AARON COPLAND

Aaron Copland



Aaron Copland

Introduction

Aaron Copland was an American nationalist composer of concert and film music, as well as an accomplished pianist. Instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, he was widely known as "the dean of American composers". Copland's music achieved a balance between modern music and American folk styles. The open, slowly changing harmonies of many of his works are said to evoke the vast American landscape. He also incorporated percussive orchestration, changing meter, polyrhythms, polychords, and tone rows in a broad range of works for concert hall, theater, ballet, and films. Aside from composing, Copland was a teacher, lecturer, critic, writer, and conductor. He was one of the most respected American classical composers of the twentieth century. By incorporating popular forms of American music such as jazz and folk into his compositions, he created pieces both exceptional and innovative. As a spokesman for the advancement of indigenous American music, Copland made great strides in liberating it from European influence. Today, ten years after his death, Copland's life and work continue to inspire many of America's young composers.

Copland was born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 14, 1900. The child of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania, he first learned to play the piano from his older sister. At the age of sixteen he went to Manhattan to study with Rubin Goldmark, a respected private music instructor who taught Copland the fundamentals of counterpoint and composition. During these early years he immersed himself in contemporary classical music by attending performances at the New York Symphony and Brooklyn Academy of Music. He found, however, that like many other young musicians, he was attracted to the classical history and musicians of Europe. So, at the age of twenty, he left New York for the Summer School of Music for American Students at Fontainebleau, France.( Copland, 1985 125)

Beginning in 1917 he began studying harmony, counterpoint and sonata form under Rubin Goldmark , a devotee of Beethoven and Wagner. At age 20 he had saved enough money to go to France and study at the new American Conservatory at Fontainebleau, near Paris. He was lucky enough to be the first American pupil of Nadia Boulanger, whom he found "exhilarating," and stayed with her until 1924. During these years, not only was he exposed to the tremendous cultural riches of Paris but he also traveled to England, Belgium and Italy. In addition he spent the summers, on Boulanger's advice, in Berlin, Vienna and Salzburg.

A 1921 performance he gave of his piano composition Le Chat et la souris resulted in the French publisher Jacques Durand coming backstage after the work and offering to issue the score. Thus it became Copland's first published work.

Methodology

His first big work - an unperformed ballet Grohg was composed at this time. The scenario was provided by Harold Clurman with whom he was sharing a Paris apartment and with whom he would share a common view of the world for years to ...