Aaron Copland
What are some intresting facts about aaron copland?
Carley, I’ll give you some facts about Aaron Copland and you can choose what you find interesting:
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.
Aside from composing, Copland was a teacher, lecturer, critic, writer, and conductor (generally, but not always, of his own works).
Most of Copland’s early exposure to music was at Jewish weddings and ceremonies, and occasional family musicales.
At the age of eleven, Copland devised an opera scenario he called Zenatello, which included seven bars of music, his first notated melody.
By the age of 15, after attending a concert by composer-pianist Ignacy Paderewski, Copland decided to become a composer.
From 1917 to 1921, Copland composed juvenile works of short piano pieces and art songs.
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.
On returning to America in 1929, he lived frugally and survived financially with help from a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1925 and again in 1926, each worth $2,500.
Lecture-recitals, awards, appointments and small commissions, plus some teaching, writing, and personal loans kept him afloat in the subsequent years through World War II.
Also important were wealthy patrons who supported the arts community during the Depression, underwriting performances, publication, and promotion of musical events and composers.
During the Depression years, Copland traveled extensively to Europe, Africa, and Mexico. He formed an important friendship with Mexican composer Carlos Chavez and would return often to Mexico on working vacations and to conduct.
During his initial visit to Mexico, Copland began composing the first of his signature works, El Salón México, which he completed four years later in 1936.
In 1939, Copland completed his first two Hollywood film scores, for Of Mice and Men and Our Town, and received sizable commissions.
But it wasn’t until the worldwide market for classical recordings boomed after World War II, however, that he achieved economic security.
Demonstrating his broad range, in the 1930s Copland began composing for ballet, with his highly successful Billy the Kid (1939), the second of four ballets he scored (after Hear Ye! Hear Ye! (1934)).
Copland’s ballet music had much the same effect of establishing Copland as an authentic composer of American music as Stravinsky’s ballet scores did for Russian music.
Copland’s timing was excellent. He helped fill a vacuum for the American choreographers who needed suitable music to score their own nationalistic dance repertory.
Copland started to publish some of his lectures in the 1930s, “What to Listen for in Music” being one of the most notable of his writings.
The decade of the 1940s was arguably Copland’s most productive and it firmly established his worldwide fame.
His two ballet scores for Rodeo (1942) and Appalachian Spring (1944) were huge successes.
His pieces Lincoln Portrait and Fanfare for the Common Man have become patriotic standards.
Because of the political climate of that era, A Lincoln Portrait was withdrawn from the 1953 inaugural concert for President Eisenhower. That same year, Copland was called before Congress, where he testified that he was never a communist.
Despite the difficulties that his suspected Communist sympathies posed, Copland nonetheless traveled extensively during the 1950s and early 1960s, observing the avant-garde stylings of Europe while experiencing the new school of Soviet music.
Copland is documented as a homosexual man in author Howard Pollack’s biography, Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man.
Like many of his contemporaries he guarded his privacy, especially in regard to his homosexuality, providing very few written details about his private life.
However, 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.
You can read more here:
http://www.notablebiographies.com/Co-Da/Copland-Aaron.html
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Fields/8616/composerfiles/copland.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_copland
Aaron Copland
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Bernstein Century – Copland: Appalachian Spring, Rodeo, etc / Bernstein, New York PO $6.95 Happy is the composer who has an advocate as passionate and talented as Leonard Bernstein. These Copland performances have been the preferred versions since they were first issued–better even than the composer’s own, later recordings. Originally they were spread over two discs, but thanks to the extended playing time of the compact disc, you can now get all three great Copland ballets togeth… |
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Of Mice & Men [VHS] $29.98 Truly one of the unsung triumphs of 1939, this heartfelt adaptation of John Steinbeck’s morality tale of two itinerant migrant workers seems just as fresh and powerful decades after its release. Lon Chaney Jr. gives the performance of a lifetime as the sweet yet feeble-minded Lennie, who is befriended by the weary Burgess Meredith. They both would be lost without each other in a rather mixed-up wo… |
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The City + Power and the Land THE CITY is a landmark documentary, co-directed by Willard Van Dyke and Ralph Steiner, with commentary written by Lewis Mumford (read by Morris Carnovsky). It features music by Aaron Copland. Notable for its montages, its narrative vignettes and its humor, it is also a powerful social portrait and historical document of New York City (1939, 44 minutes). Directed by Joris Ivens in 1940, THE POWER… |
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Keeping Score: Copland and the American Sound $18.86 DVD featuring Michael Tilson Thomas (Actor), Aaron Copland (Actor)…. |
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The City: The Classic 1939 Documentary with a newly recorded soundtrack of the score by Aaron Copland $13.51 CITY – DVD Movie… |
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New Sbme Red Seal Aaron Copland Billy The Kid & Rodeo Suite/Ferde Grof Grand Canyon Suite Sacd Opera $16.16 … |
