query: What was Aaron Copland's most famous piece of music?

title: Connotations (Copland)

text: Connotations (Copland) Connotations is a classical music composition for symphony orchestra written by American composer Aaron Copland. Commissioned by Leonard Bernstein in 1962 to commemorate the opening of Philharmonic Hall (now David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts) in New York City, United States, this piece marks a departure from Copland's populist period, which began with "El Salón México" in 1936 and includes the works he is most famous for such as "Appalachian Spring", "Lincoln Portrait" and "Rodeo". It represents a return to a more dissonant style of composition in which Copland wrote from the end of

title: Aaron Copland

text: used with contemporary rhythms, textures and structures. In what could seem contradictory, he used complex harmonies and rhythms to simplify folk melodies and make them more accessible and familiar to his listeners. Except for the Shaker tune in "Appalachian Spring", Copland often syncopates traditional melodies, changes their metric patterns and note values. In "Billy the Kid", he derives many of the work's sparse harmonies from the implied harmonic constructions of the cowboy tunes themselves. Like Stravinsky, Copland mastered the ability to create a coherent, integrated composition from what was essentially a mosaic of divergent folk-based and original elements. In that

title: Aaron Copland

text: sense, Copland's Populist works such as "Billy the Kid", "Rodeo", "Appalachian Spring" are not far removed from Stravinsky's ballet "The Rite of Spring". Within that framework, however, Copland preserved the American atmosphere of these ballets through what musicologist Elliott Antokoletz calls "the conservative handling of open diatonic sonorities," which fosters "a pastoral quality" in the music. This is especially true in the opening of "Appalachian Spring", where the harmonizations remain "transparent and bare, suggested by the melodic disposition of the Shaker tune." Variations which contrast to this tune in rhythm, key, texture and dynamics, fit within Copland's compositional practice of

title: Aaron Copland

text: to write the ballet score "Billy the Kid", which became, in Pollack's words, an "archetypical depiction of the legendary American West." Based on a Walter Noble Burns novel, with choreography by Eugene Loring, "Billy" was among the first to display an American music and dance vocabulary. Copland used six cowboy folk songs to provide period atmosphere and employed polyrhythm and polyharmony when not quoting these tunes literally to maintain the work's overall tone. In this way, Copland's music worked much in the same way as the murals of Thomas Hart Benton, in that it employed elements that could be grasped

title: Aaron Copland

text: which the composer labeled his "vernacular" style. Works in this vein include the ballets "Appalachian Spring", "Billy the Kid" and "Rodeo", his "Fanfare for the Common Man" and Third Symphony. In addition to his ballets and orchestral works, he produced music in many other genres including chamber music, vocal works, opera and film scores. After some initial studies with composer Rubin Goldmark, Copland traveled to Paris, where he first studied with Isidor Philipp and Paul Vidal, then with noted pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. He studied three years with Boulanger, whose eclectic approach to music inspired his own broad taste. Determined upon

title: Aaron Copland

text: Walter Piston, William Schuman, and Virgil Thomson also composed pieces for the Museum's Centennial exhibitions. From the 1960s, Copland turned increasingly to conducting. Though not enamored with the prospect, he found himself without new ideas for composition, saying, "It was exactly as if someone had simply turned off a faucet." He became a frequent guest conductor in the United States and the United Kingdom and made a series of recordings of his music, primarily for Columbia Records. In 1960, RCA Victor released Copland's recordings with the Boston Symphony Orchestra of the orchestral suites from "Appalachian Spring" and "The Tender Land";

title: Program music

text: audiences continued to enjoy such pieces as Arthur Honegger's depiction of a steam locomotive in "Pacific 231". Indeed, Percy Grainger's incomplete orchestral fragment "Train Music" employs the same function. This music for large orchestra depicts a train moving in the mountains of Italy. Music that is composed to accompany a ballet is often program music, even when presented separately as a concert piece. Aaron Copland was amused when a listener said that when she listened to "Appalachian Spring" she "could "see" the Appalachians and "feel" Spring", the title having been a last-minute thought, but it is certainly program music. Film

title: Aaron Copland

text: easily by a mass audience. The ballet premiered in New York in 1939, with Copland recalling "I cannot remember another work of mine that was so unanimously received." Along with the ballet "Rodeo", "Billy the Kid" became, in the words of musicologist Elizabeth Crist, "the basis for Copland's reputation as a composer of Americana" and defines "an uncomplicated form of American nationalism." Copland's brand of nationalism in his ballets differed from that of European composers such as Béla Bartók, who tried to preserve the folk tones they used as close to the original as possible. Copland enhanced the tunes he

title: Aaron Copland School of Music

text: Salzer, a refugee from Austria who was a student of the theorist Heinrich Schenker and became the leading exponent of his ideas to generations of American students and scholars; and the distinguished composers Hugo Weisgall and George Perle. http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/music/index.php?L=1&M=2 Aaron Copland School of Music The Aaron Copland School of Music is one of the oldest and most distinguished departments at Queens College, founded when the College opened in 1937. The department's curriculum was originally established by Edwin Stringham, and a later emphasis on the analytical system of Heinrich Schenker was initiated by Saul Novack. Some of the students who enrolled

title: Aaron Copland School of Music

text: Aaron Copland School of Music The Aaron Copland School of Music is one of the oldest and most distinguished departments at Queens College, founded when the College opened in 1937. The department's curriculum was originally established by Edwin Stringham, and a later emphasis on the analytical system of Heinrich Schenker was initiated by Saul Novack. Some of the students who enrolled in early classes of the college later became faculty members of the department. This included Sol Berkowitz, Gabriel Fontrier, Leo Kraft. Other distinguished faculty from the early years included John Castellini, who founded the Choral Society; Boris Schwarz, a

title: Aaron Copland

text: Aaron Copland Aaron Copland (; November 14, 1900December 2, 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later a conductor of his own and other American music. Copland was referred to by his peers and critics as "the Dean of American Composers." The open, slowly changing harmonies in much of his music are typical of what many people consider to be the sound of American music, evoking the vast American landscape and pioneer spirit. He is best known for the works he wrote in the 1930s and 1940s in a deliberately accessible style often referred to as "populist" and

title: Aaron Copland

text: needed... Aaron brought leanness to America, which set the tone for our musical language throughout [World War II]. Thanks to Aaron, American music came into its own." Aaron Copland's music has served as the inspiration for a number of popular modern works of music: Citations Bibliography Aaron Copland Aaron Copland (; November 14, 1900December 2, 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later a conductor of his own and other American music. Copland was referred to by his peers and critics as "the Dean of American Composers." The open, slowly changing harmonies in much of his music are

