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 From his early twenties until his death, Aaron Copland was a tireless force in the musical world. First as a composer of a diverse range of musical forms, then as a teacher, musical theorist, organizer of musical events, and conductor, Copland spent almost seven decades earning his reputation as the father of modern American music.
Born in 1900 in Brooklyn, New York, Aaron Copland was the fifth child of Harris, a dry-goods shop owner, and Sarah Copland. Following a wave of persecutions of Jews in Russia at the turn of the century, his parents had immigrated to America separately before meeting in New York. Music played an integral role in Copland’s youth. His mother and uncle sang and played the violin, respectively, and his sister Laurine took piano lessons at the Metropolitan Opera School. Since his parents had reservations about their ability to afford music lessons for another child, Copland first learned to play the piano from Laurine. After six months, however, he had mastered all that she had learned through four years of instruction, and his parents allowed him to find professional instruction in Brooklyn.
Copland then began to study with Leopold Wolfsuhn, who introduced the eager pupil to Chopin, Mozart, and Beethoven. The onset of the First World War interrupted Copland’s lessons, however, as he volunteered to assist with the summer’s harvest in 1914. Luckily, a member of the farm community to which he was assigned owned a piano. While Copland confessed to a friend that the piano was a "tin pan," it nevertheless allowed him to continue practicing through the summer. When Copland returned home, Wolfsuhn was so impressed by his student’s progress that he recommended Copland to Rubin Goldmark, a harmony specialist in New York. Goldmark’s strict instruction for the next few years allowed his pupil to receive solid training in established musical forms, against which Copland would later rebel. After graduating from high school in 1918, Copland decided to forgo college and instead pursue his musical career. He spent the next few years living at home and concentrating on his music. In March 1919, he published his first work for piano, a Scherzo Humoristique subtitled The Cat and the Mouse. During these early years, Copland was deeply influenced by the new music of Claude Debussy, an influence that would play a large role in Copland’s decision to move to France a few years later. To support himself, Copland worked as a clerk in his father’s store, as a runner on Wall Street, and as a pianist for the Finnish Socialist Hall in Brooklyn.
In June 1921, Aaron Copland sailed off to France to attend a summer program at the newly formed Fontainebleau School of Music for Americans, for which he won a scholarship. On the voyage, Copland met the artist Marcel Duchamp, who took a liking to the budding composer and gave Copland numerous tips on how to live cheaply in Paris. At school in Fontainbleau that summer, Copland took theory classes for the first time and met Nadia Boulanger, who accepted Copland as a student of composition in Paris at the end of the summer. Under the instruction of Boulanger, Copland created his first long piece, a ballet entitled Grohg. He stayed in France for three years, where he met numerous luminaries of the cultural world, including James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and the conductor Serge Koussevitzky, who would become an early champion of the composer’s modernist work. Three years after the young composer had come to Paris, he returned to New York.
Before Copland departed France in 1924, Boulanger had commissioned a piece from the young composer for her own appearance as an organ soloist in America the following year. Following his return to the United States, Copland spent the entire summer working on his Symphony for Organ and Orchestra, performed by Boulanger with the New York Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in January 1925. New York newspapers lauded Copland as a composer of the "ultra-moderns", "spasmodic and boisterous", and exhibiting "real talent." Later performances of his work by Koussevitzky and Boulanger with the Boston Symphony Orchestra further solidified Copland’s reputation as a fresh, modern composer. During this time, Copland exhibited a tendency toward the jazz style prevalent in 1920s America, though his compositions took on a more abstract, less extravagant form toward the end of the decade. In addition, he also began to experiment with regional and indigenous musical forms as a result of intermittent travels through Europe, Africa, Mexico, and the United States — experiments that ultimately led to his championship of American folk musical forms in the 1930s.
In 1929, Copland began to work with the festivals in Yaddo and Tanglewood. His involvement in these festivals, particularly with the new Tanglewood summer program for students, encouraged Copland to write for a wider audience. In 1935, he wrote his first play-opera, The Second Hurricane, for children in New York to perform. A few years later, the Ballet Caravan commissioned Copland to write his second ballet, Billy the Kid. Its debut in Chicago in 1938 was a smash hit. After Billy the Kid, Copland created other ballets, notably Rodeo (1942) with Agnes de Mille and Appalachian Spring (1944) with Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham. This last work won Copland the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 1945. In addition to his well-known ballets, Copland’s forays into film were equally successful. He wrote the scores Of Mice and Men (1939), Our Town (1940), The Red Pony (1948) and The Heiress (1948). For The Heiress, he won an Oscar in 1949.
Copland became increasingly reclusive after his numerous successes, spending long periods alone in Mexico, France, and in artists’ colonies throughout the United States to produce his music. During the 1940s, he acted as a goodwill ambassador to South America. In 1964, Copland received the Medal of Honor for his efforts in composition. While he virtually stopped composing in the 1970s, the affable Copland actively continued to lecture and conduct until the mid-1980s. He died in 1990.
In conclusion, Aaron Copland left a musical legacy spanning a variety of forms and styles. His early Symphony for Organ and Orchestra, written for his French composition teacher Nadia Boulanger, brought Copland much critical acclaim during the 1920s. During the 1940s, the composer wrote two famous ballets, Rodeo and Appalachian Spring, as well as a variety of film scores, including The Heiress. While he received continued inspiration from his visits to France, which he considered his second home, and from his travels to other countries, Copland created music that remains distinctly American and overflows with the youthful vigor of his young, native country.
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