
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland (November 14, 1900 – December 2,
1990) was an
American
composer of concert and film music, as well
as an accomplished
pianist. Instrumental in
forging a distinctly American style of composition, he was widely
known as "the dean of American composers". Copland's music achieved
a balance between
modern music and
American folk styles. The open, slowly changing harmonies of many
of his works are said to evoke the vast American landscape. He also
incorporated percussive
orchestration,
changing
meter,
polyrhythms,
polychords,
and
tone rows in a broad range of works for
concert hall, theater, ballet, and films. Aside from composing,
Copland was a teacher, lecturer, critic, writer, and
conductor (generally, but not always, of his own
works).
Biography
Early life
.jpg/180px-Aaron_Copland_School_of_Music_(541691170).jpg)
Aaron Copland School of Music, Queens
College (part of the City University of New York)
Aaron
Copland was born in Brooklyn
, New York
, United States
, North America, of
Lithuanian Jewish descent, the
last of five children. Before emigrating from Scotland to
the United States, Copland's father, Harris Morris Copland,
Anglicized his surname
"
Kaplan" to "
Copland". Throughout his childhood,
Copland and his family lived above his parents' Brooklyn shop (a
neighborhood "Macy's"), on the corner of Dean Street and Washington
Avenue and all the children helped out in the store. His father was
a staunch Democrat.
The family members were active in Congregation
Baith Israel Anshei Emes
, where Aaron celebrated his Bar Mitzvah. Not especially athletic, the
sensitive young man became an avid reader and often read
Horatio Alger stories on his front
steps.
Copland's father had no musical interest at all but his mother,
Sarah Mittenthal Copland, sang and played the piano, and arranged
for music lessons for her children. Of his siblings, oldest brother
Ralph was the most advanced musically, proficient on the violin,
while his sister Laurine had the strongest connection with Aaron,
giving him his first piano lessons, promoting his musical
education, and supporting him in his musical career. She attended
the Metropolitan Opera School and was a frequent opera goer. She
often brought home libretti for Aaron to study. Copland attended
Boys' High School and in the summer went to various camps. Most of
his early exposure to music was at Jewish weddings and ceremonies,
and occasional family musicales.
At the age of eleven, Copland devised an opera scenario he called
Zenatello, which included seven bars of music, his first
notated melody. He took music lessons with
Leopold Wolfsohn between 1913 and 1917, who
taught him the standard classical fare. Copland first public music
performance was at a Wanamaker recital.
By the age of 15, after attending a concert by composer-pianist
Ignacy Paderewski, Copland decided
to become a composer. After attempts to further his music study
from a correspondence course, Copland took formal lessons in
harmony, theory, and composition from
Rubin Goldmark, a noted teacher and composer
of American music (who had given
George
Gershwin three lessons). Goldmark gave the young Copland a
solid foundation, especially in the Germanic tradition, as he
stated later: "This was a stroke of luck for me. I was spared the
floundering that so many musicians have suffered through
incompetent teaching." But Copland also commented that the maestro
had "little sympathy for the advanced musical idioms of 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 Romantic style, but he had also
composed more original and daring pieces which he did not share
with his teacher. In addition to regularly attending the
Metropolitan Opera and the New York Symphony where he heard the
standard classical repertory, Copland continued his musical
development through an expanding circle of musical friends. After
he graduated from high school, Copland played in dance bands.
Continuing his musical education, Copland received further piano
lessons from
Victor
Wittgenstein, who found his student to be "quiet, shy,
well-mannered, and gracious in accepting criticism". Copland's
fascination with the
Russian
Revolution and its promise for freeing the lower classes drew a
rebuke from his father and uncles. In spite of that, in his early
adult life Copland would develop friendships with people with
socialist and communist leanings.
Studying in Paris
From 1917 to 1921, Copland composed juvenile works of short piano
pieces and art songs. Copland's passion for the latest European
music, plus glowing letters from his friend Aaron Schaffer,
inspired him to go to Paris for further study. His father wanted
him to go to college but instead, his mother's vote in the family
conference allowed him to give Paris a try. On arriving in France,
he studied with Paul Vidal at the
Fontainebleau School of Music,
but finding him too much like Goldmark, he switched to famed
teacher
Nadia Boulanger (thirty-four
at the time). He had initial reservations: "No one to my knowledge
had ever before thought of studying with a woman." She interviewed
him, and recalled later: "One could tell his talent
immediately."
Boulanger had as many as forty students at once and employed a
formal regimen that Copland had to follow, too. Copland found her
incisive mind much to his liking and stated: "This intellectual
Amazon is not only professor at the Conservatoire, is not only
familiar with all music from Bach to Stravinsky, but is prepared
for anything worse in the way of dissonance. But make no
mistake...A more charming womanly woman never lived." Though he
planned on only one year abroad, he studied with her for three
years, finding her eclectic approach to inspire his own broad
musical taste.
Adding to the heady cultural atmosphere of the early 1920s in Paris
was the presence of expatriate American writers
Paul Bowles,
Ernest
Hemingway,
Sinclair Lewis,
Gertrude Stein, and
Ezra Pound, as well as artists like
Picasso,
Chagall, and
Modigliani. Also influential on
the new music were the French intellectuals
Marcel Proust,
Paul Valéry,
Sartre,
and
André Gide, the latter cited by
Copland as being his personal favorite and most read. Travels to
Italy, Austria, and Germany rounded out Copland's musical
education. During his stay in Paris, Copland began writing musical
critiques, the first on
Gabriel
Fauré, which helped spread his fame and stature in the music
community. Instead of wallowing in self-pity and self-destruction
like many of the expatriate members of the
Lost Generation, Copland returned to America
optimistic and enthusiastic about the future.
