Composer, born in New York City, New York, USA. He studied in New York with Rubin Goldmark and in France (19214) with the later-famous pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. Back in New York, he began the wide-ranging activities that would characterize his career: painstaking composition, piano performer, promotion of new music, and teaching. His first successes came from performances of his works by such noted conductors as Walter Damrosch, who premiered the Symphony for Organ and Orchestra (1925), and Serge Koussevitsky, who became a leading champion of the composer. He created and performed new works which he presented in forums, including the Yaddo Festival (founded 1932). He also helped found organizations including the American Composers Alliance and Cos Cob Press, taught at schools including Tanglewood (194065), and wrote a series of books beginning with What to Listen for in Music (1939). After his early jazz-inspired works, including Music for the Theater (1925), and a few severe avant-garde pieces, such as the Piano Variations (1930), his best-known works began with the El Salón México (1936). This work and later pieces, among them the much-loved Appalachian Spring (1944), are marked by a warm and rhythmically lively style based on a sophisticated adaptation of American folk material. He largely retired from composing in the 1970s.
Aaron Copland (November 14, 1900 – December 2, 1990) was an American composer of concert and film music. Copland's music achieved a difficult balance between modern music and American folk styles, and the open, slowly changing harmonies of many of his works are said to evoke the vast American landscape. Outside of composing, Copland often served as a teacher and lecturer.
Biography
Copland was born in Brooklyn, New York, of Lithuanian Jewish descent.
Upon his return from his studies in Paris, he decided that he wanted to write works that were "American in character" and thus he chose jazz as the American idiom.
Many composers rejected the notion of writing music for the elite during the Depression, thus the common American folklore served as the basis for his work along with revival hymns, and cowboy and folk songs. At a time when conservatories were teaching more astringent methods of composition, Copland held onto the respect of academics with the reasonable statement that he wanted to see if he couldn't say what he had to say in the simplest possible terms. Fanfare for the Common Man, perhaps Copland's most famous work, scored for brass and percussion, was written in 1942 at the request of the conductor Eugene Goossens, conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. The fanfare was also used as the main theme of the fourth movement of Copland's Third Symphony, where it first appears in a quiet, pastoral manner, then in the brassier form of the original. The same year Copland wrote A Lincoln Portrait which became popular with the wider public, leading to a strengthening of his association with American music. The ballet Rodeo, a tale of a ranch wedding, written around the same time as Lincoln Portrait (1942) is another enduring composition for Copland, and the "Hoe-Down" from the ballet is one of the most well-known compositions by any American composer, having been used numerous times in movies and on television. In the early to mid 1990s, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association used Hoe-Down as the background music to their "Beef, it's what's for dinner" marketing campaign, and it was also used during the 78th Academy Awards as background music.
Copland composed three numbered symphonies, but applied the word "symphony" to more works than that. That leaves the "Dance Symphony," which Copland had hurriedly extracted from the early unproduced ballet "Grohg" in order to meet a commission from RCA Records.
Copland was an important contributor to the genre of film music; This suite was one of Copland's own favorite scores. Virtually every composer who wrote scores for western movies, especially between 1940 and 1960 was influenced by Copland's style of music. In fact, it is difficult to overestimate the influence Copland has had on film scores.
Having defended the Communist Party USA during the 1936 presidential election, Copland was investigated by the FBI during the red scare of the 1950s. That same year Copland testified before Congress that he was never a Communist. The accusation outraged many members of the musical community, who claimed Copland's patriotism was clearly displayed through his music. Copland's membership in the party was never proven.
A friend of the late Leonard Bernstein, Copland exerted a major influence on Bernstein's composing style. Bernstein was considered the finest conductor of Copland's works. Palmer recorded two songs based on Copland works: "Fanfare for the Common Man" and "Hoe-Down." Several of their live recordings of "Fanfare for the Common Man" incorporated the closing of the second movement of Copland's Third Symphony as well.
Copland died in North Tarrytown, New York (now Sleepy Hollow), on December 2, 1990.
In 2007, Aaron Copland will be inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame.
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