Out Spotlight

Today's Out Spotlight is one of the most respected American classical composers of the twentieth century. Incorporating popular forms of American music such as jazz and folk into his compositions he created pieces both exceptional and innovative and uniquely American. Today's Out Spotlight is composer Aaron Copland.

Aaron Copland was born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 14, 1900 the youngest of five children to Jewish immigrants from Lithuania. Before emigrating, his father, Harris Morris Copland, Anglicized his surname "Kaplan" to "Copland" while waiting in Scotland en route to America.

Growing up the family lived above his parents' Brooklyn shop, H.M. Copland's, which he described as "a kind of neighborhood Macy's, on the corner of Dean Street and Washington Avenue.

His father had no musical interest at all, but his mother, sang and played the piano, and arranged for music lessons for her children.

His oldest brother Ralph was the most advanced musically, proficient on the violin, while his sister Laurine had the strongest connection to him, and was his first piano teacher.

She also was the one helped encourage his musical education, and supported him in his musical career. She attended the Metropolitan Opera School and was a frequent opera goer. She often brought home libretti for Aaron to study.

At the age of eleven, Copland devised an opera scenario he called Zenatello, which included seven bars of music, his first notated melody.

From 1913 to 1917 he took music lessons with Leopold Wolfsohn, who taught him the standard classical fare. Copland's first public music performance was at a Wanamaker recital.

By the age of 15, after attending a concert by composer-pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Copland decided to become a composer.

Copland went on to formal lessons in harmony, theory, and composition from Rubin Goldmark, a noted teacher and composer of American music when he was 16.

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 Fountainebleau, France.

In France, Copland found a musical community unlike any he had known. It was at this time that he sold his first composition to Durand and Sons, the most respected music publisher in France. While in Europe Copeland met many of the important artists of the time, including the famous composer Serge Koussevitsky. Koussevitsky requested that Copland write a piece for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The piece, “Symphony for Organ and Orchestra” (1925) was his entry into the life of professional American music. He followed this with “Music for the Theater” and “Piano Concerto” the following year, both of which relied heavily on the jazz of the time. For Copland, jazz was the first genuinely American major musical movement. From jazz he hoped to draw the inspiration for a new type of symphonic music, one that could distinguish itself from the music of Europe.

In the late 1920s his attention turned to popular music of other countries. Moving away from his interest in jazz he began to focus on expanding the audience for American classical music. He believed that classical music could eventually be as popular as jazz in America. He worked toward this goal with both his music and a firm commitment to organizing and producing. He was an active member of many organizations, including both the American Composers’ Alliance and the League of Composers. Along with his friend Roger Sessions, he began the Copland-Sessions concerts, dedicated to presenting the works of young composers.

It was around this same time that his plans for an American music festival (similar to ones in Europe) came about as the Yaddo Festival of American Music in 1932. By the mid-’30s Copland had become not only one of the most popular composers in the country, but a leader of the community of American classical musicians.

It was in 1935 with “El Salón México” that Copland began his most productive and popular years. The piece presented a new sound that had its roots in Mexican folk music. Copland believed that through this music, he could find his way to a more popular symphonic music. In his search for the widest audience, Copland began composing for the movies and ballet. Among his most popular compositions for film are those for “Of Mice and Men”, “Our Town ”, and “The Heiress”, which won him an Academy Award for best score. He may be best known for his composition "Fanfare for the Common Man. "

He also composed scores for a number of ballets, including two of the most popular of the time: “Agnes DeMille’s Rodeo” and Martha Graham’s “Appalachian Spring", for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. Both of the ballets represented of American country life that corresponded to the folk traditions Copland was interested in.

Throughout the ’50s, Copland slowed his work as a composer, and began to try his hand at conducting. He began to tour with his own work as well as the works of other great American musicians. Conducting was a synthesis of the work he had done as a composer and as an organizer.

It is ironic, considering the political climate rampant in the US during the decade following WWII, that the composer whose music was so strongly identified with the American myth was not only a homosexual but a leftist.

In 1953, despite (or perhaps because of) his public stature, Copland was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee as an alleged Communist sympathizer, as he had--in his identification with the "common man"--supported socialist causes in the 1930s.

During the interrogation, he was a model of dignity and, in his answers, gave the committee no information that corroborated the Committee in its "witchhunts." Frustrated by this less than useful witness, the Committee dismissed Copland, but, as a result of his questioning, the performance of "A Lincoln Portrait" scheduled for President Dwight D. Eisenhower's inauguration a mere two weeks later was cancelled by government officials.

"A Lincoln Portrait" went on to become the most important and successful composition from this time. The patriotic piece for voice and orchestra presents quotes from Lincoln’s writings narrated over Copland’s musical composition.

A decade later after his ordeal with the Committee, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded Copland the Medal of Freedom for his contributions to American culture in 1964.

Over the next twenty years he traveled the world, conducting live performances and creating an important collection of recorded work. By the early ’70s, he had, with very few exceptions, completely stopped writing original music. Most of his time was spent conducting and reworking older compositions. In 1983 he conducted his last symphony.

His work as a teacher at Tanglewood, Harvard, and the New School for Social Research gained him a following of devoted musicians.

Copland wrote more than sixty articles and essays on music, in addition to five books. He traveled the world in an attempt to elevate the status of American music abroad, and to increase its popularity at home.

Like many of his contemporaries he guarded his privacy, especially sexual orientation, providing very few written details about his private life. But unlike many gay men of the time, Copland was neither ashamed of nor tortured by his sexuality. He apparently understood and accepted it from an early age, and throughout his life was involved in relationships with other men. He was one of the few composers of his stature to live openly and travel with his lovers, most of whom were talented, much younger men. Among Copland's love affairs, most of which lasted for only a few years yet became enduring friendships, were ones with photographer Victor Kraft, artist Alvin Ross, pianist Paul Moor, dancer Erik Johns, and composer John Brodbin Kennedy.

Through his commitments to music and to his country, Aaron Copland became one of the most important figures in twentieth-century American music.

On December 2, 1990, Aaron Copland passed away in North Tarrytown, New York at the age of 90.