Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland (1900–1990) was an American composer, conductor, and teacher who became synonymous with the sound of the United States in the twentieth century. His ability to weave folk tunes, jazz idioms, and vast, open harmonies into a distinctive, modern style earned him the moniker "the Dean of American Music."


Childhood and Early Influences

Copland was born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 14, 1900, the youngest of five children to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, Harris and Sarah Copland. The family lived above and operated a general merchandise store, H.M. Copland's, which the composer later described as "a kind of neighborhood Macy's." 1 Copland's father had little interest in music, but his mother sang and arranged for lessons for her children. Copland’s earliest musical training came from his older sister, Laurine, who gave him his first piano lessons and nurtured his growing ambition to become a composer, a decision he solidified by age 15.


A lesser-known, yet interesting, fact about his background is that his maternal side, the Mittenthals, had once settled in Texas and sold dry goods until Frank James, the brother of Jesse James, robbed their store, leading the family to move north to New York City.2 This unlikely connection to the American West is often cited when discussing how the "Brooklyn boy" could so convincingly capture the spirit of the cowboy in his later ballets, though Copland himself would often jokingly attribute his frugality to his origins as the "son of shopkeepers."3


Development as a Composer

After graduating from high school, Copland pursued formal instruction, studying harmony, counterpoint, and composition with the conservative American composer Rubin Goldmark. Dissatisfied with Goldmark's strict adherence to 19th-century European tradition, Copland sought a more innovative approach.4


A pivotal moment in his development came in 1921 when he traveled to France to attend the newly founded Summer School of Music for American Students at Fontainebleau. There, he met the legendary teacher Nadia Boulanger, who would become the single most influential figure in his career.5 Copland was Boulanger's first American composition student, and he remained in Paris for three years, where he developed a broad, eclectic musical taste. His return to the United States in 1924 was marked by an important commission from Boulanger: an organ concerto, which he later revised without organ to become his First Symphony (1928), marking his entry into the professional American music scene.


In the mid-1920s, Copland experimented with jazz rhythms, notably in his Music for the Theatre (1925) and Piano Concerto (1926), believing jazz to be the first truly original American musical movement.6 He then shifted to a more abstract, lean style, influenced by Igor Stravinsky’s Neoclassicism, seen in works like Piano Variations (1930).


However, in the mid-1930s, Copland made a decisive change in direction, realizing that modern composers risked "working in a vacuum" and sought to bridge the gap between the composer and the public.7 This new orientation, spurred by the Depression and the rise of new media like radio and film, led him to concentrate on folk themes and accessible, "American" sounds. This culminated in his most celebrated works—the "populist" period—which masterfully blended simple, wide-open sonorities with sophisticated compositional craft, creating an unmistakable musical signature that defined the American landscape in sound.


Most Known Works

Copland's best-known compositions generally fall into his populist period, where he achieved the iconic "American Sound" that speaks of vast landscapes and pioneer spirit.


Footnotes and References

Resources

 http://www.coplandhouse.org/aaron-copland/

https://www.kennedy-center.org/artists/c/co-cz/aaron-copland/

https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200182578/