title: Aaron Copland

text: strongest connection with Aaron; she gave him his first piano lessons, promoted his musical education, and supported him in his musical career. A student at the Metropolitan Opera School and a frequent opera-goer, Laurine also brought home libretti for Aaron to study. Copland attended Boys High School and in the summer went to various camps. Most of his early exposure to music was at Jewish weddings and ceremonies, and occasional family musicales. Copland began writing songs at the age of eight and a half. His earliest notated music, about seven bars he wrote when age 11, was for an opera

title: Aaron Copland

text: actually studied with him were small in number and did so for only brief periods; rather, Copland helped younger composers more informally, with intermittent advice and aid." This advice included focusing on expressive content rather than on purely technical points and on developing a personal style. Copland's willingness to foster talent extended to critiquing scores in progress that were presented to him by his peers. Composer William Schuman writes, "As a teacher, Aaron was extraordinary... Copland would look at your music and try to understand what "you" were after [italics Schuman]. He didn't want to turn you into another Aaron

title: Aaron Copland House

text: Aaron Copland House The Aaron Copland House, also known as Rock Hill or Copland House, is the former home of composer Aaron Copland for the last 30 years of his life, and now also a creative center for American music. Located on Washington Street in Cortlandt Manor, New York, United States. Built in the 1940s, the house and its garage were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003, and five years later, in 2008, they were designated a National Historic Landmark, the only one in the country connected to a figure from the world of classical music.

title: Connotations (Copland)

text: the Orchestre National de France (no longer available). More recently, The Juilliard Orchestra recorded the work under the direction of Sixten Ehrling for New World Records. Citations Bibliography Connotations (Copland) Connotations is a classical music composition for symphony orchestra written by American composer Aaron Copland. Commissioned by Leonard Bernstein in 1962 to commemorate the opening of Philharmonic Hall (now David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts) in New York City, United States, this piece marks a departure from Copland's populist period, which began with "El Salón México" in 1936 and includes the works he is most famous

title: Aaron Copland

text: Mexico" dancehall where he witnessed a more intimate view of Mexico's nightlife. Copland derived his melodic material for this piece freely from two collections of Mexican folk tunes, changing pitches and varying rhythms. The use of a folk tune with variations set in a symphonic context started a pattern he repeated in many of his most successful works right on through the 1940s. It also marked a shift in emphasis from a unified musical structure to the rhetorical effect the music might have on an audience and showed Copland refining a simplified, more accessible musical language. "El Salón" prepared Copland

title: Aaron Copland House

text: was not running properly, among other problems. The Copland Heritage Association, newly formed to manage the house, decided to sell it. But residents of the Town of Cortlandt organized a grassroots effort to save it. As a result, the association was able to raise the $150,000 necessary for repairs. The town worked out an arrangement where it owns the house and leases it to the Copland Heritage Association (now Copland House, Inc.) for $1 a year. Once that was concluded, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, executor of the composer's estate, and the town worked out the details of the

title: Aaron Copland

text: music, "the optimistic tone", "his love of rather large canvases", "a certain directness in expression of sentiment", and "a certain songfulness". While "Copland's musical rhetoric has become iconic" and "has functioned as a mirror of America," conductor Leon Botstein suggests that the composer "helped define the modern consciousness of America's ideals, character and sense of place. The notion that his music played not a subsidiary but a central role in the shaping of the national consciousness makes Copland uniquely interesting, for the historian as well as the musician." Composer Ned Rorem states, "Aaron stressed simplicity: Remove, remove, remove what isn't

title: Aaron Copland

text: Copland revised his text "The New Music" with comments on the styles that he encountered. He found much of what he heard dull and impersonal. Electronic music seemed to have "a depressing sameness of sound," while aleatoric music was for those "who enjoy teetering on the edge of chaos." As he summarized, "I've spent most of my life trying to get the right note in the right place. Just throwing it open to chance seems to go against my natural instincts." In 1952, Copland received a commission from the League of Composers, funded by a grant from Richard Rodgers and

title: Aaron Copland House

text: composer-in-residence program. Under the program, American composers who apply and are approved get three-to-eight-week stays in the house, with an allowance for food and the use of a car, while they work. They may share the house with spouses or partners, but not children or dogs. Allen Shearer was the first composer in residence in late 1998. Others have included Richard Danielpour, Derek Bermel, Robert Paterson, and Judith Lang Zaimont. Aaron Copland House The Aaron Copland House, also known as Rock Hill or Copland House, is the former home of composer Aaron Copland for the last 30 years of his

title: Aaron Copland

text: and Washington Avenue, and most of the children helped out in the store. His father was a staunch Democrat. The family members were active in Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes, where Aaron celebrated his Bar Mitzvah. Not especially athletic, the sensitive young man became an avid reader and often read Horatio Alger stories on his front steps. Copland's father had no musical interest. His mother, Sarah Mittenthal Copland, sang, played the piano, and arranged for music lessons for her children. Of his siblings, oldest brother Ralph was the most advanced musically, proficient on the violin. His sister Laurine had the

title: Aaron Copland

text: structural point of view. From the 1960s onward, Copland's activities turned more from composing to conducting. He became a frequent guest conductor of orchestras in the U.S. and the UK and made a series of recordings of his music, primarily for Columbia Records. Aaron Copland was born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 14, 1900. He was the youngest of five children in a Conservative Jewish family of Lithuanian origins. While emigrating from Russia to the United States, Copland's father, Harris Morris Copland, lived and worked in Scotland for two to three years to pay for his boat fare to

title: Aaron Copland

text: his quest to take up the slogan of the Stieglitz group, "Affirm America," Copland found only the music of Carl Ruggles and Charles Ives upon which to draw. Without what Copland called a "usable past," he looked toward jazz and popular music, something he had already started to do while in Europe. In the 1920s, George Gershwin, Bessie Smith, and Louis Armstrong were in the forefront American popular music and jazz. By the end of the decade, Copland felt his music was going in a more abstract, less jazz-oriented direction. However, as large swing bands such as those of Benny

title: Aaron Copland

text: the US. It was there that Copland's father may have Anglicized his surname "Kaplan" to "Copland", though Copland himself believed for many years that the change had been due to an Ellis Island immigration official when his father entered the country. Copland was however unaware until late in his life that the family name had been Kaplan, and his parents never told him this. Throughout his childhood, Copland and his family lived above his parents' Brooklyn shop, H.M. Copland's, at 628 Washington Avenue (which Aaron would later describe as "a kind of neighborhood Macy's"), on the corner of Dean Street

title: Inscape (Copland)

text: premiere: "Aaron, it's amazing how, even when you compose in a completely 'foreign' idiom the music still comes out sounding like you." "The writing," also, "bears the unmistakable imprint of Copland's mature personality, in its wide spacing, its spare, lucid textures, often in just two or three parts, and lithe, cumulative rhythms." Inscape (Copland) Inscape is a 1967 musical composition for orchestra by Aaron Copland, approximately twelve to thirteen minutes in length, and commissioned by and dedicated to the New York Philharmonic for its 125th anniversary (see also "Capriccio burlesco"). Composed using the twelve-tone technique, the piece has been considered

