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AARON COPLAND (1900-1990)
Aaron Copland was the pioneer of American music -- he showed the world how
to write classical music in an American way. He was born in 1900, when
Americans were rarely recognized as composers in the music world. So Copland
went to Europe for serious study, and, in the 1920s, wrote pieces with the flavor
of jazz. European classical composers were also influenced by jazz at this time,
as they were searching for new ways to bring their music into the 20th century.
Copland's early works Grohg and Music for the Theatre show jazz influence. But
he was soon to shed this in favor of strictly classical yet modernist works. With
the great depression of the 1930s, when millions of Americans were unable to
find work, the appeal of abstract music began to wane. So beginning in 1938,
Copland produced a series of ballets that were to be widely heard and musically
influential: Billy the Kid (a ballet about a legendary western outlaw, complete with
cowboy songs, commissioned in 1938 by Kirstein for Eugene Loring), Rodeo
(another Wild West ballet, about a cowgirl's search for a man) and Appalachian
Spring (commissioned by the choreographer Martha Graham). When World War
II began, the Cincinnati Symphony needed a patriotic American hero, and
Copland -- by now one of the most famous composers in America -- wrote A
Lincoln Portrait. For the same orchestra, he created his noble Fanfare for the
Common Man.
While Copland never abandoned the more adventurous style (including, later in
his life, twelve-tone composition), he is best remembered, and justly so, for
creating a truly American symphonic style. Over the course of his life he not only
served as a trendsetter, but also played an important role in the development of
younger composers at places such as the Berkshire Music Center. He was, in
fact, the musical father to more than one generation of young composers.
Adapted from: http://www.essentialsofmusic.com/composer/copland.html