Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland is generally considered America’s greatest composer.  That is, it is he, through his compositions and through his essays, books, lectures, and other thoughts on music, who has done more than any other individual to establish a corpus of “serious” music in this country that has largely defined an “American Sound.”  He lived a long life; influenced generations of...

By his very nature Copland was completely dedicated to the cause of the creation and encouragement of an indigenous American music—in every manifestation of the idea.  So it came to pass that relatively early in his stylistic move to a more “accessible” musical style that explored American indigenous elements, he composed An Outdoor Overture.  The title is a bit misleading, for it played nothing...

    Aaron Copland is generally considered America’s greatest composer.  That is, it is he, through his compositions and through his essays, books, lectures, and other thoughts on music who has done more than any other individual to establish a corpus of “serious” music in this country that largely defined an “American Sound.”  He lived a long life; influenced...

         If there ever was an American “composer laureate,” then Aaron Copland is surely he.   A native of Brooklyn, the son of Jewish immigrants of Lithuanian descent, he established what many call the “American sound” in art music.  He had gone to Paris, like so many during the 1920s, to study advanced composition, and his musical style when he returned...

Aaron Copland is generally considered America’s greatest composer.  That is, it is he, through his compositions and through his essays, books, lectures, and other thoughts on music, who has done more than any other individual to establish a corpus of “serious” music in this country that has largely defined an “American” style.  He lived a long life; influenced generations of young...

Aaron Copland is a man who is hard to pin down.  Clearly America’s most well-known and respected “classical” composer, he was the creator of some of the country’s most beloved compositions that brought the “American” style to the concert hall.  Yet, for all that, he was a musician with a remarkably broad range of personal interests and musical styles.  His deep intellect and...

For the 1942-43 concert season, the distinguished English conductor of the Cincinnati Symphonic, Eugène Goossens, conceived the idea of commissioning fanfares from mostly American composers to open each of the forthcoming concerts.  Those were dark times, indeed, for the world’s democracies, and he sought to more or less repeat his success with a similar project in England during the First...

Aaron Copland is a man who is hard to pin down.  Clearly America’s most well-known and respected “classical” composer, he was the creator of some of the country’s most beloved compositions that brought the “American” style to the concert hall.  Yet, for all that, he was a musician with a remarkably broad range of personal interests and musical styles.  His deep intellect and...

It is difficult, indeed, in these times truly to understand the profound differences—between then and now–of the impact of our nation’s wars upon our national experience.  Our recent wars, while demanding great sacrifice of those directly involved, pale in their engagement of the vast majority of our people in comparison with the generation of World War II.  In those parlous times...

    If there ever was an American “composer laureate,” then Aaron Copland is surely he.   A native of Brooklyn, the son of Jewish immigrants of Lithuanian descent, he established what many call the “American Sound” in art music.  He had gone to Paris, like so many during the 1920s, to study advanced composition, and his musical style when he returned was accordingly advanced...