Brief biography of American composer and music teacher Aaron Copland, his life, film scores and list of works. Famous for ballet Appalachian Spring.

Aaron Copland, famous for Appalachian Spring, is considered America's best-known 20th century composer of classical music in terms of vividly portraying the wide open spaces of America, putting to memory the lives of pioneers and legends of the Wild West.

Copland's film scores, including Of Mice and Men, Our Town and The Heiress, for which he won an Academy Award for best score, set new standards for Hollywood.

Beginnings of Copland

Aaron Copland was born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 14, 1900, a son of Russian Jewish immigrants. He started his musical lessons with Rubin Goldmark in New York and with the famous French teacher Nadia Boulanger, in Paris, then returned to New York.

Early Career

Aside from composing, he took a leading part in composers’ organizations and taught at the New School for Social Research for ten years, from 1927. Elmer Bernstein and Alberto Ginastera were among his prominent students.

His early works, such as his Piano Concerto incorporate jazz and modernist idioms. He took avant-garde European styles and gave them a distinctive American pitch.

Orchestral Works

Copland later assimilated local American styles, notably in the ballets Billy the Kid and Appalachian Spring based on the poem by Hart Crane. Among his orchestral works are three symphonies, including a considered very American short piece “Fanfare for the common Man, ” Music for the Theatre, Symphonic Ode, A Dance Symphony, Statements, El Salon Mexico, Music for the Radio, An Outdoor Overture, Quiet City, Letter from Home, Danzon Cubano, Lincoln Portrait for orator and orchestra, piano concerto, and a clarinet concerto.

Copland's Music Distinctly American

In spite earlier great European influence of his contemporaries particularly Schoenberg and Stravinsky, he started seriously looking to his own American homeland for inspiration: Wild West, pioneering life in the Appalachian, music of black Americans, and jazz. He reinforced all these with his talents and skills to come up with an American voice; true enough, his most famous work is known to be the ballet Appalachian Spring, with many quotations from old folk songs, hymns and dances.

Copland's Awards

Pulitzer Price for ballet Appalachian Spring, 1944

Academy Awards nomination for:

• Mice and Men (1931)
• Our Town (1940)
• The North Star (1943)

Best music in 1949: The Heiress

Works by Aaron Copland

• Piano Concerto, 1926
• El Salón Mexico, for orchestra, 1936
• Ballet, Billy the Kid, 1938
• Quiet City, for orchestra, 1939
• Film score, Of Mice and Men, 1939
• Film score, Our Town, 1940
• Ballet, Rodeo, 1942
• Ballet, Appalachian Spring, 1944
• Symphony No.3 including 'Fanfare for the Common Man', 1946
• Clarinet Concerto, 1948
• Film score, The Heiress, 1949
• The Old American Songs, 1952
• Opera, The Tender Land, 1959
• Ballet, Dance Panels, 1959

Sources:

The Encyclopedia of Music, by Max Wade-Matthew and Wendy Thompson, Hermes House (2004)

The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music, edited by Stanley Sadie (1994)