.... © 2000 Jeffrey Dane

Sometimes called "The Brooklyn Stravinsky" because of some musical parallels with the older Russian composer, Aaron Copland's contributions to American music ultimately established him as the most original and influential American composer in our country's history.

Born in 1900 and raised on Washington Avenue near the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, Copland became a musical icon even during his own lifetime, which stretched clear across the 20th century.

The family name in Russia was Kaplan but it was as a Copland that Aaron first saw the light of day. Young Aaron's initial piano lessons were from his sister, but a mark of his initiative is that he was soon knocking at the door of Leopold Wolfsohn's piano studio at 345 Clinton Avenue in Brooklyn to arrange, on his own, for more advanced instruction. At 17, in his senior year at Boys High School, Copland was recommended by Wolfsohn for intensive study in harmony and composition with Rubin Goldmark, who in 1924 became the director of the Composition Department at The Juilliard School in New York. Goldmark himself had studied with the great Antonin Dvorak, which would make Aaron Copland essentially Dvorak's musical grandson.

Aaron Copland, left, ca.1960, and Antonin Dvorak, ca.1903. Dvorak, Copland's musical grandfather, lived across the street from New York's National Conservatory of Music, of which he was director from 1892-1895.

By age 21, Copland was in France, attending the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau. His first residence was at 207 Boulevard Raspail in the Montparnasse section of Paris, and he began a pivotal period of study with the great educator, Nadia Boulanger. She herself had studied with Gabriel Fauré (who was still living), and some of her own students comprise a roster of the most significant figures in American music. A public performance of Copland's piano piece, Le Chat et la Souris ("The Cat & The Mouse," composed in 1920) was attended by a representative of Durand, Debussy's own publisher, who immediately afterward offered to bring out the young Copland's work, for which he was paid 500 Francs. Copland excitedly wrote to his family that his music would soon be published for the first time.

Copland recalled the weekly gatherings at Mlle. Boulanger's home at 36 Rue Ballu, where he met the most important French musicians of the time. "I even shook hands with Saint-Saëns in that place," he later said. The links in the chain that binds us to the world's musical history seem larger and stronger when we realize that Charles Camille Saint-Saëns (composer of "Danse Macabre" and "Carnival of the Animals") was born in 1835, a mere eight years after Beethoven's death, and that he was the first composer of note to write (in 1907) what was operatively a film score. Sad sequels sometimes show that serendipity plays its role not a month too soon: it was in 1921 and only weeks before Saint-Saëns' death on December 16 (ironically, Beethoven's birthday) that Copland had met him.

American-born composers had been around before Copland but most were trained in Europe, and their music reflected this. When Copland returned from France he had a strong desire, and now the technique, to write a kind of music that would be unmistakably American in its sound. Initially, jazz seemed to have the basic source material for it, but his feeling about a "conscious Americanism" in his music eventually changed significantly, taking a different direction with different musical materials. A testament to his originality is that his musical maturity developed not from outside sources but mainly from within. He infused his music with a distinctively individualistic "Copland sound": it's impossible to define and difficult to explain - but it's also very easy to recognize and it influenced countless composers who followed him.

Nadia Boulanger, left, and New York's Juilliard School building on Cleremont Avenue (now the Manhattan School of Music).

Though we may be unaware of it, Copland's music has touched all of us in some way. One example of his music's popularity and impact is in the use of The Hoedown from his ballet "Rodeo" (pronounced ro-DAY-o) in a once-popular TV commercial narrated by the late Robert Mitchum ("Beef - It's what's for dinner"). Another is in the famous "Fanfare for the Common Man," which Copland wrote at 42 for brass and percussion, and which he soon expanded for use as the last movement of his Third Symphony. The "Fanfare," one of several he composed, effectively identifies him musically and is one of his most recognizable pieces.

As Beethoven's fifth and sixth symphonies were actually composed in reverse order, the title of one of Copland's most well-known works was given to the piece only after it was completed, and is an ideal illustration of what the power of suggestion can do. His ballet "Appalachian Spring" was commissioned by Martha Graham and won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1945. Copland related of having been told by countless people how his music for this ballet conjured up in their minds the most vivid and moving images of Americana and all that goes with it. They weren't aware, of course, that a musical "description" of Americana was unintentional, and that during its composition the piece had only a working title, "Ballet for Martha." The music had already been composed before a final title for the piece had even been thought of, and which was chosen by Martha Graham herself, who had found the phrase in a poem by Hart Crane.

When Copland first visited Israel, then a new country, to play and conduct his own works, he set a precedent by meeting for nearly a week with thirty of Israel's young composers, offering guidance and encouragement.

