Brooklyn born, Aaron Copland, of Lithuanian/Jewish heritage, was a path finder in American music. He was the first to compose classical works with a uniquely American flair. When Copland was born in 1900, no American was internationally recognized as a serious classical composer.
His musical education included time in the U.S. with Rubin Goldmark, (who also taught George Gershwin) and, in his early twenties, with Nadia Boulanger at the Fontainebleau School of Music in Paris.
During the 1936 presidential election, Copland showed himself to be sympathetic to American Communist Party causes. He was later investigated by the FBI during the McCarthy era "red scare" and was among those blacklisted from work opportunities. In 1953, Copland was called before Congress to testify. In the end, it was never proven that Copland had ever been a member of the Communist Party.
Copland's early compositions used the influences of American jazz, then his style evolved to a modernist classical one. Starting in 1938, Copand composed a series of ballets that were to become both popular and critically acclaimed: Billy the Kid and Rodeo were ballets with western cowboy themes, then came one of his most enduring compositions, Appalachian Spring (1942), commissioned by the legendary choreographer Martha Graham.
Copland created eight film scores which seriously raised the bar for Hollywood movie music. His finely trained classical ear gave great breadth and edge to his symphonically orchestrated film music. For the 1950 movie, The Heiress, he won an Oscar for composing its score. His music also provides the sonic backdrop for director Spike Lee's film, He Got Game (1998).
Besides his Academy Award, Aaron Copland was the recipient of numerous honors which include the Guggenheim Fellowship (1925 and 1926), the Pulitzer Prize (1945), and the New York Music Critic's Circle award (1954). He also authored several books including What to Listen for in Music (1939), Music and Imagination (1952), and Copland on Music (1960).
In 1971 Aaron Compand was invited to the University of Toronto to speak as part of the Sir Ernest McMillan Guest Lecture Series sponsored by CAPAC (Composers Authors and Publishers Association of Canada). I had just finished my bachelor of music degree there, majoring in composition. I'd become fascinated with Aaron Copland's music in my undergraduate years. In my 4th year, my comtemporary techniques professor assigned me Copland's Concerto for Clarinet, Strings & Harp (1948) as an end-of-term class presentation project. There was an excellent recording with clarinetist Benny Goodman, who had originally commissioned Copland to compose the concerto, so I went to work listening and analsying the two finely crafted movements. I loved everything about this composition and because of the year it was completed, I labelled it, "My Birthday Music."
In 1971, I had the good fortune of winning a scholarship to do a masters degree in composition at a Canadian University. The award was funded by CAPAC (Composers, Authors and Publishers Association of Canada, now SOCAN), and I decided to do my graduate work at the University of Toronto. CAPAC asked me, as the recipient of their scholarship, to attend Aaron Copland's Toronto lecture and then meet him afterward. So, after the lecture, as I waited backstage at the MacMillan Theatre, out came a 70-year-old Aaron Copland in a dark suit, looking exactly like his pictures but taller than I expected. As our hands interlocked, I felt warmth, firmness; a man kindly offering an opening. I told him how much I admired him and his music. With his gentleness and humility in evidence, in his soft spoken manner, he thanked me. Much later, when reading the Howard Pollack biography, "Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man," it was confirmed, that Copland was gay, At that moment, I realized that there was a missed opportunity at our 1971 meeting. If I had known then that he was gay, surely I would have taken the initiative to know him better by asking him to lunch or perhpas offering to accompany him on the trip to the airport for his flight back to New York! That way, what was an exchange of just a few minutes, might possibly have become a friendship.
Concerto for Clarinet, Strings & Harp Part I
Aaron Copland (1848)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsUhJB_xlf8
Concerto for Clarinet, Strings & Harp Part II
Aaron Copland (1948)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPIu7FDeIzc