Career between 1925 and 1950
Upon returning to America, Copland was determined to make his way
as a full-time composer. He rented a studio apartment on the Upper
West Side, his home area for the next three decades, which kept him
close to Carnegie Hall and other musical venues and publishers
(later he would move to Westchester County). He lived frugally and
survived financially with help from a
Guggenheim Fellowship in 1925 and
again
in
1926, each worth $2,500. Lecture-recitals, awards, appointments
and small commissions, plus some teaching, writing, and personal
loans kept him afloat in the subsequent years through World War II.
Also important were wealthy patrons who supported the arts
community during the Depression, underwriting performances,
publication, and promotion of musical events and composers.
Copland's compositions in the early 1920s reflected the prevailing
"modernist" attitude among intellectuals that they were a small
vanguard leading the way for the masses, who would only come to
appreciate their efforts over time. In this view, music and the
other arts need be accessible to only a select cadre of the
enlightened. Toward this end, Copland formed the
Young Composer's Group, modeled after
France's
"Six", gathering together promising
young composers, acting as their guiding spirit.
Soon after his return, Copland was introduced to the artistic
circle of
Alfred Stieglitz and met
many of the leading artists of that time. Steiglitz's conviction
that the American artist should reflect "the ideas of American
Democracy" influenced Copland and a whole generation of artists and
photographers, including
Paul Strand,
Edward Weston,
Ansel Adams,
Georgia
O'Keeffe,
Walker Evans. Copland was
directly inspired by the photographs of Walker Evans in his opera
The Tender Land.
In his quest to take up Steiglitz's challenge, Copland had few
established American contemporaries to emulate apart from
Carl Ruggles and reclusive
Charles Ives, although the 1920s were Golden
Years for American popular music and jazz, with
George Gershwin and
Louis Armstrong leading the way. Later,
however, Copland joined up with his younger contemporaries, and
formed a group termed the "commando unit", which included
Roger Sessions,
Roy
Harris,
Virgil Thomson, and
Walter Piston. They collaborated in
joint concerts showcasing their work to new audiences.
Copland's relationship with the "commando unit" was one of both
support and rivalry, and he played a key role in keeping them
together. The five young American composers helped promote each
other and their works but also had testy exchanges, inflamed by the
assertion of the press that Copland was the "truly American"
composer. Going beyond the five, Copland was generous with his time
with nearly every American young composer he met during his life,
later earning the title the "Dean of American Music".
Mounting troubles with the
Symphonic Ode (1929) and
Short Symphony (1933) caused him to rethink the paradigm
of composing orchestral music for a select group, as it was a
financially contradictory approach, particularly in the Depression.
In many ways, this shift mirrored the German idea of
Gebrauchsmusik ("music for use") as composers
sought to create music that could serve a utilitarian as well as
artistic purpose. This approach encompassed two trends: one—music
that students could easily learn, and two—music which would have
wider appeal (incidental music for plays, movies, radio, etc.).
Copland undertook both goals, starting in the mid 1930s.
Perhaps also motivated by the plight of children during the
Depression, around 1935 Copland began to compose musical pieces for
young audiences, in accordance with the first goal of American
Gebrauchsmusik. These works included
piano pieces (
The Young Pioneers) and an opera (
The
Second Hurricane).
During the Depression years, Copland traveled extensively to
Europe, Africa, and Mexico. He formed an important friendship with
Mexican composer Carlos Chavez and would return often to Mexico on
working vacations and to conduct. During his initial visit to
Mexico, Copland began composing the first of his signature works,
El Salón México,
which he completed four years later in 1936. This and other
incidental commissions fulfilled the second goal of American
Gebrauchsmusik, creating music of
wide appeal.
During this time, he composed (for radio broadcast) "Prairie
Journal", a piece which was one of his first to convey a Western
flavor. Branching out into theater, Copland also played an
important role providing musical advice and inspiration to
The Group Theater—
Stella Adler's and
Lee
Strasberg's "method" acting school. The Group Theater followed
Copland's musical agenda and focused on plays that illuminated the
American experience. After Hitler and Mussolini's attacks on Spain
in 1936, leftist parties had united in a
Popular Front against Fascism. Many Group
Theater members were influenced by
Marxism
and other progressive philosophies, and several had joined the
Communist Party, including
Elia Kazan and
Clifford Odets. Copland also had
contact later with other major American playwrights, including
Thorton Wilder,
William Inge,
Arthur
Miller, and
Edward Albee and
considered projects with all of them. During the 1930s, Copland
wrote incidental music for several plays, including
Irwin Shaw's "Quiet City" (1939), considered one
of his most personal and poignant scores.
In 1939, Copland completed his first two Hollywood film scores, for
Of Mice and Men
and
Our Town, and received
sizable commissions. But it wasn’t until the worldwide market for
classical recordings boomed after World War II, however, that he
achieved economic security. Even after securing a comfortable
income, he continued to write, teach, lecture, and eventually
conduct. In the same year, he composed the radio score "John
Henry", based on the folk ballad.
Demonstrating his broad range, in the 1930s Copland began composing
for ballet, with his highly successful
Billy the Kid (1939), the second
of four ballets he scored (after
Hear Ye! Hear
Ye! (1934)). Copland's ballet music had much the same effect
of establishing Copland as an authentic composer of American music
as Stravinsky's ballet scores did for Russian music. Copland's
timing was excellent. He helped fill a vacuum for the American
choreographers who needed suitable music to score their own
nationalistic dance repertory.
In keeping with the wartime period, Copland's "Piano Sonata" (1941)
was a piece characterized as "grim, nervous, elegiac, with
pervasive bell-like tolling of alarm and mourning". It was later
adapted to "Day on Earth", a landmark American dance by Doris
Humphrey.
