Copland was a dedicated educator, inspiring generations of musicians through his teaching and conducting.
Copland was a dedicated educator, inspiring generations of musicians through his teaching and conducting.
Aaron Copland’s parents were Russian-Jewish immigrants to America who had settled in Brooklyn. Copland was born there on November 14, 1900, and later said of his childhood home: “Music was the last thing anyone would have connected with it.” Nevertheless, when he was 13 years old, Copland went to a concert performance given by the virtuoso Polish pianist Ignacy Paderewski (1860–1941), after which he realised that music was the only thing that really mattered to him. After taking lessons with Rubin Goldmark (1917–21), a well-known composer and teacher who had studied with Dvorák, Copland went to France in 1921, where he enrolled at the School of Music for Americans in Europe at Fontainebleau. Paris at that time was a world centre for the arts: STRAVINSKY, PROKOFIEV, RAVEL, and other leading composers were all working there. Most importantly for Copland, he became one of the first American pupils of the French musical scholar and teacher Nadia BOULANGER, who encouraged his taste for the music of Stravinsky. It was under her guidance that Copland wrote his first large-scale work, the Organ Symphony, completed in 1924.
Back in America later in 1924, Copland had his Organ Symphony performed by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Walter DAMROSCH. Because of its advanced style and dissonant harmonies, Damrosch exclaimed that: “If a young man can write a piece of music like this at the age of 23, in five years time he’ll be ready to commit murder!”
Whether or not Damrosch intended it, his words helped to publicise the young composer’s name and he was commissioned to write a new work by Sergey KOUSSEVITZKY, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. This was an orchestral piece entitled Music for the Theater (although it had nothing to do with any particular drama). Copland included jazz rhythms and harmonies in the piece, giving it a specifically American sound. The work had its first performance in 1925, not long after the sensational premiere of Rhapsody in Blue by George GERSHWIN, which also blended jazz styles with conventional concert orchestration and harmonies. Copland’s own Piano Concerto and other works continued this fusion of American jazz and dance music.
By 1930, Copland was already a major figure on the American musical scene, but he was not altogether happy with his own work to date. He felt that much of his music was too intellectual and therefore had only limited appeal. He wanted to write some music that had a stronger, more tuneful and distinctive American sound to it, which would appeal to larger numbers of people. Copland, therefore, began to compose in two different styles—"varying the attack!” as he called it, between academic and popular styles. In the years that followed, he continued to write advanced or academic works, such as his Piano Variations (1930), which were later orchestrated, his Piano Sonata (1941), and Connotations (1962) for orchestra, which is a bold journey toward serialism. Copland also began to write a series of popular works that was to spread his reputation and his innovative style of American concert music around the world.
The first of these “Americana” works was the orchestral piece El salón México (1936), inspired by a visit to a noisy, smoky dance hall in Mexico City. The piece overflows with the bright, brash sounds of Latin American dance music. Copland then turned his attentions to the traditions of his own country and to the composition of three vivid ballet scores. Billy the Kid (1940), inspired by the life and death of the notorious Wild West outlaw, evokes the wide open spaces of the American West and includes several old cowboy tunes, plus a dramatic orchestral “shoot-out.” Rodeo (1942) celebrates a rowdy cowboy gathering and includes a foot-tapping, hand-clapping “hoedown.” Appalachian Spring (1944), which was choreographed by Martha Graham (1893–1991), is an atmospheric portrayal, in sound and movement, of a young, pioneering husband and wife building their home on a farm in Pennsylvania. More traditional American melodies, including the tune of a Shaker hymn, run through this beautiful score.
Copland wrote many other works that comprised a masterful blend of American folk song and dance with his own musical and poetic vision, or which expressed American patriotism at its best. Such works include Lincoln Portrait (1942), written for orchestra and narrator, which was inspired by passages from Abraham Lincoln’s letters and speeches; Symphony No. 3 (1946); 12 Poems of Emily Dickinson (1950), written and arranged for piano and voice; and the opera The Tender Land (1954). Copland also wrote the musical scores for several Hollywood films, including Of'Mice and Men (1939), Our Town (1940), and The Red Pony (1948).
In addition to his achievements as a composer, Copland did much for American musical life both as a conductor and a teacher. As a conductor, he visited many parts of the world, including the Soviet Union, introducing new audiences to American music. For many years he was a popular teacher at the Berkshire Music Festival at Tanglewood, Massachusetts. He wrote several important books about music, including Music and Imagination (1952), and, through his associations with various musical institutions, he worked tirelessly on behalf of his fellow composers. Among his many honours, Copland was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1944, the Gold Medal of the American Academy in 1956, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. When he died in New York on December 2, 1990, Copland was truly the Grand Old Man of American Music.
Alan Blackwood
SEE ALSO:
BALLET AND MODERN DANCE MUSIC; BERNSTEIN, LEONARD; DEBUSSY, CLAUDE; FESTIVALS AND EVENTS; FILM MUSIC; FOLK MUSIC; JAZZ; ORCHESTRAL MUSIC; SERIALISM.
FURTHER READING
Copland, Aaron. Composer from Brooklyn (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984);
Copland, Aaron. Our New Music (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968);
Peare, Catherine. Aaron Copland: His Life (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1969);
Skowronski, JoAnn. Aaron Copland: A Bio-bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Ballets:Appalachian Spring; Billy the Kid; Rodeo.
Chamber music: Duo for Flute and Piano.
Orchestral works: Clarinet Concerto; Connotations; Dance Symphony; El salón México; Fanfare for the Common Man; Letter from Home; Lincoln Portrait; Music for the Theater; Organ Symphony; An Outdoor Overture; Piano Concerto; Quiet City; Symphony No. 3.
Piano pieces:Midsummer Nocturne; Piano Sonata; Piano Variations.
Songs: 12 Poems of Emily Dickinson.