George Gershwin had already achieved massive popularity through his songs and shows, but his was the music of the gifted street musician rather than the academic conservatoire pupil. This spurred North American composers to redouble their efforts to develop a distinctive, national style. The way was clear for a creative voice to emerge that would draw together the various strands of American popular and folk music for concert-hall presentation, and Copland proved to be the right person in the right place at the right time.
All those notes, and to what end? His singer-pianist mother prescribed a healthy diet of opera, ballet and orchestral concerts in addition to piano and violin lessons, but it was not until he saw the great Polish pianist-composer Paderewski give a sensational recital in that he fixed his sights on becoming a composer.
Two years later he began lessons with Rubin Goldmark, who ensured that Copland was brought up to speed with the music of the great Romantic masters. However, Copland was already hankering after something more stylistically adventurous, as witness the Debussyian heartbeat of his first published composition, The Cat And The Mouse for solo piano.
Now there was simply no holding him back. Between and Copland bathed in the artistic hot-spring that was post-war Paris, under the intellectually bracing guidance of Nadia Boulanger. Having absorbed everything from Ravel and Satie to Proust and Picasso, Copland returned home determined to put the United States on the musical map once and for all. It was distinctive in its use of polyrhythm and polyharmony, particularly in the cowboy songs. In the early s, Copland produced two important works intended as national morale boosters.
Fanfare for the Common Man , scored for brass and percussion, was written in at the request of the conductor Eugene Goossens, conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. It would later be used to open many Democratic National Conventions, and to add dignity to a wide range of other events. Many Americans have performed the recitation, including politicians, actors, and musicians and Copland himself, with Henry Fonda doing the most notable recording.
Continuing his string of successes, in Copland composed the ballet Rodeo, a tale of a ranch wedding, written around the same time as Lincoln Portrait.
This was a recreation of Appalachian fiddler W. This fragment lifted from Ruth Crawford Seeger is now one of the best-known compositions by any American composer, having been used numerous times in movies and on television, including commercials for the American beef industry. Copland was commissioned to write another ballet, Appalachian Spring , originally written using thirteen instruments, which he ultimately arranged as a popular orchestral suite.
Graham took the score and created a ballet she called Appalachian Spring from a poem by Hart Crane which had no connection with Shakers. It was an instant success, and the music later acquired the same name.
Copland, when I see that ballet and when I hear your music I can see the Appalachians and just feel spring. Skip to main content. In his ballets— Billy the Kid , Rodeo , and Appalachian Spring ; Pulitzer Prize, —he made use of folk melodies and relaxed his previous style to arrive at a sound more broadly recognized as "American. Copland's concern for establishing a tradition of music in American life increased when he became a teacher at The New School for Social Research at Harvard University, and as head of the composition department at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood, Massachusetts, a school founded by Koussevitzky.
Beginning with the Quartet for Piano and Strings , Copland made use of the methods developed by Austrian American composer Arnold Schoenberg, who developed a tonal system not based on any key. This confused many listeners. Copland's most important works of these years include the Piano Fantasy , Nonet for Strings , Connotations , and Inscape The Tender Land represents an extension of the style of ballet to the opera stage. Copland spent the final years of his life living primarily in the New York City area.
He engaged in many cultural missions, especially to South America. Although he had been out of the major spotlight for almost twenty years, he remained semiactive in the music world up until his death, conducting his last symphony in He was remembered as a man who encouraged young composers to find their own voice, no matter the style, just as he had done for sixty years.
Copland, Aaron, and Vivian Perlis. Copland: through New York: St. Copland: Since Martin's Press, Pollack, Howard. Toggle navigation.
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