Copland started to publish some of his lectures in the 1930s, "What
to Listen for in Music" being one of the most notable of his
writings. He also took a leadership role in the American Composers
Alliance, whose mission was "to regularize and collect all fees
pertaining to performance of their copyrighted music" and "to
stimulate interest in the performance of American music". Copland
eventually moved over to rival
ASCAP. Through
the collection of his royalty fees and with his great success from
1940 on, Copland amassed a multi-million dollar fortune by the time
of his death.
The decade of the 1940s was arguably Copland's most productive and
it firmly established his worldwide fame. His two ballet scores for
Rodeo (1942) and
Appalachian Spring
(1944) were huge successes. His pieces
Lincoln Portrait and
Fanfare for the Common Man
have become patriotic standards (See Popular works, below). Also
important was Copland's
Third Symphony, composed in a
two-year period from 1944 to 1946, his foremost symphony and the
most popular American symphony of the 20th Century.
In 1945, Copland contributed to
Jubilee Variation, a work
commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony in which ten America
composers collaborated, but the piece is seldom heard in the
concert hall. Copland's
In the Beginning (1947) is a
choral work using the first seven verses of the second chapter of
Genesis from the King James Version of the Bible and a masterpiece
of the choral repertory.
Copland's
Clarinet Concerto (1948), scored for solo
clarinet, strings, harp, and piano, was a commission piece for
bandleader and clarinetist
Benny
Goodman, and a complement to Copland's earlier jazzy work, the
Piano Concerto (1926). Continuing with jazz influenced
works, Copland wrote two short pieces, and combining them with to
early works, created "Four Piano Blues", an introspective
composition.
Copland completed the 1940s with two film scores, one for
William Wyler's
1949
film,
The Heiress, and his
score for the film adaptation of
John
Steinbeck's novel
The Red
Pony.
In 1949, he returned to Europe to find
Pierre Boulez dominating the group of post-War
radical musicians. He also met with the proponents of the
twelve-tone school (Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg) and he found
himself in greater sympathy with them than with the French, who
were drifting too far from classical principles to suit his taste
and producing " a chaotic impression".
1950s and 1960s
In 1950, Copland received a
Fulbright
scholarship to study in Rome, Italy, which he did the following
year. Around this time, he also composed his
Piano
Quartet, adopting Schoenberg's twelve-tone method of
composition, and
Old American Songs (1950), premiered by
William Warfield.
Because of the political climate of that era,
A Lincoln
Portrait was withdrawn from the 1953 inaugural concert for
President
Eisenhower. That same
year, Copland was called before
Congress, where he testified
that he was never a communist.
Despite
the difficulties that his suspected Communist sympathies posed,
Copland nonetheless traveled extensively during the 1950s and early
1960s, observing the avant-garde
stylings of Europe while experiencing the new school of Soviet
music. Additionally, he was rather taken with the work of
Toru Takemitsu while in Japan, and
began a correspondence that would last over the next decade.
Copland wrote of the Japanese composer: "He has the 'pure gold'
touch, he chooses his notes carefully and meaningfully." Copland
also gained exposure to the latest musical trends in Poland and
Scandinavia. In observing these new musical forms, Copland revised
his text "The New Music" with comments on the styles that he
encountered. In particular, while Copland explained the importance
of the work of
John Cage and others (in
his chapter titled "The Music of Chance"), he found that these
radical trends in music which appealed to those "who enjoy
teetering on the edge of chaos" were less likely to gain the
appreciation of a wider audience "who envisage art as a bulwark
against the irrationality of man's nature". As he summarized: "I’ve
spent most of my life trying to get the right note in the right
place. Just throwing it open to chance seems to go against my
natural instincts."
In 1954, Copland received a commission from
Richard Rodgers and
Oscar Hammerstein to create music for
the opera
The Tender Land,
based on
James Agee's
Let Us Now Praise Famous
Men. Copland had been leery of writing an opera, being
especially aware of the pitfalls of that form, including weak
libretti and demanding production values. Nevertheless, Copland
decided to try his hand at "la forme fatale", especially since the
1950s were boom times for American playwriting with
Arthur Miller,
Clifford Odets, and
Thorton Wilder doing some of their best
works. Originally two acts, later
The Tender Land was
expanded to three. As he feared, critics found the libretto to be
the opera's weak spot and he later stated: "I admit that if I have
one regret it is that I never did write a 'grand opera'." In spite
of its weaknesses, the opera has established itself as one of the
few American operas in the standard repertory.
Copland exerted a major influence on the compositional style of his
friend and protégé
Leonard
Bernstein, and a whole generation of American composers as
well. Bernstein was considered the finest conductor of Copland's
works and cites Copland's "aesthetic, simplicity with originality"
as being his strongest and most influential traits.
Later life
Copland found himself
conducting more and
composing less from the 1960s onward. Though not enamored with the
prospect, Copland found himself without new ideas for composition,
saying: "It was exactly as if someone had simply turned off a
faucet." Copland was a frequent guest conductor of orchestras in
the US and the UK. He made a series of recordings of his music,
especially during the 1970s, primarily for
Columbia Records. In 1960,
RCA Victor released Copland's recordings with the
Boston Symphony Orchestra
of the orchestral suites from
Appalachian Spring and
The Tender Land; these recordings were later reissued on
CD, as were most of Copland's Columbia recordings (by Sony).
Copland
deteriorated through the 1980s and died of
Alzheimer's disease and respiratory failure in North Tarrytown,
New York
(now Sleepy Hollow), on 2 December 1990.
Much of his large estate was bequeathed to the creation of the
Aaron Copland Fund for Composers, which gives out over $600,000 per
year to performing groups.
