Aaron Copland (1900–1990) was born on November 14, 1900, in Brooklyn, New York, the youngest of five children in a Jewish immigrant family. His first musical experiences came from his older sister Laurine, who gave him basic piano lessons.
By age fifteen, he had decided to pursue music seriously. He immersed himself in opera scores and self-taught harmony exercises. In 1917 he began studying with Rubin Goldmark, a teacher who had trained under Dvořák. Goldmark gave him a firm grounding in traditional harmony and counterpoint.
Copland traveled to Paris in 1921 to study at the newly founded American Conservatory in Fontainebleau. There he met Nadia Boulanger, the brilliant pedagogue who became his most important mentor. He stayed with her for three years.
Boulanger taught some of the most important composers and performers of the 20th century. Though she composed, conducted, and performed, it was as a teacher of prodigious knowledge that she made her mark. Copland recalled that “she had but one all-embracing principle … the creation of what she called la grande ligne – the long line in music.”
Boulanger’s wide circle of artists and intellectuals introduced Copland to European modernism, but she also encouraged him to find his own voice. It was in Paris that Copland began to realize the importance of writing music that reflected his American identity. He returned to the United States in 1924.
During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Copland experimented with abstract styles, using dissonance and complex rhythms. Works such as the Piano Variations (1930) demonstrated his command of modernist techniques but also failed to find a wide audience.
The great depression of the 1930s caused him to rethink his role as a composer. He wanted his music to speak more directly to ordinary Americans rather than only to elite circles. This decision ushered in his most famous and enduring works.
The first work that sounds like the music of Copland, who became an American icon, was the Symphony No. 2 – A Short Symphony (it’s only about 15 minutes long). Composed from 1931 to 1933, it still retains many modernist characteristics, but it also heralds the popular style that was soon to emerge.
In the mid-1930s, he began to incorporate American folk melodies, open harmonies, and clear textures into his compositions. Pieces like “El Salón México” (1936), based on Mexican folk tunes, showcased his new approach to composition. The 1940s marked the pinnacle of Copland’s career, when he wrote the ballets that would cement his reputation as the quintessential American composer. Billy the Kid (1938), Rodeo (1942), and Appalachian Spring (1944) blend folk tunes, cowboy songs, and Shaker hymns with Copland’s distinctive open-interval harmonies.
Below is the finale to Billy the Kid. It was commissioned by Lincoln Kirstein and choreographed by Eugene Loring for Ballet Caravan.
Rodeo is a ballet composed by Copland and choreographed by Agnes de Mille, which premiered in 1942. Below is the Hoe Down from that ballet.
Appalachian Spring was created by the choreographer Martha Graham and Copland, and was later arranged as an orchestral work. First performed in 1944, it earned Copland the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Shaker themes influenced the ballet, notably in the music, where Copland incorporated a theme and variations on the common Shaker tune ‘Simple Gifts’.
Copland wrote his Fanfare for the Common Man in 1942. The theme became the backbone for his Symphony No. 3. It’s in all the movements, but forms the basis for the fourth movement. First, the fanfare followed by the fourth movement.
Copland’s populist style was perfect for film music. His scores for Of Mice and Men (1939), Our Town (1940), and The Heiress (1949, which won him an Academy Award), demonstrated his ability to translate psychological nuance into music. Copland’s film work influenced generations of Hollywood composers, including Elmer Bernstein and John Williams, who adopted his expansive, open-air sound for Westerns and epic dramas.
By the late 1940s and 1950s, Copland felt that his populist style had run its course. This was, at least in part, a response to his less successful contemporaries who accused him of selling out to popular taste. In other words, writing music that people wanted to hear. So, he returned to 12-tone serialism and other advanced techniques that earned him cartel among his colleagues, but which audiences disdained.
He largely stopped composing after 1972, though he continued to conduct and lecture. In his later years he suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. He died on December 2, 1990, in North Tarrytown (now Sleepy Hollow), New York, at the age of 90.
That a gay Jewish son of immigrant parents born in Brooklyn with far-left politics could write music that defines Americana is one of those mysteries of art that defy explanation. Nevertheless, Copland’s music, at its best, expresses the essence of America in a way unique in American music.
Below is a computer generated timeline of Copland’s life and career.
Aaron Copland: A Timeline
1900 – Born November 14 in Brooklyn, New York, to Harris Morris and Sarah Mittenthal Copland.
1914–1917 – Begins piano lessons with his sister Laurine, later studies harmony with Rubin Goldmark in New York.
1921 – Travels to Paris to study at the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau. Becomes a pupil of Nadia Boulanger, who becomes his lifelong mentor.
1924 – Symphony for Organ and Orchestra premiered in New York, with Boulanger as soloist.
1925 – Composes Music for the Theatre, blending jazz idioms with orchestral writing.
1926 – Concerto for Piano and Orchestra premieres, incorporating jazz elements.
1930 – Writes the Piano Variations, a stark, modernist work that establishes him as a serious avant-garde composer.
1933 – Helps found the American Composers’ Alliance, promoting contemporary American music.
1936 – Composes El Salón México, inspired by Mexican folk music.
1938 – Ballet Billy the Kid premieres, bringing Copland national fame.
1939–1940 – Writes acclaimed film scores: Of Mice and Men (1939) and Our Town (1940).
1942 – Fanfare for the Common Man premiered by the Cincinnati Symphony; Lincoln Portrait also written this year.
1942 – Ballet Rodeo premieres, choreographed by Agnes de Mille, featuring the famous “Hoe-Down.”
1944 – Appalachian Spring, composed for Martha Graham, premieres; wins the Pulitzer Prize in 1945.
1949 – Wins Academy Award for Best Original Score for The Heiress.
1950 – Writes Piano Quartet, using twelve-tone technique.
1953 – Called before Congress during the McCarthy hearings about alleged communist sympathies.
1962 – Connotations for orchestra premieres at the opening of Lincoln Center, using serial techniques.
1964 – Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Lyndon B. Johnson.
1965 – Composes Inscape, one of his last major orchestral works.
1972 – Ceases composing new music but continues to conduct and lecture widely.
1979 – Receives Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime achievement.
1980s – Health declines due to Alzheimer’s disease.
1990 – Dies on December 2 in North Tarrytown (Sleepy Hollow), New York, at age 90.
