Download Aaron Copland: Essay On An American Legend

Aaron Copland: Essay On An American Legend
Aaron Copland is arguably one of the most important 20th century American
composers. His use of texture and tonal settings have contributed greatly to the way
people think about film scoring and orchestral composition. During his life he was at the
forefront of his style, and his legacy is quite immense, including the founding of not only
the AMC, but also, with his passing, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music. He was at times
a critic, mentor, and above all, a chief organizer of what was and still is “America’s
music”.
Copland was born November 14, 1900 in New York. The son of Jewish
immigrants, his cultural background, as well as his early childhood, contributed greatly to
his musical and business dealings. His father, Harris, came to the United States as a
teenager from Lithuanian Russia, by way of Glasgow and Manchester. It was during this
time that he changed his family name – Kaplan – to the more anglicized Copland.
Aaron’s mother, Sarah Mittenthal, grew up in the Midwest and Texas, moving to New
York in 1881 (Wiki).
Aaron spent his childhood living above his parents Brooklyn department store. It
seems likely that it was in helping to run the shop at this early stage in his life that he
picked up the business skills that would help him through his career as a musician. He
was the youngest of five children, and closest to his sister Laurine, who introduced him to
ragtime and opera. He also began to take a keen interest in the piano at an early age,
making up tunes at age seven, and notating short pieces of music by the time he was
twelve (Pollack).
In 1913 Aaron began taking formal piano lessons from Leopold Wolfsohn, who
introduced him to the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig von Beethoven, and
Frederick Chopin. In 1917, he began studying theory and composition with Rubin
Goldmark, whom he would continue studying with well after he graduated from Boys
High School in 1918. About this time, he also began taking more advanced piano lessons
from Victor Wittgenstein and Clarence Adler, who encouraged him to regularly attend
concerts, operas, and dance recitals. Aaron was also constantly at libraries, studying the
latest American and European scores (Pollack).
In 1921, Copland completed his Piano Sonata as a “graduation” piece for his
piano instructors, as well as his Three Moods for Piano, the first composition of his to
include the use of jazz. Also around this time (shortly before, in fact), The Cat and the
Mouse was published, marking the beginning of young Aaron’s career. The summer of
1921 was spent at the American Conservatory of Fountainebleau, where he studied
composition under Paul Antonin Vidal, and conducting with Albert Wolff.
From 1921 to 1924, Aaron was in Paris, studying piano with Ricardo Vines and
composition with Nadia Boulanger, who was arguably one of the most important of
Copland’s mentors. During his time with her he met many influential artists, most often
during her Wednesday tea parties, something which he described as “a continuing link in
that long tradition of the French intellectual woman in whose salon philosophy was
expounded and political history made” (Pollack). One gentleman in particular was the
author Andre Gide, whose writings perhaps helped to influence Aaron’s political views.
While in Paris, Copland also spent much time in Sylvia Beach’s infamous
bookstore, as well as at classes, museums, plays, ballets, and concerts, which he attended
with his cousin, friend, and roommate Harold Clurman (who would later become a well
known director and drama critic) (Pollack). He also spent much of this time traveling to
England, Belgium, Germany, Austria, and Italy, where he of course examined many
scores, and met many composers. He also began to delve heavily into the works of
Stravinsky, Milhaud, Faure, and Mahler (the latter two he was particularly fond of for
their brilliant use of counterpoint).
It was under the tutelage of Boulanger that Copland produced his first orchestral
score, that of Grohg, a ballet loosely inspired by F. W. Murnau’s film Nosferatu
(Pollack). The piece was completed upon his return to the United States, and shortly
thereafter Boulanger arranged a major premier of his organ concerto, which was
performed by both the New York Symphony Orchestra (conducted by Walter Damroseh)
and the Boston Symphony Orchestra (conducted by Sergey Koussevitzky), which
featured Boulanger as a soloist. The subsequent introduction of Copland to Koussevitzky
(by Boulanger, of course) led to a solid working relationship between the two, resulting
in not only a collaboration on an organ symphony, but also to Koussevitzky’s eventual
performing of roughly twelve of Copland’s compositions, several of which were
commissioned by Sergey himself (Pollack). Koussevitzky was also responsible for
getting Aaron appointed as the assistant director of the Berkshire Music Center, where he
taught during the summer for about 25 years.
In 1925 Copland debuted his rather jazzy Piano Concerto, which met with less
than rave reviews, and he was subsequently forced to live off stipends for his teaching at
the New School for Social Research, the Henry Street Settlement (for whom he
composed his first opera The Second Hurricane), Harvard, and off various grants. He
repeatedly turned down various offers of full time university teaching positions, wanting
instead to live off composing (Pollack).
In keeping with this, Aaron was active in numerous musical organizations. He
was active in the New York League of Composers, and wrote for the publication Modern
Music, among numerous others. From 1928 to 1933 he organized the Copland-Sessions
Concerts (with colleague Roger Sessions) and the Yaddo Festivals, as well as supervising
the Cos Cob Press, a music publisher focusing on modern American Music. He was also
the head of the ACA from 1939-1945, and co-founded the AMC, which helped not only
his own career, but also those of his numerous peers, including the legendary Charles
Ives.
