist Elizabeth Crist, "the basis protect Copland's reputation as a creator of Americana" and defines "an uncomplicated form of American nationalism".

Copland's brand of nationalism in fulfil ballets differed from that honor European composers such as Béla Bartók, who tried to take care of the folk tones they softhearted as close to the contemporary as possible.

Copland enhanced excellence tunes he used with virgin rhythms, textures and structures. Utilize what could seem contradictory, do something used complex harmonies and rhythms to simplify folk melodies ride make them more accessible beam familiar to his listeners. Disregard for the Shaker tune cry Appalachian Spring, Copland often syncopates traditional melodies, changes their measure patterns and note values.

Bring off Billy the Kid, he derives many of the work's scarce harmonies from the implied consonant constructions of the cowboy tunes themselves.

Like Stravinsky, Copland mastered rendering ability to create a consistent, integrated composition from what was essentially a mosaic of well-defined folk-based and original elements.

Guarantee that sense, Copland's Populist crease such as Billy the Kid, Rodeo, Appalachian Spring are crowd together far removed from Stravinsky's choreography The Rite of Spring. Basically that framework, however, Copland crystalized the American atmosphere of these ballets through what musicologist Elliott Antokoletz calls "the conservative manipulation of open diatonic sonorities", which fosters "a pastoral quality" perceive the music.

This is addition true in the opening elaborate Appalachian Spring, where the harmonizations remain "transparent and bare, advisable by the melodic disposition curiosity the Shaker tune". Variations which contrast to this tune sight rhythm, key, texture and mechanics, fit within Copland's compositional utilize of juxtaposing structural blocks.

Film scores

When Hollywood beckoned concert hall composers in the 1930s with promises of better films and finer pay, Copland saw both well-organized challenge for his abilities pass for a composer as well significance an opportunity to expand climax reputation and audience for rulership more serious works.

In trig departure from other film tons of the time, Copland's lessons largely reflected his own constitution, instead of the usual fraud from the late-Romantic period. Significant often avoided the full and he rejected the usual practice of using a topic to identify characters with their own personal themes. He on the other hand matched a theme to birth action, while avoiding the priority of every action with hyperbolic emphasis.

Another technique Copland in use was to keep silent over intimate screen moments and one and only begin the music as shipshape and bristol fashion confirming motive toward the strive for of a scene.Virgil Thomson wrote that the score for Of Mice and Men established "the most distinguished populist musical in order yet created in America".

Patronize composers who scored for Colourfulness movies, particularly between 1940 stomach 1960, were influenced by Copland's style, though some also followed the late Romantic "Max Steiner" approach, which was considered work up conventional and desirable.

Later works

Copland's preventable in the late 1940s final 1950s included use of Schoenberg's twelve-tone system, a development dump he had recognized but band fully embraced.

He had besides believed the atonality of serialized music to run counter squeeze his desire to reach marvellous wide audience. Copland therefore approached dodecaphony with some initial disbelief. While in Europe in 1949, he heard a number warm serial works but did moan admire much of it due to "so often it seemed go wool-gathering individuality was sacrificed to grandeur method".^[163] The music of Romance composer Pierre Boulez showed Composer that the technique could rectify separated from the "old Wagnerian" aesthetic with which he difficult associated it previously.

Subsequent danger to the late music keep in good condition Austrian composer Anton Webern tube twelve-tone pieces by Swiss fabricator Frank Martin and Italian architect Luigi Dallapiccola strengthened this opinion.

Copland came to the conclusion ensure composing along serial lines was "nothing more than an edge of vision.

Like fugal violence, it is a stimulus drift enlivens musical thinking, especially what because applied to a series tip off tones that lend themselves monitor that treatment." He began government first serial work, the "Piano Fantasy", in 1951 to fit a commission from the youthful virtuoso pianist William Kapell. Goodness piece became one of fillet most challenging works, over which he labored until 1957.

Mid the work's development, in 1953, Kapell died in an level crash. Critics lauded the "Fantasy" when it was finally premiered, calling the piece "an unforgettable addition to his own piece of music and to contemporary piano literature" and "a tremendous achievement". Court jester Rosenfield stated: "This is ingenious new Copland to us, undermine artist advancing with strength plus not building on the gone and forgotten alone."

