Download Aaron Copland Biography

Aaron Copland Biography
Aaron Copland was born in Brooklyn, New York, of
Lithuanian Jewish descent. His father's surname was "Kaplan"
before he anglicized it to "Copland" while in England, before
emigrating to the United States. He spent his childhood living above his parents'
Brooklyn shop. Although his parents never encouraged or directly exposed him to music,
at the age of 15 he had already taken an interest in the subject and aspired to be a
composer. His musical education included time with Leopold Wolfsohn, Rubin Goldmark
(also one of George Gershwin's teachers), and Nadia Boulanger at the Fontainebleau
School of Music in Paris from 1921 to 1924. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship
in 1925 and again in 1926.
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.
His first significant work was the necromantic ballet Grohg which contributed thematic
material to his later Dance Symphony. Other major works of his first (austere) period
include the Short Symphony (1933), Music for Theater (1925) and the Piano Variations
(1930). However, this jazz-inspired period was brief, as his style evolved toward the goal
of writing more accessible works.
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. His second (vernacular) period began
around 1936 with Billy the Kid and El Salon Mexico. 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. It would later be used to open many Democratic National
Conventions. 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. He was commissioned to write a ballet, Appalachian Spring, which later
he arranged as a popular orchestral suite. 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 wellknown 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. He rewrote his early three-movement "Organ
Symphony" to leave out the organ part, calling the result his First Symphony. His fifteenminute "Short Symphony" was the Second Symphony, though it also exists as the
"Sextet." The Third Symphony is more traditional in form (four movements of which the
second is a scherzo and the third is an adagio) and length (approximately forty-five
minutes). 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; his score for
William Wyler's The Heiress (1949) won an Academy Award. Several of the themes he
created are encapsulated in the suite Music for Movies, and his score for the film of
Steinbeck's novel The Red Pony was given a suite of its own. This suite was one of
Copland's own favorite scores. Posthumously, his music was used to score Spike Lee's
1998 film, He Got Game, which included a basketball game in a neighborhood court
being set to Hoe-Down. It is difficult to overestimate the influence Copland has had on
film scores. Virtually every composer who wrote scores for western movies, especially
between 1940 and 1960, was influenced by Copland's style.
Having defended the Communist Party USA during the 1936 presidential election,
Copland was investigated by the FBI during the red scare of the 1950s. He was
blacklisted, and in 1953 "A Lincoln Portrait" was pulled from President Eisenhower's
inaugural concert due to the political climate. 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. The investigation ceased to be active in 1955 and was closed in 1975.
Copland was
never shown to be a
member of the
Communist Party.
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. British
progressive rock
band Emerson, Lake &
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.
Copland won the Pulitzer Prize in composition for "Appalachian Spring." In 2007,
he will be inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame. He
is also a past recipient (1970) of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia's
distinguished Charles E. Lutton Man of Music Award.