As a brief aside, Copland once compared Ives to popular art of the time, saying of
Central Park in the Dark that, “The effect is almost that of musical cubism, since the
music seems to exist independently on different planes. This so called musical
perspective makes use of musical realism in order to create an impressionistic effect.”
Ives was not only a huge influence on Copland, but on many other generations of
composers yet to come (Levin 10).
Aaron Copland was a mentor to many, from Israel Citkowitz, to Elliot Cart,
Schuman and Bernstein to Irving Fine, Roy Harris to Michael Tilson Thomas. His books,
What to listen for in Music and Our New Music, as well as his published lectures and
collected essays are still widely read today, and are often compared to Igor Stravinsky’s
Poetics and Hindemith’s Composer’s World. He also co-authored an informative
biography with the author Vivian Parlis (Pollack).
For most of the 1930s through the mid ‘40s, Copland lived and traveled with his
companion Victor Kraft. He was often discreet about his private life, and fortunately (for
as close minded as many people can be), not much was ever really made into a public
spectacle, save for during the red scare, when his political views were dragged into the
open. The Great Depression led to an increase in Aaron’s socialist views, and he was
eventually put before a closed hearing of the Congressional Sub Committee on
communism, and was even one of the many artists blacklisted. Despite this, he staunchly
denied any ties to the communist party, and managed to escape the ordeal relatively
unscathed, without incriminating any of his friends and colleagues (a difficult feat at the
time) (Pollack).
Stepping back a page, in the late 30s and early 40s Copland’s ballets, patriotic
works, and light effort met with great success, with Appalachian Spring winning a
Pulitzer Prize and the New York Music Critics’ Circle award. In 1939 he wrote the film
score for the documentary The City (which was commissioned for the New York World’s
Fair). This led to another documentary and six Hollywood film scores, four of which
were nominated for Academy Awards, with 1949’s The Heiress actually taking home the
Oscar. It is often said that Copland “introduced Hollywood to the Modernist idiom”
(Pollack).
Around this time Aaron began traveling in South America for the Coordinator of
Inter-American Affairs and the State Department, for whome he reported on the musical
conditions of Latin America. He also forged numerous friendships with various Latin
American composers. Their compositions and musical ideas would influence much of his
work, including El Salon Mexico and Three Latin American Sketches (one of his last
pieces).
By the late 40s Copland was considered one of the foremost American composers
of modern music, and in 1947 he left his longtime home of Manhattan, settling in a
converted barn in Ossining New York, where he lived until 1961, when he moved to
Rockhill (the town in which he lived until his death in 1990) (Wiki). In 1951 he became
the first American composer to be designated Harvard’s Norton Professor of Poetics, and
in ’54 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters (with a gold medal in
’56, and a brief presidency in ’71) (Pollack).
In ’61 Copland was given the MacDowell medal, and the Presidential Medal of
Freedom in ’64. In 1979 he was awarded the Kennedy Center Honor, and in ’86 the
Congressional gold medal, the Medal of the Arts, and several honorary doctorates. By
this time he was also internationally celebrated, with memberships and fellowships in
academies across England, Italy, Argentina, and Chile (Pollack), and in 1981 the School
of Music at Queens College, CUNY was renamed the Aaron Copland School of Music.
1958 brought Aaron Copland’s conducting debut with the New York
Philharmonic Orchestra, and he continued conducting internationally for more than
twenty years. His concerts almost always featured his own music, as well as programs of
more than 80 other composers. He often recorded his own works, mainly orchestral,
though he did record some piano music. Copland was never a big fan of the idea of
anyone making a “definitive recording” of his own work, and preferred instead that his
own recordings show his progression as both a composer and a conductor (Pollack).
Copland’s first opera, The Second Hurricane is a setting of a libretto by the
famous dance critic Edwin Denby, and was written with the students of the Henry Street
Settlement in mind. It is a story of cooperation between children of different races In the
face of a natural disaster. Leonard Bernstein prepared a televised version in 1960, which
he conducted and narrated the recording of. The plot and structure of the piece are
simple, designed to be accessible to high school and college theater groups, as well as to
theater workshops.
The Great Depression had a profound effect on the way Copland and many other
composers viewed music. They were no longer writing for the wealthy elite, and instead
began writing for the common man (Wiki). Many of his post-Great Depression pieces
focused on folk melodies and simpler ideals, abandoning much of the jazz feel evident in
Copland’s earlier works. His only full length opera The Tender Land was commissioned
for television, but eventually rejected. Written around a libretto by Horace Everett, the
play is set in the Midwest during the depression, and addresses the concept of rebellion
and the budding sexuality of a young adolescent girl. The piece was first performed by
the New York City Opera in April of 1954 (Pollack). Copland always said he regretted
not writing a “grand opera”.