title: Inscape (Copland)

text: Inscape (Copland) Inscape is a 1967 musical composition for orchestra by Aaron Copland, approximately twelve to thirteen minutes in length, and commissioned by and dedicated to the New York Philharmonic for its 125th anniversary (see also "Capriccio burlesco"). Composed using the twelve-tone technique, the piece has been considered less accessible than much of Copland's earlier music. It is named for Gerard Manley Hopkins's term "inscape", invented: Hopkins's opposite of "inscape" was "instress" ("perception as opposed to intrinsic, essential quality"), and a commentator writes that Copland, "uses sounds as an 'instress' that communicates a deeper inner essence, an 'inscape.'" "The outward

title: Aaron Copland

text: his presentation notes into three books, "What to Listen for in Music" (1939), "Our New Music" (1941), and "Music and Imagination" (1952). In the 1980s, he collaborated with Vivian Perlis on a two-volume autobiography, "Copland: 1900 Through 1942" (1984) and "Copland Since 1943" (1989). Along with the composer's first-person narrative, these two books incorporate 11 "interludes" by Perlis and other sections from friends and peers. Some controversy arose over the second volume's increased reliance over the first on old documents for source material. Due to the then-advanced stage of Copland's Alzheimer's and the resulting memory loss, however, this fallback to

title: Aaron Copland

text: most challenging works, over which he labored until 1957. During the work's development, in 1953, Kapell died in an aircraft crash. Critics lauded the "Fantasy" when it was finally premiered, calling the piece "an outstanding addition to his own oeuvre and to contemporary piano literature" and "a tremendous achievement". Jay Rosenfield stated, "This is a new Copland to us, an artist advancing with strength and not building on the past alone." Serialism allowed Copland a synthesis of serial and non-serial practices. Before he did this, according to musicologist Joseph Straus, the philosophical and compositional difference between non-tonal composers such as

title: Aaron Copland

text: bequeathed to the creation of the Aaron Copland Fund for Composers, which bestows over $600,000 per year to performing groups. Copland never enrolled as a member of any political party. Nevertheless, he inherited a considerable interest in civic and world events from his father. His views were generally progressive and he had strong ties with numerous colleagues and friends in the Popular Front, including Odets. Early in his life, Copland developed, in Pollack's words, "a deep admiration for the works of Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser and Upton Sinclair, all socialists whose novels passionately excoriated capitalism's physical and emotional toll on

title: Aaron Copland

text: total of about 100 works which covered a diverse range of genres. Many of these compositions, especially orchestral pieces, have remained part of the standard American repertoire. According to Pollack, Copland "had perhaps the most distinctive and identifiable musical voice produced by this country so far, an individuality ... that helped define for many what American concert music sounds like at its most characteristic and that exerted enormous influence on multitudes of contemporaries and successors." His synthesis of influences and inclinations helped create the "Americanism" of his music. The composer himself pointed out, in summarizing the American character of his

title: Clarinet Concerto (Copland)

text: by Copland to increase pressure on Goodman, since he kept on putting off the first performance. A recording of the first radio performance by Goodman, with the NBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Fritz Reiner is available on CD on the Legend music label (see below). The concerto quickly established itself as a standard piece in the clarinet repertoire. Since the performance by Benny Goodman, other notable performances include those by: However, one particular recording of note is the one with Goodman and conducted by Copland himself, which Aaron Copland considered to be his best recording ever. Copland incorporated

title: Aaron Copland

text: would develop friendships with people with socialist and communist leanings. Copland's passion for the latest European music, plus glowing letters from his friend Aaron Schaffer, inspired him to go to Paris for further study. An article in "Musical America" about a summer school program for American musicians at the Fontainebleau School of Music, offered by the French government, encouraged Copland still further. His father wanted him to go to college, but his mother's vote in the family conference allowed him to give Paris a try. On arriving in France, he studied at Fontainebleau with pianist and pedagogue Isidor Philipp and

title: Piano Concerto (Copland)

text: Piano Concerto (Copland) The Concerto for Piano and Orchestra is a musical composition by the American composer Aaron Copland. The work was commissioned by the conductor Serge Koussevitzky who was then music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It was first performed on January 28, 1927, by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Koussevitzky with the composer himself as the soloist. The piece is dedicated to Copland's patron Alma Morgenthau Wertheim. Copland completed work on the piano concerto in November 1926. It is cast two connected movements: a short, slow first movement and a large, fast second movement. Like George

title: Aaron Copland House

text: Other previous winners include Pierre Jalbert, Richard Danielpour, Robert Xavier Rodriguez, Robert Paterson, Judith Lang Zaimont, Andrew Norman, Derek Bermel, Du Yun, Henry Threadgill, Alvin Singleton, Dave Douglas, Christopher Theofanidis, and Hannah Lash. In 1999, Copland House initiated its resident chamber ensemble Music From Copland House (MCH), the U.S.'s only wide-ranging American repertory ensemble, which made its debut at the Opening Night of Merkin Concert Hall’s 1999-2000 season. In September 2009, "Copland House at Merestead", the organization's regular mainstage concert series, was established at the historic Merestead Estate in Mount Kisco, New York. The Rock Hill property is on the

title: Aaron Copland

text: total grasp of all classical music, and he was encouraged to experiment and develop a "clarity of conception and elegance in proportion." Following her model, he studied all periods of classical music and all forms—from madrigals to symphonies. This breadth of vision led Copland to compose music for numerous settings—orchestra, opera, solo piano, small ensemble, art song, ballet, theater and film. Boulanger particularly emphasized "la grande ligne" (the long line), "a sense of forward motion ... the feeling for inevitability, for the creating of an entire piece that could be thought of as a functioning entity." During his studies with

title: Aaron Copland

text: 1921, gave the young Copland a solid foundation, especially in the Germanic tradition. As Copland stated later: "This was a stroke of luck for me. I was spared the floundering that so many musicians have suffered through incompetent teaching." But Copland also commented that the maestro had "little sympathy for the advanced musical idioms of the day" and his "approved" composers ended with Richard Strauss. Copland's graduation piece from his studies with Goldmark was a three-movement piano sonata in a Romantic style. But he had also composed more original and daring pieces which he did not share with his teacher.