Personal life
A moral conservative by nature, Copland was a calm, affable, modest
and mild-mannered man, who masked his feelings. Even friends found
it hard to crack his façade. Although shy, he preferred to be in a
crowd rather than alone. He lived simply, and approached composing
in the same manner. He was an avid reader. He always remained
thrifty, even after he achieved substantial wealth. In company
Copland could be "almost devilishly
droll" and fun-loving. His tact served him well
in his private life and in his public life as a moderator,
committee man, and teacher. Copland was a constant and diligent
worker and a night owl, who composed primarily at the piano and at
a relatively slow pace. He was careful in assembling and storing
his documents and scores, as well, so he could later find and
re-use earlier ideas and themes.
Deciding not to follow the example of his father, a solid Democrat,
Copland never enrolled as a member of any political party, but he
espoused a general progressive view and had strong ties with
numerous colleagues and friends in the Popular Front, including
Odets. Copland supported the
Communist Party USA ticket during the
1936 presidential
election, at the height of his involvement with
The Group Theater, and remained a
committed opponent of militarism and the Cold War, which he
regarded as having been instigated by the United States. He
condemned it as, "almost worse for art than the real thing". Throw
the artist "into a mood of suspicion, ill-will, and dread that
typifies the cold war attitude and he'll create nothing". In
keeping with these attitudes, Copland was a strong supporter of the
Presidential candidacy of Henry A. Wallace on the Progressive Party
ticket.
As
a result, he was later investigated by the FBI
during the Red scare of
the 1950s and found himself blacklisted.Copland was included
on an FBI list of 151 artists thought to have Communist
associations.
Joseph McCarthy and
Roy Cohn questioned Copland about his
lecturing abroad, neglecting completely Copland's works which made
a virtue of American values. Outraged by the accusations, many
members of the musical community held up Copland's music as a
banner of his patriotism. The investigations ceased in 1955 and
were closed in 1975. Though taxing of his time, energy, and
emotional state, Copland's career and international artistic
reputation were not seriously affected by the McCarthy probes. In
any case, beginning in 1950, Copland, who had been appalled at
Stalin's persecution of Shostakovich and other artists, began
resigning from participation in leftist groups. He decried the lack
of artistic freedom in the Soviet Union and in his 1954 Norton
lecture, asserted that loss of freedom under Soviet Communism
deprived artists of "the immemorial right of the artist to be
wrong". He began to vote Democratic, first for Stevenson and then
Kennedy.
Copland is documented as a homosexual man in author Howard
Pollack's biography,
Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an
Uncommon Man. Like many of his contemporaries he guarded his
privacy, especially in regard to his homosexuality, providing very
few written details about his private life. However, he was one of
the few composers of his stature to live openly and travel with his
lovers, most of whom were talented, much younger men. Among
Copland's love affairs, most of which lasted for only a few years
yet became enduring friendships, were ones with photographer Victor
Kraft, artist
Alvin Ross, pianist Paul
Moor, dancer
Erik Johns, and composer
John Brodbin Kennedy.
Composer
Influences
Copland's earliest musical inclinations as a teenager ran toward
Chopin,
Debussy,
Verdi, and the Russian composers. Some of his
preferences might also have been formed by the anti-German feelings
during World War I, as later he studied German music. Copland's
curiosity about the latest music from
Debussy and
Scriabin was
frustrated by the fact that sheet music for "avant-garde" works was
expensive at that time and hard to come by. So he borrowed these
works from a music library and studied them intensely. Some of his
earliest compositions were songs and piano pieces inspired by these
European influences.
Copland's teacher and mentor
Nadia
Boulanger was his most important influence, having studied with
her in Paris from 1921-1924. In gratitude for the immense support
and promotion on his behalf, he stated to her in 1950: "I shall
count our meeting the most important of my musical life… Whatever I
have accomplished is intimately associated in my mind with those
early years, and with what you have since been as inspiration and
example." Of all her students, she listed Copland first. Copland
especially admired Boulanger's total grasp of all classical music
and was encouraged to experiment and develop a "clarity of
conception and elegance in proportion". Following her model, he
studied all periods of classical music, and all forms—from
madrigals to symphonies. This breadth of vision led Copland to
compose music for numerous settings—orchestra, opera, solo piano,
small ensemble, art song, ballet, theater, and film. Boulanger
particularly emphasized "la grande ligne" (the long line), "a sense
of forward motion…the feeling for inevitability, for the creating
of an entire piece that could be thought of as a functioning
entity".
In discovering
Johann Sebastian
Bach, Copland pointed out: "[Bach has an] inexhaustible wealth
of musical riches, which no music lover can afford to ignore…what
strikes me most markedly about Bach's work is the marvelous
rightness of it. It is the rightness not merely of a single
individual, but a whole musical epoch." Copland stated that an
ideal music might combine
Mozart's
"spontaneity and refinement", with
Palestrina's "purity", and
Bach's "profundity".
Copland
was excited to be so close at hand to the new post-Impressionistic
French music of Ravel, Roussel, and Satie, as well as
The Six, a group that included Milhaud
, Poulenc, and Honegger. Anton
von Webern,
Alban Berg, and
Bela Bartók also impressed him. Copland was
"insatiable" in seeking out the newest European music, whether in
concerts, score reading, or heated debate. These "moderns" were
discarding the old laws of composition and experimenting with new
forms, harmonies, and rhythms, including the use of jazz and
quarter-tone music.
Serge
Koussevitzky had just arrived in Paris and was adding to the
ferment by conducting and promoting the new music of Russia and
France. Later, he would conduct many Copland premieres in New York.
Among the first performances that Copland attended was Milhaud's
Creation of the World, which caused riots in Paris.
Milhaud was his inspiration for some of Copland's earlier "jazzy"
works. Copland was also exposed to Schoenberg, and admired his
earlier atonal pieces, thinking Schoenberg's
Pierrot Lunaire a landmark work
comparable to Stravinsky's "
The Rite
of Spring". Copland even tried out Schoenberg's innovative
twelve-tone system and adapted it to his style.