Composers, of any nation or era, who can realize a livelihood mainly from royalties are the exceptions to the rule. Aaron Copland was one of them. His importance is of such magnitude that his career became effectively an industry unto itself, and his renown brought him personal prosperity and worldwide fame. These earnings, which included appearances as a conductor of his own music, gave him the fortunate and enviable practical stability to live comfortably throughout his life without the necessity of having to hold an official position.

Charles Camille Saint-Saëns (left), late in his life, and Copland with his friend, colleague, and most exponential interpreter, Leonard Bernstein.

Copland tended to be subtle, introverted, discreet, restrained, casual, economical in the use and handling of his musical materials as well as in his speech, and personally something of the Classicist, while his friend and colleague (and arguably his most exponential interpreter), Leonard Bernstein, was obvious, extroverted, sometimes ostentatious, explanatory, lavish, and of a Romantic personal nature. The differences between the two composers were in some ways diametric and certainly dramatic, but since opposites attract, they were also complimentary. Bernstein's now-historic New York Philharmonic debut occurred on Sunday, November 14, 1943 - Copland's 43rd birthday. Though he never formally studied with Copland in the traditional sense, during his student days the young Bernstein would bring his latest compositions to the older man. Bernstein later recalled some of Copland's comments: "This is lousy," or "This sounds like Scriabin," or "This is just Rachmaninoff revisited - but go home and write some more!"

To say that Copland wrote American music would be understatement epitomized. In 1942 he composed "A Lincoln Portrait" for speaker and orchestra. Its recordings have had narrators as diverse and yet truly American as Henry Fonda, Katherine Hepburn, Charlton Heston, James Earl Jones, H.Norman Schwarzkopf and Adlai Stevenson. In addition to works in the popular idiom, such as the ballets "Billy The Kid" and "El Salón Mexico," Copland composed three symphonies, chamber works, eight film scores (including "The Heiress" and "The Red Pony"), operas, and piano music, some of which is brutally difficult to play.

Like his music, Copland's conversation was economical, to the point, and free of superfluity. "If it's in the music, it's in the man," he said. When asked if he was partial to any of his own works, he replied, "I like 'Appalachian Spring' because everybody seems to, and I like the Short Symphony because nobody seems to. It's the unwanted child."

As Vladimir Horowitz and Artur Rubinstein were considered the foremost pianists of their day, for decades Aaron Copland was the dominant American composer, and the first, in 1925, to win a Guggenheim Fellowship. It's no accident that Lincoln Center's opening concert in September, 1962 had a work by Copland on it: "Connotations For Orchestra," commissioned especially for the event.

Aaron Copland's studio at his home at Rock Hill, near Peekskill, NY..

The wealthy Rossini composed little in his later life ("I have a passion for idleness," he said), and Sibelius wrote nothing after 1929, living his remaining twenty eight years as a man of leisure on a handsome stipend from the Finnish government. Feeling he had expressed himself sufficiently, Copland composed less in his last years, spending them at his home near Peekskill, NY. He died on December 2, 1990 - seven Sundays to the hour after Leonard Bernstein - and his ashes were scattered about the grounds of Tanglewood, Massachussetts, where he had spent so much time teaching young composers. His spacious home, with a glass-walled studio and located in secluded rustic surroundings near the Hudson River, is where he lived and worked for the last 30 years of his life. In keeping with his wishes, the house is kept by the Copland Heritage Association not as a museum but as a functioning retreat for creative artists.

At this point I forsake an author's anonymity and take a personal role. I had the pleasure of meeting and speaking with Aaron Copland on at least half a dozen occasions. It wasn't just easy but actually necessary to literally look up to him: physically imposing at well over six feet, and in keeping with the magnitude of his music, Copland towered over most of his contemporaries, as George Washington did with his. With a facial profile as distinctive as his musical one, Copland had the look of a benevolent bird of prey. Many people met Johannes Brahms during the last century. In our day many met Aaron Copland, and it's frankly very pleasing for me to know that I am one of them. Friendly and markedly approachable as a human being, he accomplished more in a year than many others do in their individual lifetimes - and the occasions on which I shook hands and spoke with him represent moments in my personal weather which had a memorable effect on the climate of my life.

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Author's Biography :

Jeffrey Dane is an independent historian, researcher and author whose work is widely published, in print and online publications, in the USA and in several languages worldwide. Initially trained in musicology, most of what he writes for publication has a musical focus, but as a pleasant, relaxing and fulfilling diversion from the norm of routine he researches and writes on other subjects as well - any subjects that interest him - ranging from antiques to the Alamo, from Goethe to George Washington. His book, "Beethoven's Piano," was published by New York's Museum of the American Piano. His personal Remembrance of Leonard Bernstein (whom he know when a student) appeared in The Musical Performance Journal, London, in 1997, and he has been a contributor to several books, including "Leonard Bernstein - A Life" by Meryle Secrest (Alfred Knopf, New York, 1994). He's been called by some a real idealist and by others an ideal realist. Both views have merit.