title: Aaron Copland

text: Copland... When he questioned something, it was in a manner that might make you want to question it yourself. Everything he said was helpful in making a younger composer realize the potential of a particular work. On the other hand, Aaron could be strongly critical." Although Copland studied conducting in Paris in 1921, he remained essentially a self-taught conductor with a very personal style. Encouraged by Igor Stravinsky to master conducting and perhaps emboldened by Carlos Chavez's efforts in Mexico, he began to direct his own works on his international travels in the 1940s. By the 1950s, he was also

title: Aaron Copland

text: previous material was inevitable. The use in both books of letters and other unpublished sources, expertly researched and organized, made them what Pollack terms "invaluable." During his career, Copland met and helped hundreds of young composers, whom he met and who were drawn to him by his continual interest and acuity into the contemporary musical scene. This assistance came mainly outside an institutional framework—other than his summers at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood and a few semesters at Harvard and the State University of New York at Buffalo, Copland operated outside an academic setting. Pollack writes, "Those composers who

title: Aaron Copland

text: Schoenberg and tonal composers like Stravinsky had been considered too wide a gulf to bridge. Copland wrote that, to him, serialism pointed in two opposite directions, one "toward the extreme of total organization with electronic applications" and the other "a gradual absorption into what had become a very "freely interpreted tonalism" [italics Copland]." The path he said he chose was the latter one, which he said, when he described his "Piano Fantasy", allowed him to incorporate "elements able to be associated with the twelve-tone method and also with music tonally conceived." This practice differed markedly from Schoenberg, who used his

title: Connotations (Copland)

text: backstage during intermission to meet with the composer. When Copland later asked Verna Fine, wife of American composer Irving Fine, what this meant, Fine answered, "Oh, Aaron, it's obvious. She hated your piece!" In "Variety", Robert J. Landry called "Connotations" "an assault on [the audience's] nervous systems" and added, "Seldom has this reviewer heard such outspoken comment in the lobbies after such dull response. It is strictly accurate to declare that an audience paying $100 a seat and in mood for self-congratulation and schmaltz hated Copland's reminder of the ugly realities of industrialization, inflation and cold war—which his music seems

title: Aaron Copland

text: opera, "The Tender Land" was written in two acts but later expanded to three. As Copland feared, critics found the libretto to be weak when the opera premiered in 1954. In spite of its flaws, the opera became one of the few American operas to enter the standard repertory. In 1957, 1958, and 1976, Copland was the Music Director of the Ojai Music Festival, a classical and contemporary music festival in Ojai, California. For the occasion of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Centennial, Copland composed "Ceremonial Fanfare For Brass Ensemble" to accompany the exhibition "Masterpieces Of Fifty Centuries." Leonard Bernstein,

title: Aaron Copland

text: scenario he created and called "Zenatello". From 1913 to 1917 he took piano lessons with Leopold Wolfsohn, who taught him the standard classical fare. Copland's first public music performance was at a Wanamaker's recital. By the age of 15, after attending a concert by composer-pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Copland decided to become a composer. After attempts to further his music study from a correspondence course, Copland took formal lessons in harmony, theory, and composition from Rubin Goldmark, a noted teacher and composer of American music (who had given George Gershwin three lessons). Goldmark, with whom Copland studied between 1917 and

title: Aaron Copland

text: War II. He was also generous with his time with nearly every American young composer he met during his life, later earning the title, "Dean of American Music." With the knowledge he had gained from his studies in Paris, Copland came into demand as a lecturer and writer on contemporary European classical music. From 1927 to 1930 and 1935 to 1938, he taught classes at The New School of Social Research in New York City. Eventually, his New School lectures would appear in the form of two books—"What to Listen for in Music" (1937, revised 1957) and "Our New Music"

title: Aaron Copland

text: it previously. Subsequent exposure to the late music of Austrian composer Anton Webern and twelve-tone pieces by Swiss composer Frank Martin and Italian composer Luigi Dallapiccola strengthened this opinion. Copland came to the conclusion that composing along serial lines was "nothing more than an angle of vision. Like fugal treatment, it is a stimulus that enlivens musical thinking, especially when applied to a series of tones that lend themselves to that treatment." He began his first serial work, the "Piano Fantasy," in 1951 to fulfill a commission from the young virtuoso pianist William Kapell. The piece became one of his

title: Aaron Copland

text: much stress with him as his behavior became increasingly erratic, sometimes confrontational. Kraft fathered a child to whom Copland later provided financial security, through a bequest from his estate. Vivian Perlis, who collaborated with Copland on his autobiography, writes, "Copland's method of composing was to write down fragments of musical ideas as they came to him. When he needed a piece, he would turn to these ideas (his "gold nuggets")." if one or more of these nuggets looked promising, he would then write a piano sketch and eventually work on them at the keyboard. The piano, Perlis writes, "was so

title: Aaron Copland

text: integral to his composing that it permeated his compositional style, not only in the frequent use in the instrument but in more subtle and complex ways." His habit of turning to the keyboard tended to embarrass Copland until he learned that Stravinsky also did so. Copland would not consider the specific instrumentation for a piece until it was complete and notated. Nor, according to Pollack, did he generally work in linear fashion, from beginning to end of a composition. Instead, he tended to compose whole sections in no particular order and surmise their eventual sequence after all those parts were

title: Aaron Copland

text: the heady cultural atmosphere of Paris in the 1920s were Paul Bowles, Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra Pound, as well as artists like Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, and Amedeo Modigliani. Also influential on the new music were the French intellectuals Marcel Proust, Paul Valéry, Jean-Paul Sartre, and André Gide; the latter cited by Copland as being his personal favorite and most read. Travels to Italy, Austria, and Germany rounded out Copland's musical education. During his stay in Paris, Copland began writing musical critiques, the first on Gabriel Fauré, which helped spread his fame and stature in the

title: Aaron Copland

text: it became Copland's best-known symphony. The Clarinet Concerto (1948), scored for solo clarinet, strings, harp, and piano, was a commission piece for bandleader and clarinetist Benny Goodman and a complement to Copland's earlier jazz-influenced work, the Piano Concerto (1926). His "Four Piano Blues" is an introspective composition with a jazz influence. Copland finished the 1940s with two film scores, one for William Wyler's "The Heiress" and one for the film adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel "The Red Pony". In 1949, Copland returned to Europe, where he found French composer Pierre Boulez dominating the group of post-war avant-garde composers there. He

title: Aaron Copland

text: Boulanger in Paris, Copland was excited to be so close to the new post-Impressionistic French music of Ravel, Roussel, and Satie, as well as Les six, a group that included Milhaud, Poulenc, and Honegger. Webern, Berg, and Bartók also impressed him. Copland was "insatiable" in seeking out the newest European music, whether in concerts, score reading or heated debate. These "moderns" were discarding the old laws of composition and experimenting with new forms, harmonies and rhythms, and including the use of jazz and quarter-tone music. Milhaud was Copland's inspiration for some of his earlier "jazzy" works. He was also exposed

title: Quiet City (music)