Above all others, Copland named
Igor
Stravinsky as his "hero" and his favorite twentieth century
composer. Stravinsky was in many ways his premiere model.
Stravinsky's rhythm and vitality is apparent in many of his works.
Copland was especially admiring of Stravinsky's "jagged and uncouth
rhythmic effects," "bold use of dissonance," and "hard, dry,
crackling sonority." Copland was similarly but not quite as
strongly impressed by
Serge
Prokofiev's "fresh, clean-cut, articulate style."
Another inspiration for much of Copland's music was
jazz. Although familiar with jazz back in America,
having listened to it and also played it in bands, he fully
realized its potential while traveling in Austria: "The impression
of jazz one receives in a foreign country is totally unlike the
impression of such music heard in one's own country...when I heard
jazz played in Vienna, it was like hearing it for the first time."
He also found that the distance from his native country helped him
see the United States more clearly. Beginning in 1923, he employed
"jazzy elements" in his classical music, but by the late
1930s, he moved on to Latin and American folk tunes in
his more successful pieces. His earlier works especially
demonstrate the influence of jazz rhythmic, timbral, and harmonic
practices, and that influence is again apparent in a few later
works such as the
Clarinet Concerto commissioned by
Benny Goodman. During the late 1920s
and 1930s, Copland sought out jazz at the Cotton Club and heard
Duke Ellington,
Benny Carter, and
Bix Beiderbecke among others. Of Duke
Ellington among other jazz composers, Copland said he was "the
master of them all".
Although Copland was intrigued by the idea of a "jazz concerto" and
"symphonic jazz", his
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra did
not succeed in that form as had those of Maurice Ravel and George
Gershwin, who was praised by such eminent musical exiles as
Schoenberg, Bartók, and Stravinsky (Gershwin had recently died at
38 and so was no longer a potential rival). Copland would go on to
write extensively and deliver the Norton lectures about jazz in
America, especially the Big Band sound (1930s) and Cool West Coast
Jazz (1950s). Yet, enthusiastic as he was about jazz throughout his
life, Copland also recognized its limitations:
"With the [Piano] Concerto I felt I had done all I
could with the idiom, considering its limited emotional
scope.
True, it was an easy way to be American in musical
terms, but all American music could not possibly be confined to two
dominant jazz moods — the blues and the snappy
number."
Although his early focus of jazz gave way to other influences,
Copland continued to make use of jazz in more subtle ways in later
works. But it was the synthesizing of all his influences and
inclinations which create the "Americanism" of his music. Copland
pointed out in summarizing the American character of his music,
"the optimistic tone", "his love of rather large canvases", "a
certain directness in expression of sentiment", and "a certain
songfulness". As he advanced in his career (by 1941), he said of
himself and advised other composers:
"I no longer feel the need of seeking out conscious
Americanisms [folksongs and folk rhythms].
Because we live here and work here, we can be certain
that when our music is mature it will also be American in
quality."
In contradiction to this statement, however, he continued to look
for and employ folk material for several more years.
Copland's work from the late 1940s onward included experimentation
with
Schönberg's
twelve-tone system, resulting in two major
works, the
Piano Quartet (1950) and the
Piano
Fantasy (1957).
Early work
Copland's earliest compositions before leaving for Paris were short
works for piano and some
art songs,
inspired mostly by Liszt and Debussy. He experimented with
ambiguous beginnings and endings, rapid key changes, and the
frequent use of tritones. His first published work was
The Cat
and the Mouse (1920), a piano solo piece based on a
Jean de la Fontaine fable. In
Three Moods (1921), Copland's final movement is entitled
"Jazzy", which he noted "is based on two jazz melodies and ought to
make the old professors sit up and take notice".
One of Copland's first significant works upon returning from his
studies in Paris was the
necromantic
ballet Grohg. This ballet, suggested
to Copland by the film
Nosferatu,
a free adaptation of the
Dracula tale,
provided the source material for his later
Dance Symphony.
Originally intended as an orchestral exercise while he was studying
in Paris, Copland completed it as a full orchestral score after
returning to New York in 1925. It too had "jazz elements" as did
many of Copland's works in the 1920s.
Copland's
Symphony for Organ and Orchestra (1924) brought
him into contact with
Serge
Koussevitzky, a conductor known as a champion of "new music",
and another figure who would prove to be influential in Copland's
life, perhaps the second most important after Boulanger.
Koussevitzky performed twelve Copland works during his tenure as
conductor of the Boston Symphony. Copland's relationship with
Koussevitzky was apparently unique, as his interpretations of
Copland's works reflected the particular admiration that the latter
had for the young composer. Copland's
Music for the
Theatre (1925) and the
Piano Concerto (1926) were
both composed for Koussevitzky.
Other major works of his first period include the
Piano Variations (1930), and the
Short Symphony (1933). However, this jazz-inspired period
was relatively brief, as his style evolved toward the goal of
writing more accessible works using folk sources.
Popular works
Impressed with the success of Virgil Thompson's "Four Saints in
Three Acts", Copland wrote
El Salón México between 1932
and 1936, which met with popular acclaim, in contrast to the
relative obscurity of most of his previous works. It appears he
intended it to be a popular favorite, as he wrote in 1927: "It
seems a long long time since anyone has written an
Espana
or a
Bolero—the kind of brilliant piece that everyone
loves." Copland derived freely from two collections of Mexican folk
tunes, changing pitches and varying rhythms. The use of a folk tune
with variations set in a symphonic context started a pattern he
repeated in many of his most successful works right on through the
1940s. This work also marked the return of jazz patterns to
Copland's compositional style, though they appeared in a more
subdued form than before and no longer the centerpiece. Chavez
conducted the premiere, and
El Salón México became an
international hit gaining Copland wide recognition.