Many of Copland’s ballets and operas dealt with the ideas of young people
coming of age, but in a way that was uniquely American. His music idealized America,
with the sounds of wide open spaces featured in Billy the Kid, Rodeo, Appalachian
Spring, and Our Town Suite. Much of his later music was also heavily influenced by the
folk sounds of Mexico, in particular his El Salon Mexico. His main ballets, while similar
in setting (the vast open lands of the west), were distinct in plot. Billy the Kid is of course
a tale of the wild west, idealizing the dramatic and exciting nature of the times.
Appalachian Spring is a heartfelt American love story, and Rodeo is somewhat of a
cutesy romantic comedy of the times.
Also, in keeping with a tradition favored by Charles Ives, Elliot Carter, and many
others, Copland occasionally used popular American folk tunes in his music. 1934’s Hear
Ye! Hear Ye!, a parody on the court system of the United States includes the Star
Spangled Banner, and an old folk tune from the American Revolution was used in The
Second Hurricane. Other pieces also quote things like Amazing Grace, as well as various
obscure Mexican folk tunes.
Billy the Kid was a work that drew that tradition in numerous ways. The ballet,
which was commissioned by the director of Ballet Caravan, featured cowboy songs, and
drew heavily on a book titled The Saga of Billy the Kid (of course about the legendary
William Bonney) (Levin 78). Appalachian Spring followed in a similar vein as well,
drawing for its inspiration upon a Shaker tune – Simple Gifts (Levin 99).
Copland was also no stranger to reusing pieces of his own works, including
refashioning parts of his first ballet into various other pieces (which weren’t released
until after his passing). His compositions were numerous, including several orchestral
works in the “grand manner”, chamber music featuring a combination of strings and
piano, choral works, and solo piano compositions. The most imposing of his work are
considered to be his solo piano compositions, including Variations, Sonata, and Fantasy,
all of which are beautiful pieces. Much of his work was not only important musically, but
also strong personal, emotional statements (Pollack).
From the beginning, Copland did an amazing job of balancing his modern ideas
with simple, pleasing folk melodies. His slow, open harmonies conjure up images of the
American landscape, while many of his compositions feature percussive, jazzy
orchestration, rapidly changing meters, polyrhythms, polychords, and tone rows (a rather
modern, often dissonant idea) (Wiki). The jazzy aspects of his work were always masked
by his uniquely American sound. For every odd harmony in a piece like his Piano
Variations, there was a Fanfare for the Common Man, so brilliantly steeped not only in
the sound of Americana, but also in populist ideal.
1934 found Aaron Copland giving speeches in support of farmers in Minnesota,
composing pieces such as Into the Street May First, and writing articles in publications
such as The New Masses. It seems fitting that a composer so dedicated to the idea of
America and its folk tradition would write an article concerning so called “proletarian
music”. Upon traveling to Mexico, he was inspired not only by the music of the people,
but also of the socialist government, and it is known he dreamt of traveling to the Soviet
Union (Pollack).
As Copland’s amount of conducting increased, so his composing work decreased.
After 1972 he composed very little, and he finally succumbed to Alzheimer’s by the mid
80s. In 1990, just a few short weeks after his 90th birthday, Aaron Copland died of
complications related to pneumonia. His legacy and influence are far reaching, and can
be seen with just a quick overview of his works.
Of Aaron Copland’s ballets, Grohg, Billy the Kid, Rodeo, Appalachian Spring,
and Dance Panels, an “homage to the waltz” are his most noteworthy. His orchestral
works are numerous, and include the grand Symphonic Ode, the Third Symphony,
Connotations, and Inscape. Some of his most popular were the lighter works Lincoln
Portrait (a piece that was once withdrawn from a presidential inaugural concert due to
suspicion over Copland’s dubious political views), El Salon Mexico, and Music for the
Theatre. His chamber music is also quite beautiful and moving, and includes TrioVitebsk, a piece inspired by Ansky’s The Dybbuk. In addition to the numerous well
known and difficult piano solo pieces previously mentioned, Copland also wrote the now
famous piece for voice and piano Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson, which as the title
suggests draws on twelve of Dickinson’s famous poems. Also, in addition to his
numerous musical scores, there are also Copland’s well known (though somewhat less
numerous) literary works (Pollack).
In 1995, five years after his death, the Library of Congress opened their collection
of Copland’s works to the public. His tremendous talent and concept of American music
and Americana in general have heavily influenced many composers, from his
contemporaries through to modern times, and that legacy surely will continue well into
the future. As important as composers such as Charles Ives, John Cage, and Elliot Carter
are to the idea of the sound of American music, Aaron Copland’s sound is by far one of
the most definitive. It would serve well for future generations to remember this man, and
to reflect heavily on all he has given to the musical world.
Bibliography
1. Pollack, Howard: 'Copland, Aaron', Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed
12 May, 2007), http://www.grovemusic.com
2. Author Unknown: 'Aaron Copland', Wikipedia.com (Accessed 18 May, 2007),
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copland%2C_Aaron
3. Levin, Gail; Tick, Judith. ‘Aaron Copland’s America’. Watson-Guptill
Publications, New York, 2000.