text: Quiet City (music) Quiet City is a composition for trumpet, cor anglais, and string orchestra by Aaron Copland. In 1939, Copland wrote incidental music for the play "Quiet City" by Irwin Shaw. He later worked some of it into a ten-minute composition designed to be performed independently of the play. The piece premiered on January 28, 1941, by conductor Daniel Saidenberg and his Saidenberg Little Symphony in New York City. The original score for the play was composed for trumpet, alto saxophone, B clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), and piano. According to Copland, the piece was "an attempt to mirror the

title: Aaron Copland

text: and Fred Astaire to the ballets of George Balanchine and Martha Graham, to both democratize and Americanize dance as an art form. In 1939, Copland completed his first two Hollywood film scores, for "Of Mice and Men" and "Our Town", and composed the radio score "John Henry", based on the folk ballad. While these works and others like them that would follow were accepted by the listening public at large, detractors accused Copland of pandering to the masses. Music critic Paul Rosenfeld, for one, warned in 1939 that Copland was "standing in the fork in the highroad, the two branches

title: Aaron Copland

text: remained an agnostic. Pollack writes, Like many contemporaries, Copland regarded Judaism alternately in terms of religion, culture, and race; but he showed relatively little involvement in any aspect of his Jewish heritage... At the same time, he had ties to Christianity, identifying with such profoundly Christian writers as Gerard Manley Hopkins and often spending Christmas Day at home with a special dinner with close friends... In general, his music seemed to evoke Protestant hymns as often as it did Jewish chant...Copland characteristically found connections among various religious traditions... But if Copland was discreet about his Jewish background, he never hid

title: Letter from Home (Copland)

text: clarinet, two bassoons (bassoon II is optional), two horns, two trumpets, two trombones, timpani, percussion (bells, suspended cymbal, triangle, bass drum), optional harp, optional piano, and strings. Letter from Home (Copland) Letter from Home is a 1944 orchestral composition by Aaron Copland.The piece was commissioned as a patriotic work by Paul Whiteman for his Radio Hall of Fame Orchestra, and suggests the emotions of a soldier reading a letter from home. The music has been described as Copland's "most sentimental" and reflects his own homesickness in Mexico. It is scored for flute, oboe, four saxophones, French horn, three trumpets, three

title: Letter from Home (Copland)

text: Letter from Home (Copland) Letter from Home is a 1944 orchestral composition by Aaron Copland.The piece was commissioned as a patriotic work by Paul Whiteman for his Radio Hall of Fame Orchestra, and suggests the emotions of a soldier reading a letter from home. The music has been described as Copland's "most sentimental" and reflects his own homesickness in Mexico. It is scored for flute, oboe, four saxophones, French horn, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, guitar, piano, harp, percussion, and strings. The 1964 orchestral version is scored for two flutes, two oboes (oboe II is optional), two clarinets, optional bass

title: Aaron Copland

text: of which would be later incorporated into his "Music for a Great City"), "Connotations" (1962, for the new Lincoln Center Philharmonic hall), "Emblems" (1964, for wind band), "Night Thoughts" (1972, for the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition), and "Proclamation" (1982, his last work, started in 1973). Copland did not consider himself a professional writer. He called his writing "a byproduct of my trade" as "a kind of salesman for contemporary music." As such, he wrote prolifically about music, including pieces on music criticism analysis, on musical trends, and on his own compositions. An avid lecturer and lecturer-performer, Copland eventually collected

title: Aaron Copland

text: included use of Schönberg's twelve-tone system, a development that he had recognized but not fully embraced. He had also believed the atonality of serialized music to run counter to his desire to reach a wide audience. Copland therefore approached dodecaphony with some initial skepticism. While in Europe in 1949, he heard a number of serial works but did not admire much of it because "so often it seemed that individuality was sacrificed to the method." The music of French composer Pierre Boulez showed Copland that the technique could be separated from the "old Wagnerian" aesthetic with which he had associated

title: Aaron Copland

text: to Schoenberg and admired his earlier atonal pieces, thinking Schoenberg's "Pierrot Lunaire". Above all others, Copland named Igor Stravinsky as his "hero" and his favorite 20th-century composer. Copland especially admired Stravinsky's "jagged and uncouth rhythmic effects," "bold use of dissonance," and "hard, dry, crackling sonority." Another inspiration for much of Copland's music was jazz. Although familiar with jazz back in America—having listened to it and also played it in bands—he fully realized its potential while traveling in Austria: "The impression of jazz one receives in a foreign country is totally unlike the impression of such music heard in one's own

title: Aaron Copland

text: conducting the works of other composers, and after a televised appearance where he directed the New York Philharmonic, Copland became in high demand. He placed a strong emphasis in his programs on 20th-century music and lesser-known composers, and until the 1970s rarely planned concerts to feature his music exclusively. Performers and audiences generally greeted his conducting appearances as positive opportunities to hear his music as the composer intended. His efforts on behalf of other composers could be penetrating but also uneven. Understated on the podium, Copland modeled his style after other composer/conductors such as Stravinsky and Paul Hindemith. Critics wrote

title: Aaron Copland

text: complete, much like assembling a collage. Copland himself admitted, "I don't compose. I assemble materials." Many times, he included material he had written years earlier. If the situation dictated, as it did with his film scores, Copland could work quickly. Otherwise, he tended to write slowly whenever possible. Even with this deliberation, Copland considered composition, in his words, "the product of the emotions," which included "self-expression" and "self-discovery." While Copland's earliest musical inclinations as a teenager ran toward Chopin, Debussy, Verdi and the Russian composers, Copland's teacher and mentor Nadia Boulanger became his most important influence. Copland especially admired Boulanger's

title: Aaron Copland

text: Africa, and Mexico. He formed an important friendship with Mexican composer Carlos Chávez and would return often to Mexico for working vacations conducting engagements. During his initial visit to Mexico, Copland began composing the first of his signature works, "El Salón México", which he completed in 1936. In it and in "The Second Hurricane" Copland began "experimenting," as he phrased it, with a simpler, more accessible style. This and other incidental commissions fulfilled the second goal of American Gebrauchsmusik, creating music of wide appeal. Concurrent with "The Second Hurricane", Copland composed (for radio broadcast) "Prairie Journal" on a commission from

title: Piano Variations (Copland)

text: and made a lasting impression. The New York "Herald Tribune" reported that, in the piece, Copland "sardonically thumbed his nose at all those esthetic attributes which have hitherto been considered essential to the creation of music" . The work is now regarded as one of the most significant in contemporary piano literature. Dancer-choreographer Martha Graham requested permission to choreograph a solo piece on the Piano Variations. With Copland's consent, she produced "Dithyrambic", an evocation of Dionysus that was received with the highest enthusiasm . Copland admitted to being "utterly astonished that anyone could consider this kind of music suitable for

title: Connotations (Copland)