Copland achieved his first major success in ballet music with his
groundbreaking score
Billy the Kid, based on a Walter
Noble Burns novel, with choreography by Eugene Loring. The ballet
was among the first to display an American music and dance
vocabulary, adapting the "strong technique and intense charm of
Astaire" and other American dancers. It was distinctive in its use
of
polyrhythm and
polyharmony, particularly in the cowboy songs.
The ballet premiered in New York in 1939, with Copland recalling "I
cannot remember another work of mine that was so unanimously
received."
John Martin
wrote, "Aaron Copland has furnished an admirable score, warm and
human, and with not a wasted note about it anywhere." It became a
staple work of the
American
Ballet Theatre, and Copland's twenty minute suite from the
ballet became part of the standard orchestral repertoire. When
asked how a Jewish New Yorker managed so well to capture the Old
West, Copland answered "It was just a feat of imagination."
In the early 1940s, Copland produced two important works intended
as national morale boosters.
Fanfare for the Common Man,
scored for
brass and
percussion, was written in 1942 at the
request of the conductor
Eugene
Goossens, conductor of the
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
It would later be used to open many Democratic National
Conventions, and to add dignity to a wide range of other events.
Even musical groups from
Woody Herman's
jazz band to the
Rolling Stones
adapted the opening theme. The
fanfare was
also used as the main theme of the fourth movement of Copland's
Third Symphony,
where it first appears in a quiet, pastoral manner, then in the
brassier form of the original. In the same year, Copland wrote
A Lincoln Portrait, a
commission from conductor
André
Kostelanetz, leading to a further strengthening in his
association with American patriotic music. The work is famous for
the spoken recitation of Lincoln's words, though the idea had been
previously employed by
John Alden
Carpenter's "Song of Faith" based on
George Washington's quotations. "Lincoln
Portrait" is often performed at national holiday celebrations. Many
Americans have performed the recitation, including politicians,
actors, and musicians and Copland himself, with
Henry Fonda doing the most notable
recording.
Continuing his string of successes, in 1942 Copland composed the
ballet
Rodeo, a tale of a
ranch wedding, written around the same time as
Lincoln Portrait.
Rodeo is
another enduring composition for Copland and contains many
recognizable folk tunes, well-blended with Copland's original
music. Notable in the final movement, is the striking "Hoedown".
This was a recreation of Appalachian fiddler W. M. Stepp's version
of the square-dance tune "Bonypart" ("Bonapart's Retreat"), which
had been transcribed for piano by
Ruth Crawford Seeger and published in
Alan Lomax and Seeger's book,
Our Singing Country (1941).
For the "Hoedown" in
Rodeo Copland borrowed note for note
from Seeger's piano transcription of Stepp's tune. This fragment
(lifted from Ruth Crawford Seeger) is now of the best-known
compositions by any American composer, having been used numerous
times in movies and on television, including commercials for the
American beef industry. The ballet, originally titled "The Courting
at Burnt Ranch", was choreographed by
Agnes de Mille, niece of film giant
Cecil B. DeMille. It premiered at the
Metropolitan Opera on October 16, 1942
with de Mille dancing the principal "cowgirl" role and the
performance received a standing ovation. A reduced score is still
popular as an orchestral piece, especially at "Pops"
concerts.
Copland was commissioned to write another ballet,
Appalachian Spring, originally
written using thirteen instruments, which he ultimately arranged as
a popular
orchestral suite. The
commission for
Appalachian Spring came from
Martha Graham, who had requested of Copland
merely "music for an American ballet". Copland titled the piece
"Ballet for Martha", having no idea of how she would use it on
stage but he had her in mind, "When I wrote ‘Appalachian Spring’ I
was thinking primarily about Martha and her unique choreographic
style, which I knew well…And she's unquestionably very American:
there's something prim and restrained, simple yet strong, about her
which one tends to think of as American." Copland borrowed the
flavor of
Shaker hymns and dances, and
directly used the hymn
Gift to Be Simple. Graham took the
score and created a ballet she called
Appalachian Spring
(from a poem by
Hart Crane which had no
connection with Shakers). It was an instant success, and the music
later acquired the same name. Copland was amused and delighted
later in life when people would come up to him and say: "Mr.
Copland, when I see that ballet and when I hear your music I can
see the Appalachians and just feel spring." Copland had no
particular setting in mind while writing the music, he just tried
to give it an American flavor, and had no knowledge of the borrowed
title.
Symphonic works
Copland composed three numbered symphonies, but applied the word
"symphony" to more than just symphonies of typical structure. He
rewrote his early three-movement
Organ Symphony omitting
the organ, calling the result his
First Symphony. His
fifteen-minute
Short Symphony was the
Second
Symphony, though it also exists as the
Sextet. His
Dance Symphony was hurriedly extracted from the earlier
unproduced ballet
Grohg to meet an
RCA Records commission deadline.
The
Third Symphony
is in the more traditional format (four movements; second movement,
scherzo; third movement, adagio) and is his most famous symphony.
At forty minutes, it is his longest orchestral composition. He
composed it with Koussevitzky's unique character in mind, "I knew
exactly the kind of music he enjoyed conducting and the sentiments
he brought with it, and I knew the sound of his orchestra, so I had
every reason to do my darnedest to write a symphony in the grand
manner." Among the details of interest in the work is Copland's use
of palindromic structure—whole movements as well as melodies end as
they began. Completing the work after World War II was won by the
Allies, he stated that the symphony was "intended to reflect the
euphoric spirit of the country at the time." The work received
generally strong acclaim. Koussevitzky "declared it simply the
greatest American symphony ever written." Arthur Berger stated that
it achieved "a kind of panorama of all the musical resources that
have through the years formed his musical language." While
Leonard Bernstein "deemed it the epitome
of a decades-long search by many composers for a distinctly
American music." It is the best known, most performed, and most
recorded American symphony of the 20th Century.