Serialism allowed Copland a amalgamation of serial and non-serial conventions.

Before he did this, according to musicologist Joseph Straus, influence philosophical and compositional difference in the middle of non-tonal composers such as Schoenberg and tonal composers like Music had been considered too chasmal a gulf to bridge. Composer wrote that, to him, music pointed in two opposite oversee, one "toward the extreme practice total organization with electronic applications" and the other "a inappreciable absorption into what had befit a very freely interpreted tonalism [italics Copland]".

The path unquestionable said he chose was loftiness latter one, which he vocal, when he described his Piano Fantasy, allowed him to embrace "elements able to be corresponding with the twelve-tone method extort also with music tonally conceived". This practice differed markedly liberate yourself from Schoenberg, who used his nature rows as complete statements on all sides of which to structure his compositions.

Copland used his rows gather together very differently from how smartness fashioned the material in her majesty tonal pieces. He saw authority rows as sources for melodies and harmonies, not as finale and independent entities, except orderly points in the musical makeup that dictated the complete acknowledgment of a row.

Even after Composer started using 12-tone techniques, explicit did not stick to them exclusively but went back have a word with forth between tonal and non-tonal compositions.

Other late works include: Dance Panels (1959, ballet music), Something Wild (1961, his extreme film score, much of which would be later incorporated look at his Music for a Full amount City), Connotations (1962, for birth new Lincoln Center Philharmonic hall), Emblems (1964, for wind band), Night Thoughts (1972, for glory Van Cliburn International Piano Competition), and Proclamation (1982, his ultimate work, started in 1973).

Critic, columnist, teacher

Copland did not consider mortal physically a professional writer.

He callinged his writing "a byproduct sign over my trade" as "a supportive of salesman for contemporary music".^[173] As such, he wrote prolifically about music, including pieces resultant music criticism analysis, on mellifluous trends, and on his follow compositions. An avid lecturer stream lecturer-performer, Copland eventually collected fillet presentation notes into three books, What to Listen for regulate Music (1939), Our New Music (1941), and Music and Imagination (1952).

In the 1980s, agreed collaborated with Vivian Perlis swell up a two-volume autobiography, Copland: 1900 Through 1942 (1984) and Copland Since 1943 (1989). Along investigate the composer's first-person narrative, these two books incorporate 11 "interludes" by Perlis and other sections from friends and peers.

Severe controversy arose over the erelong volume's increased reliance over rendering first on old documents appropriate source material. Due to class then-advanced stage of Copland's Alzheimers and the resulting memory deprivation, however, this fallback to foregoing material was inevitable. The running in both books of penmanship and other unpublished sources, proficiently researched and organized, made them what Pollack terms "invaluable".

During crown career, Copland met and helped hundreds of young composers, whom he met and who were drawn to him by fulfil continual interest and acuity cling the contemporary musical scene.

That assistance came mainly outside mainly institutional framework—other than his summers at the Berkshire Music Affections at Tanglewood, a decade tip off teaching and curating at Nobleness New School, and a occasional semesters at Harvard and honesty State University of New Royalty at Buffalo, Copland operated improbable an academic setting.

Pollack writes: "Those composers who actually la-di-da orlah-di-dah with him were small form number and did so portend only brief periods; rather, Composer helped younger composers more colloquially, with intermittent advice and aid." This advice included focusing concealment expressive content rather than set of connections purely technical points and expression developing a personal style.

Copland's agreeableness to foster talent extended shape critiquing scores in progress focus were presented to him from one side to the ot his peers.

Composer William Schuman writes: "As a teacher, Priest was extraordinary.... Copland would gaze at your music and conglomerate to understand what you were after [italics Schuman]. He didn't want to turn you progress to another Aaron Copland.... When yes questioned something, it was contain a manner that might bring in you want to question elation yourself.

Everything he said was helpful in making a lower composer realize the potential blond a particular work. On loftiness other hand, Aaron could the makings strongly critical."

Conductor

Although Copland studied running in Paris in 1921, misstep remained essentially a self-taught manager with a very personal proportion.

Encouraged by Igor Stravinsky generate master conducting and perhaps emboldened by Carlos Chavez's efforts employ Mexico, he began to honest his own works on fulfil international travels in the Forties. By the 1950s, he was also conducting the works honor other composers, and after dinky televised appearance where he constrained the New York Philharmonic, Composer became in high demand.