text: "pastoral, reflective." While these are all moods long familiar to listeners of Copland's music, Pollack asserts, "a new darkness hangs over the whole. The outer sections are grave; the jazzy sections rather cheerless; the pastoral contrast more weary than peaceful. The music often seems lost, uncertain, trapped." The piece ends in a series of strict 12-note chords that Copland called "aggregates." Both Chavez and American composer David Diamond were confused initially about what musical form "Connotations" would take. The work's title seemed to give no clear indication, they said, and Chavez told Copland that he found "Connotations" too abstract. As

title: Aaron Copland

text: of which lead respectively to popular and artistic success." Even some of the composer's friends, such as composer Arthur Berger, were confused about Copland's simpler style. One, composer David Diamond, went so far as to lecture Copland: "By having sold out to the mongrel commercialists half-way already, the danger is going to be wider for you, and I beg you dear Aaron, don't sell out [entirely] yet." Copland's response was that his writing as he did and in as many genres was his response to how the Depression had affected society, as well as to new media and the audiences

title: Aaron Copland

text: was financially contradictory, particularly in the Depression. Avant-garde music had lost what cultural historian Morris Dickstein calls "its buoyant experimental edge" and the national mood toward it had changed. As biographer Howard Pollack points out, Copland observed two trends among composers in the 1930s: first, a continuing attempt to "simplify their musical language" and, second, a desire to "make contact" with as wide an audience as possible. Since 1927, he had been in the process of simplifying, or at least paring down, his musical language, though in such a manner as to sometimes have the effect, paradoxically, of estranging audiences

title: Aaron Copland

text: (1940, revised 1968 and retitled "The New Music: 1900–1960"). During this period, Copland also wrote regularly for "The New York Times", "The Musical Quarterly" and a number of other journals. These articles would appear in 1969 as the book "Copland on Music". Copland's compositions in the early 1920s reflected the modernist attitude that prevailed among intellectuals, that the arts need be accessible to only a cadre of the enlightened and that the masses would come to appreciate their efforts over time. However, mounting troubles with the "Symphonic Ode" (1929) and "Short Symphony" (1933) caused him to rethink this approach. It

title: Aaron Copland

text: in a place you suspected was weak... She could also tell you "why" it was weak [italics Copland]." He wrote in a letter to his brother Ralph, "This intellectual Amazon is not only professor at the Conservatoire, is not only familiar with all music from Bach to Stravinsky, but is prepared for anything worse in the way of dissonance. But make no mistake ... A more charming womanly woman never lived." Copland later wrote that "it was wonderful for me to find a teacher with such openness of mind, while at the same time she held firm ideas of right

title: Aaron Copland House

text: The grounds below Copland's home consist of a two-tiered garden ringed by natural woods, and in 2009, the National Wildlife Federation designated the property a Certified Wildlife Habitat. Copland began retreating to the country during weekends and summers in the 1930s. He found the experience of rural living beneficial to his composing, and after a series of residences, purchased the modernist ranch-style house in the 1960s to live there full-time. Its style has been described as consistent with Copland's music. After his death in 1990, the Copland Heritage Association, now Copland House, Inc., was established to preserve the building. Its

title: Clarinet Concerto (Copland)

text: Clarinet Concerto (Copland) Aaron Copland's Clarinet Concerto (also referred to as the "Concerto for clarinet, strings and harp") was written between 1947 and 1949, although a first version was available in 1948. The concerto was later choreographed by Jerome Robbins for the ballet "Pied Piper" (1951). Soon after Copland composed his Symphony No. 3, in 1947 jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman commissioned him to write a concerto for clarinet. Goodman told Copland biographer Vivian Perlis: I made no demands on what Copland should write. He had completely free rein, except that I should have a two-year exclusivity on playing the work.

title: Symphony for Organ and Orchestra (Copland)

text: Symphony for Organ and Orchestra (Copland) Aaron Copland wrote the Symphony for Organ and Orchestra in 1924. It represents a major work in the composer's oeuvre, as it was his first fully realized orchestral work, his first work for organ, and the first piece whose orchestration he heard. In 1928, Copland re-orchestrated the work without organ as his Symphony No. 1, rewriting the organ part in the brass and adding saxophone. Copland studied composition in Paris from 1921 to 1924 under famed pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. He was especially appreciative of the confidence she displayed in her young American students, and

title: Aaron Copland

text: these recordings were later reissued on CD, as were most of Copland's Columbia recordings (by Sony). From 1960 to his death, Copland resided at Cortlandt Manor, New York. Known as Rock Hill, his home was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2003 and further designated a National Historic Landmark in 2008. Copland's health deteriorated through the 1980s, and he died of Alzheimer's disease and respiratory failure on December 2, 1990, in North Tarrytown, New York (now Sleepy Hollow) and his ashes were scattered over the Tanglewood Music Center near Lenox, Massachusetts. Much of his large estate was

title: Aaron Copland

text: the action, while avoiding the underlining of every action with exaggerated emphasis. Another technique Copland employed was to keep silent during intimate screen moments and only begin the music as a confirming motive toward the end of a scene. Virgil Thompson wrote that the score for "Of Mice and Men" established "the most distinguished populist musical style yet created in America." Many composers who scored for western movies, particularly between 1940 and 1960, were influenced by Copland's style, though some also followed the "Max Steiner" approach, which was more bombastic and obvious. Copland's work in the late 1940s and 1950s

title: Copland (operating system)

text: that point, applications would gain some additional modern features. As System 7.5 was code-named "Mozart", the next-generation operating system was intended to address the looming architectural issues, was dubbed "Copland" after composer Aaron Copland. The intended successor system, "Gershwin", would complete the process of moving the entire system to the new platform. The Copland project was first announced in March 1995. Parts of Copland, most notably an early version of the new file system, were demonstrated at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in May 1995. Apple also promised that a beta release of Copland would be ready by the end of

title: Aaron Copland

text: of his precision and clarity before an orchestra. Observers noted that he had "none of the typical conductorial vanities". Copland's unpretentious charm was appreciated by professional musicians but some criticized his "unsteady" beat and "unexciting" interpretations. Koussevitzky advised him to "stay home and compose." However, while Bernstein (from whom Copland asked at times for conducting advice) occasionally joked that Copland could conduct his works "a little better," he also noted that Copland improved over time and considered him a more natural conductor than Stravinsky or Hindemith. Eventually, Copland recorded nearly all his orchestral works with himself conducting. Copland wrote a

title: Aaron Copland

text: ought to make the old professors sit up and take notice". The Symphony for Organ and Orchestra established Copland as a serious modern composer. Musicologist Gayle Murchison cites Copland's use melodic, harmonic and rhythmic elements endemic in jazz, which he would also use in his "Music for the Theater" and Piano Concerto to evoke an essentially "American" sound. he fuses these qualities with modernist elements such as octatonic and whole-tone scales, polyrhythmic ostinato figures, and dissonant counterpoint. Murchinson points out the influence of Igor Stravinsky in the work's nervous, driving rhythms and some of its harmonic language. Copland in hindsight