Later work
Copland's work in the late 1940s and 1950s included use of
Schönberg's
twelve-tone system, a development that he
recognized as important, but which he did not fully embrace. His
first result was his "Piano Quartet" (1950). However, he found the
atonality of serialized music to run counter to his desire to reach
a wide audience. So, in contrast to the Second Viennese School,
Copland's use of the system emphasized the importance of the
"classicalizing principles", in order to prevent the material from
falling into "near-chaos".
In 1951, Copland undertook one of his most challenging works, the
"Piano Fantasy" (1957) which he labored over for several years. It
was a commission for the young virtuoso pianist
William Kapell, who died in 1953 during the
years of the work's development. The piece adapted the
twelve-tone system as a ten-note row, reserving
the last two notes as a tonal resolution and anchor. Critics lauded
the effort, calling the piece "an outstanding addition to his own
oeuvre and to contemporary piano literature" and "a tremendous
achievement". Jay Rosenfield stated, "This is a new Copland to us,
an artist advancing with strength and not building on the past
alone."
Other late works include: "Dance Panels" (1959, ballet music),
"Something Wild" (1961, his last film score), "Connotations" (1962,
for the new Lincoln Center Philharmonic hall), "Emblems" (1964, for
college bands), "Night Thoughts" (1972, for the
Van Cliburn Piano Competition), and
"Proclamation’" (1982, his last work, started in 1973).
Film composer
By the 1930s, Hollywood began to beckon "serious" composers with
promises of better films and higher pay. The reality, however, was
that few found good projects. Copland sought to enter that arena,
as both a challenge for his abilities as a composer and an
opportunity to expand his reputation and audience for his more
serious works. Unlike the total attention he would hope to get from
a concert-goer, Copland wrote that film music had to achieve a
balance. It should be "secondary in importance to the story being
told on the screen" while notably adding to the dramatic and
emotional content of the film—but without diverting the viewer's
attention from the action.
Upon arriving in Hollywood in 1937, he had high hopes, "It is just
a matter of finding a feature film that needs my kind of music."
What he found, however, was the ongoing tendency of studios to edit
and cut movie scores which often subverted a composer's intentions.
No projects seemed suitable at first. But his patience paid off two
years later when Copland found a kindred spirit in director Lewis
Milestone who allowed Copland to supervise his own orchestration
and who refrained from interfering with his work. Copland composed
three of his five film scores for Milestone.
This collaboration resulted in the notable film
Of Mice and Men (1939),
from the novel by
John Steinbeck,
that earned Copland his first nomination for an Academy Award ( he
actually received two nominations, one for "best score and another
for "original score"). He considered himself lucky with his first
film score, "Here was an American theme, by a great American
writer, demanding appropriate music." Having accepted small sums
for other projects in the past, especially to help out
cash-strapped productions involving friends, this time Copland
would capitalize on his efforts, "I thought if I was to sell myself
to the movies, I ought to sell myself good." From then on, he
became one of Hollywood's highest paid film composers, earning as
much as $15,000 per film.
In a departure from other film scores of the time, Copland's work
largely reflected his own style, instead of the usual borrowing
from the late Romantic period. Many silent and early talking films
used classical music themes directly, in the credit sequences as
well as in the film itself. According to Copland's approach,
however, the film score's purpose was more comprehensive and
subtle—to set the atmosphere of time and place, illustrate the
thoughts of the actors, provide continuity and filler, and mold and
heighten emotion and drama. Most of the time he avoided the use of
a full orchestra. Additionally, he rejected the common practice of
using
leitmotiv to identify characters
with their own personal themes, but instead matched a theme to the
action, while avoiding the underlining of every action with
exaggerated emphasis.
Another technique Copland employed was to keep silent during
intimate screen moments and only begin the music as a confirming
motive toward the end of a scene.
Virgil
Thompson wrote that the score for "Of Mice and Men" established
"the most distinguished populist musical style yet created in
America." Many composers who scored for western movies,
particularly between 1940 and 1960, were influenced by Copland's
style, though some also followed the "Max Steiner" approach which
was more bombastic and obvious. As a commentator on film scores,
Copland singled out
Bernard
Herrmann,
Miklós Rózsa,
Alex North, and
Erich Korngold as innovative leaders in the
field.
Copland's score for
The
North Star (1943) was nominated for an
Academy Award and William Wyler's
1949 film,
The
Heiress won the award. Several movie themes he created are
encapsulated in the suite
Music for Movies, and his score
for the film adaptation of
John
Steinbeck's novel
The Red
Pony was given a suite of its own. His score for the 1961
independent film Something Wild was released
in 1964 as
Music For a Great City. Copland also composed
scores for two documentary films,
The City (1939) and
The Cummington Story (1945).
Spike
Lee's
He Got Game (1998) made extensive use of
Copland's music in its film score.
Critic, writer, and teacher
Starting with his first critiques in 1924, Copland began a long
career as music critic, teacher, and observer, mostly of
contemporary classical music. He was an avid lecturer and
lecturer-performer. He wrote reviews of specific works, trends,
composers, festivals, books about music, and recordings. He took on
a wide range of issues from the most general ("Creativity") to the
most practical ("Composer Economics"). Copland also wrote three
books, "What to Listen for in Music (1939)", "Our New Music
(1941)", and "Music and Imagination" (1952). He had a long list of
notable students (see below). Copland put a good deal of time and
energy into supporting young musicians, especially through his
association with the
Berkshire
Music Center at Tanglewood, both as a guest conductor and
teacher. In working with young composers, Copland thought it more
important to focus on expressive content than on technical
points.
Conductor
Copland studied conducting in Paris in 1921, but not until his
involvement conducting his own Hollywood scores, did he undertake
it except out of necessity. On his international travels in the
1940s, however, he began to make appearances as a guest conductor,
performing his own works. By the 1950s, he was conducting the works
of other composers as well. From the 1960s on, he conducted far
more than he composed.