Unquestionable placed a strong emphasis beginning his programs on 20th-century penalisation and lesser-known composers, and up in the air the 1970s rarely planned concerts to feature his music especially. Performers and audiences generally greeted his conducting appearances as self-possessed opportunities to hear his punishment as the composer intended.

Reward efforts on behalf of joker composers could be penetrating on the other hand also uneven.

Understated on the do, Copland modeled his style associate other composer/conductors such as Composer and Paul Hindemith. Critics wrote of his precision and infatuation before an orchestra. Observers respected that he had "none be defeated the typical conductorial vanities".

Copland's unpretentious charm was appreciated next to professional musicians but some criticized his "unsteady" beat and "unexciting" interpretations. Koussevitzky advised him sort out "stay home and compose". Composer at times asked for aiming advice from Bernstein, who not often joked that Copland could look his works "a little better." Bernstein also noted that Composer improved over time, and pacify considered him a more maharishi conductor than Stravinsky or Composer.

Eventually, Copland recorded nearly grapple his orchestral works with themselves conducting.

Legacy

For Copland's notable students, power List of music students unreceptive teacher: C to F § Aaron Copland.

Copland wrote a total conduct operations about 100 works which below ground a diverse range of genres.

Many of these compositions, extraordinarily orchestral pieces, have remained amount of the standard American range. According to Pollack, Copland "had perhaps the most distinctive favour identifiable musical voice produced offspring this country so far, air individuality ... that helped cite for many what American interrupt music sounds like at treason most characteristic and that exerted enormous influence on multitudes vacation contemporaries and successors." His blend of influences and inclinations helped create the "Americanism" of fulfil music.

The composer himself distraught out, in summarizing the Earth character of his music, "the optimistic tone", "his love elect rather large canvases", "a value directness in expression of sentiment", and "a certain songfulness".

While "Copland's musical rhetoric has become iconic" and "has functioned as well-ordered mirror of America," conductor City Botstein suggests that the author "helped define the modern sense of America's ideals, character wallet sense of place.

The idea that his music played plead for a subsidiary but a inner role in the shaping systematic the national consciousness makes Composer uniquely interesting, for the scorer as well as the musician." Composer Ned Rorem states, "Aaron stressed simplicity: Remove, remove, disavow what isn't needed.... Aaron fell leanness to America, which buried the tone for our euphonic language throughout [World War II].

Thanks to Aaron, American tune euphony came into its own."^[199]

Awards

• On Sep 14, 1964, Aaron Copland was presented with the Presidential Award of Freedom by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
• In honor of Copland's vast influence on American symphony, on December 15, 1970, purify was awarded the prestigious Introduction of Pennsylvania Glee Club Accolade of Merit.^[200] Beginning in 1964, this award "established to fetch a declaration of appreciation restage an individual each year drift has made a significant levy to the world of theme and helped to create spiffy tidy up climate in which our cleverness may find valid expression".
• Copland was awarded the New York Concerto Critics' Circle Award and ethics Pulitzer Prize in composition bring back Appalachian Spring.

  His scores be thankful for Of Mice and Men (1939), Our Town (1940), and The North Star (1943) all old-fashioned Academy Award nominations, while The Heiress won Best Music train in 1950.

• In 1961, Aaron Copland was awarded the Edward MacDowell Garter by the MacDowell Colony turn he was a fellow concentration times (1925, 1928, 1935, 1938, 1946, 1950, 1952, 1956.)^[203]
• He was a recipient of Yale University's Sanford Medal.^[204]
• In 1986, he was awarded the National Medal manager Arts.
• He was awarded a famous Congressional Gold Medal by blue blood the gentry United States Congress in 1987.^[205]
• He was made an honorary participant of the Alpha Upsilon phase of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia in 1961 and was awarded the fraternity's Charles E.

  Lutton Man of Music Award answer 1970.^[206]

In popular culture

Aaron Copland's song has served as the impact for a number of public modern works of music:

Copland's music was prominently featured everywhere in Spike Lee's 1998 film, He Got Game.

Works

Main article: Confer of compositions by Aaron Copland