title: Aaron Copland

text: tone rows as complete statements around which to structure his compositions. Copland used his rows not much different than how he fashioned the material in his tonal pieces. He saw his rows as sources for melodies and harmonies, not as complete and independent entities, except at points in the musical structure that dictated the complete statement of a row. Even after Copland started using 12-tone techniques, he did not stick to them exclusively but went back and forth between tonal and non-tonal compositions. Other late works include: "Dance Panels" (1959, ballet music), "Something Wild" (1961, his last film score, much

title: Aaron Copland

text: music community. Instead of wallowing in self-pity and self-destruction like many of the expatriate members of the Lost Generation, Copland returned to America optimistic and enthusiastic about the future, determined to make his way as a full-time composer. He rented a studio apartment on New York City's Upper West Side in the Empire Hotel, close to Carnegie Hall and other musical venues and publishers. He remained in that area for the next thirty years, later moving to Westchester County, New York. Copland lived frugally and survived financially with help from two $2,500 Guggenheim Fellowships in 1925 and 1926. Lecture-recitals, awards,

title: Aaron Copland House

text: he closed on the house, proudly proclaims "HOUSE BOUGHT!" He lived there for the rest of his life. The house's aesthetics complement Copland's music. Both have what one writer calls his "simplicity, quiet dignity and rugged elegance." It blends well into the surrounding natural environment, with its prominent exterior wood (painted dark green) and stone. The stone foundation seems to blend seamlessly into the natural rock ledge underneath. The large picture windows connect the interior of the house to the surrounding woods. His only significant change was the 1962 addition of the guest apartment on the garage. Copland maintained a

title: Aaron Copland

text: the composition itself more concentrated. In its combination and refinement of modernist and jazz elements, Steinberg calls the "Short Symphony" "a remarkable synthesis of the learned and the vernacular, and thus, in all its brevity [the work last just 15 minutes], a singularly 'complete' representation of its composer." However, Copland moved from this work toward more accessible works and folk sources. Copland wrote "El Salón México" between 1932 and 1936, which met with a popular acclaim that contrasted the relative obscurity of most of his previous works. Inspiration for this work came from Copland's vivid recollection of visiting the "Salon

title: Aaron Copland

text: This procedure, which provided Copland with more formal flexibility and a greater emotional range than in his earlier music, is similar to Schoenberg's idea of "continuous variation" and, according to Copland's own admission, was influenced by the twelve-tone method, though neither work actually uses a twelve-tone row. The other major work of Copland's first period is the "Short Symphony" (1933). In it, music critic and musicologist Michael Steinberg writes, the "jazz-influenced dislocations of meter that are so characteristic of Copland's music of the 1920s are more prevalent than ever." Compared to the "Symphonic Ode", the orchestration is much leaner and

title: Aaron Copland

text: and performers. By 1933 ... he began to find ways to make his starkly personal language accessible to a surprisingly large number of people. In many ways, this shift mirrored the German idea of "Gebrauchsmusik" ("music for use"), as composers sought to create music that could serve a utilitarian as well as artistic purpose. This approach encompassed two trends: first, music that students could easily learn, and second, music which would have wider appeal, such as incidental music for plays, movies, radio, etc. Toward this end, Copland provided musical advice and inspiration to The Group Theatre, a company which also

title: Connotations (Copland)

text: to be talking about." A minority of apparently more discerning listeners felt that "Connotations" was the right music for its time and place. Composer Arthur Berger states, "I think [Copland] wrote exactly the piece he wanted to write because he wanted to make a statement about the new Philharmonic Hall in New York—it wasn't going to be a temple of easy listening, as it were, but a place for serious music-making." Minna Lederman Daniel, a music writer and editor of "Modern Music" magazine, told Copland, "I think "Connotations" was the right place for the people and the occasion—indeed the only

title: Aaron Copland

text: Oscar Hammerstein, to write an opera for television. While Copland was aware of the potential pitfalls of that genre, which included weak libretti and demanding production values, he had also been thinking about writing an opera since the 1940s. Among the subjects he had considered were Theodore Dreiser's "An American Tragedy" and Frank Norris's "McTeague" He finally settled on James Agee's "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men", which seemed appropriate for the more intimate setting of television and could also be used in the "college trade," with more schools mounting operas than they had before World War II. The resulting

title: Aaron Copland

text: state as they might have been. Nevertheless, beginning in 1950, Copland—who had been appalled at Stalin's persecution of Shostakovich and other artists—began resigning from participation in leftist groups. Copland, Pollack states, "stayed particularly concerned about the role of the artist in society." He decried the lack of artistic freedom in the Soviet Union, and in his 1954 Norton lecture he asserted that loss of freedom under Soviet Communism deprived artists of "the immemorial right of the artist to be wrong." He began to vote Democratic, first for Stevenson and then for Kennedy. Potentially more damaging for Copland was a sea-change

title: Aaron Copland

text: Goodman and Glenn Miller became popular in the 1930s, Copland took a renewed interest in the genre. Inspired by the example of Les Six in France, Copland sought out contemporaries such as Roger Sessions, Roy Harris, Virgil Thomson, and Walter Piston, and quickly established himself as a spokesman for composers of his generation. He also helped found the Copland-Sessions Concerts to showcase these composers' chamber works to new audiences. Copland's relationship with these men, who became known as "commando unit" was one of both support and rivalry, and he played a key role in keeping them together until after World

title: Aaron Copland

text: in artistic tastes, away from the Populist mores that infused his work of the 1930s and 40s. Beginning in the 1940s, intellectuals assailed Popular Front culture, to which Copland's music was linked, and labeled it, in Dickstein's words, as "hopelessly middlebrow, a dumbing down of art into toothless entertainment." They often linked their disdain for Populist art with technology, new media and mass audiences—in other words, the areas of radio, television and motion pictures, for which Copland either had or soon would write music, as well as his popular ballets. While these attacks actually began at the end of the

title: Aaron Copland

text: his return to the U.S. to make his way as a full-time composer, Copland gave lecture-recitals, wrote works on commission and did some teaching and writing. He found composing orchestral music in the modernist style he had adapted abroad a financially contradictory approach, particularly in light of the Great Depression. He shifted in the mid-1930s to a more accessible musical style which mirrored the German idea of "Gebrauchsmusik" ("music for use"), music that could serve utilitarian and artistic purposes. During the Depression years, he traveled extensively to Europe, Africa, and Mexico, formed an important friendship with Mexican composer Carlos Chávez

