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...
Symphony No. 3
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...
The Red Pony
Copland wrote the scores for eight films—including two documentaries—beginning in 1939. He was in the forefront of those who brought a modern musical style to a Hollywood that had been thoroughly dominated by pseudo-romantic film composers. His music for the film dramatization (1949—starring Myrna Loy and Robert Mitchum) of John Steinbeck’s The Red Pony was composed in 1948, and a suite of six...
Three Latin American Sketches
Copland is clearly regarded as the most significant American composer of “classical” music, and that reputation is considerably enhanced by the association with him of what many musical critics call the “American” style. It’s really difficult to exaggerate his impact upon serious music in American culture. The importance of his compositions is self-evident, of course, not...