A self-taught conductor, Copland developed a very personal style.
He occasionally asked friend
Leonard
Bernstein for advice. Copland took an understated and
unpretentious approach to conducting and modeled his style after
other composer/conductors such as Stravinsky and Hindemith.
Observers of Copland noted that he had "none of the typical
conductorial vanities". Though his friendly and modest persona, and
his great enthusiasm, were appreciated by professional orchestra
musicians, some criticized his beat as "unsteady" and his
interpretations as "unexciting". Some of his peers, like
Koussevitzky, went even further, advising him to "stay home and
compose". Copland thoroughly enjoyed conducting but admitted that
he did it in part because in the last seventeen years of his life
he felt little inspiration to compose. He was offered "permanent"
conducting posts but preferred to operate as a guest conductor.
Nearly all of Copland's conducting appearances included his own
works, which added to the intoxication of conducting. As he stated,
"Conducting puts one in a very powerful position…Best of all, it is
a use of power for a good purpose." It also allowed him the freedom
to travel which he always enjoyed.
Copland was a strong advocate for newer music and composers, and
his programs always included heavy representation of 20th century
music and lesser-known composers. Performers and audiences
generally greeted his conducting appearances as positive
opportunities to hear his music as the composer intended, but
sometimes found his efforts with other composers to be lacking.
From Copland's point of view, he found both the New York
Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra to be "tough"
groups, resistant to newer music. Newton Mansfield, violinist with
the New York Philharmonic, stated, "The orchestra didn’t take him
too seriously. It was like going out to a nice lunch." Copland also
found resistance from European orchestras; however, he was warmly
received and respected in England. Copland recorded nearly all his
orchestral works with himself conducting.
Awards
- On September 14, 1964, Aaron Copland was presented with the
Presidential Medal of
Freedom by President Lyndon
Johnson.
- In honor of Copland's vast influence on American music, on
December 15, 1970 he was awarded the prestigious University of Pennsylvania
Glee Club Award of Merit . Beginning in 1964, this award
"established to bring a declaration of appreciation to an
individual each year that has made a significant contribution to
the world of music and helped to create a climate in which our
talents may find valid expression."
- Copland was awarded the New York Music Critics’ Circle Award
and the Pulitzer Prize in composition for Appalachian
Spring. His scores for Of Mice and Men (1939),
Our Town (1940), and The North Star (1943) all
received Academy Award nominations, while The Heiress won Best Music in 1950.
- He was
a recipient of Yale
University
's Sanford Medal.
- He was awarded a special Congressional Gold Medal by the
United States Congress in
1987.
Notable students
Selected works
- Scherzo Humoristique: 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 (1927-1929)
- Piano Variations
(1930)
- Grohg (1925/32) (ballet)
- Short Symphony (Symphony No. 2)
(1931-33)
- 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 (1939-41)
- An Outdoor Overture (1941), written for high school
orchestras
- Fanfare for the
Common Man (1942)
- Lincoln Portrait
(1942)
- Rodeo (1942)
(ballet)
- Danzon Cubano (1942)
Film
- 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.
Bibliography
- Copland, Aaron (1939; Revised 1957), What to Listen For in
Music, New York, New York: McGraw-Hill
Book Company, reprinted many times.
- Copland, Aaron (2006). Music and Imagination,
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN
978-0-674-58915-5
References
- Howard Pollack, "Aaron Copland", Henry Holt and Co., New York,
1999, p. 15, ISBN 0-8050-4909-6
- The Rest is Noise: Listening To The Twentieth Century, First
Edition, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007, p.266
- Pollack, p. 26
- Julia Smith, "Aaron Copland", E. P. Dutton & Co., New York,
1953, p. 15
- Pollack, p. 19
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- Berger, Arthur. (1953) Aaron Copland Oxford University
Press
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- Aldrich and Wotherspoon, Who's who in gay and lesbian
history, London, 2000
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- According to Charles Hazlewood in Discovering Music from 32:20 to 33:45
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- Pollack, p. 412
- Pollack, p. 357
- Pollack, p. 358
- Stepp's fiddle tune had been collected in 1937 by Alan and
Elizabeth Lomax and published in Our Singing Country
(1941). See Judith Tick's preface to John A. and Alan Lomax and
Ruth Crawford Seeger's, Our Singing Country Folk Songs and
Ballads (Dover, 2000), p. xvii.
- Smith, p. 193
- Pollack, p. 367
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- Grout, Donald Jay, & Palisca, Claud V. (1996). A History of
Western Music (5th ed.). New York & London: W. W. Norton and
Company.
- Pollack, p. 388
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- Pollack, p. 416
- Pollack, p. 417
- Pollack, p. 418
- Pollack, p. 445
- Pollack, p. 462
- Pollack, p. 482
- Pollack, pp. 484-5
- Pollack, pp. 487-515
- Pollack, p. 336
- Smith, p. 179
- Pollack, p. 348
- Pollack, p. 337
- Pollack, p. 340
- Pollack, p. 343
- Pollack, p. 349
- Pollack, p. 342
- Pollack, p. 350
- Smith, p. 215
- Smith, p. 201
- Pollack, p. 497
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- Smith, pp. 264-5
- Smith, p. 264
- Smith, p. 285
- Smith, p. 290
- Pollack, pp. 534-5
- Pollack, p. 536
- Pollack, p. 537
- Pollack, p. 538
- Pollack, p. 533
- Pollack, p. 535
- Pollack, p. 539
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- Leading clarinetist to receive Sanford
Medal
-
http://clerk.house.gov/art_history/house_history/goldMedal.html
- Carol J. Oja & Judith Tick (Ed.): Aaron Copland and His
World. Princeton University Press 2005
External links
- Listening