title: Aaron Copland

text: attracted Stella Adler, Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg. Philosophically an outgrowth of Stieglitz and his ideals, the Group focused on socially-relevant plays by the American authors. Through it and later his work in film, Copland met several major American playwrights, including Thornton Wilder, William Inge, Arthur Miller, and Edward Albee, and considered projects with all of them. Around 1935 Copland began to compose musical pieces for young audiences, in accordance with the first goal of American Gebrauchsmusik. These works included piano pieces ("The Young Pioneers") and an opera ("The Second Hurricane"). During the Depression years, Copland traveled extensively to Europe,

title: Aaron Copland

text: composer Paul Vidal. When Copland found Vidal too much like Goldmark, he switched at the suggestion of a fellow student to Nadia Boulanger, then aged 34. He had initial reservations: "No one to my knowledge had ever before thought of studying with a woman." She interviewed him, and recalled later: "One could tell his talent immediately." Boulanger had as many as 40 students at once and employed a formal regimen that Copland had to follow. Copland found her incisive mind much to his liking and found her ability to critique a composition impeccable. Boulanger "could always find the weak spot

title: Aaron Copland

text: In addition to regularly attending the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Symphony, where he heard the standard classical repertory, Copland continued his musical development through an expanding circle of musical friends. After graduating from high school, Copland played in dance bands. Continuing his musical education, he received further piano lessons from Victor Wittgenstein, who found his student to be "quiet, shy, well-mannered, and gracious in accepting criticism." Copland's fascination with the Russian Revolution and its promise for freeing the lower classes drew a rebuke from his father and uncles. In spite of that, in his early adult life Copland

title: Piano Variations (Copland)

text: directly. Another prominent characteristic is the piece's rhythmic irregularity. The meters change constantly within an essentially 4/4 framework. Piano Variations (Copland) The Piano Variations of American composer Aaron Copland were written for piano solo from January to October 1930. They were dedicated to American writer and literary critic Gerald Sykes (c. 1904–1984) , and were originally published in 1932 by Cos Cob Press, which merged with Arrow Music Press in 1938 and was taken over by Boosey & Hawkes in 1956. The approximate performance time is 11 minutes. The Piano Variations were a product of Copland's second-style period, also called

title: Piano Variations (Copland)

text: Piano Variations (Copland) The Piano Variations of American composer Aaron Copland were written for piano solo from January to October 1930. They were dedicated to American writer and literary critic Gerald Sykes (c. 1904–1984) , and were originally published in 1932 by Cos Cob Press, which merged with Arrow Music Press in 1938 and was taken over by Boosey & Hawkes in 1956. The approximate performance time is 11 minutes. The Piano Variations were a product of Copland's second-style period, also called the abstract period, which comprised only instrumental (non-vocal) compositions. During this time, the composer moved away from the

title: Aaron Copland

text: Professorship at Harvard University. These lectures were published as the book "Music and Imagination". Because of his leftist views, which had included his support of the Communist Party USA ticket during the 1936 presidential election and his strong support of Progressive Party candidate Henry A. Wallace during the 1948 presidential election, Copland was investigated by the FBI during the Red scare of the 1950s. He was included on an FBI list of 151 artists thought to have Communist associations and found himself blacklisted, with "A Lincoln Portrait" withdrawn from the 1953 inaugural concert for President Eisenhower. Called later that year

title: Aaron Copland

text: 1930s with the writings of Clement Greenberg and Dwight Macdonald for "Partisan Review", they were based in anti-Stalinist politics and would accelerate in the decades following World War II. Despite any difficulties that his suspected Communist sympathies might have posed, Copland traveled extensively during the 1950s and early 60s to observe the avant-garde styles of Europe, hear compositions by Soviet composers not well known in the West and experience the new school of Polish music. While in Japan, he was taken with the work of Toru Takemitsu and began a correspondence with him that would last over the next decade.

title: Aaron Copland

text: to a private hearing at the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., Copland was questioned by Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn about his lecturing abroad and his affiliations with various organizations and events. In the process, McCarthy and Cohn neglected completely Copland's works, which made a virtue of American values. Outraged by the accusations, many members of the musical community held up Copland's music as a banner of his patriotism. The investigations ceased in 1955 and were closed in 1975. The McCarthy probes did not seriously affect Copland's career and international artistic reputation, taxing of his time, energy, and emotional

title: Aaron Copland

text: country ... when I heard jazz played in Vienna, it was like hearing it for the first time." He also found that the distance from his native country helped him see the United States more clearly. Beginning in 1923, he employed "jazzy elements" in his classical music, but by the late 1930s, he moved on to Latin and American folk tunes in his more successful pieces. Although his early focus of jazz gave way to other influences, Copland continued to make use of jazz in more subtle ways in later works. Copland's work from the late 1940s onward included experimentation

title: Aaron Copland

text: it, either. Pollack states that Copland was gay and that the composer came to an early acceptance and understanding of his sexuality. Like many at that time, Copland guarded his privacy, especially in regard to his homosexuality. He provided few written details about his private life and even after the Stonewall riots of 1969, showed no inclination to "come out." However, he was one of the few composers of his stature to live openly and travel with his intimates. They tended to be talented, younger men involved in the arts, and the age-gap between them and the composer widened as

title: Piano Concerto (Copland)

text: New York Philharmonic's Young People's Concerts and later produced the first recording of the concerto with the New York Philharmonic and Copland again performing the piano part. The piece has since grown more popular and has been recorded many times. In 2008, the music critic Peter Dickinson of "Gramophone" reflected, "The first of its two movements is a spacious outpouring of fanfares and blues and the second is a crazy kind of supercharged ragtime that really upset the Boston audience and critics. It shows how Copland exploited the jazz age to brilliant effect." Piano Concerto (Copland) The Concerto for Piano

title: Aaron Copland

text: than that of any the composer's contemporaries, even while other conductors programmed only a few of Copland's works Soon after his return, Copland was exposed to the artistic circle of photographer Alfred Stieglitz. While Copland did not care for Stieglitz's domineering attitude, he admired his work and took to heart Stieglitz's conviction that American artists should reflect "the ideas of American Democracy." This ideal influenced not just the composer but also a generation of artists and photographers, including Paul Strand, Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Walker Evans. Evans' photographs inspired portions of Copland's opera "The Tender Land". In

title: Aaron Copland House

text: armchair in which he was sometimes photographed. Across the hallway is the master bedroom. It has a queen-size bed with two adjoining tables and lamps and plaster walls. In bookshelves under the windows are Copland's collections of music journals, dating back to the September 1924 issue of "The Musical Quarterly", which had Copland's first published article. The adjacent similarly-sized library has full-height bookshelves, some of which are large enough to hold full scores of compositions by Copland and the composers who have resided here since. There are also regular books on music and other subjects from Copland's collection. Its walls