Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland (1900-1990), American composer, a dominant presence in United States music of the 20th century.

Copland was born in New York City on November 14, 1900. He studied in New York City with the American composer Rubin Goldmark and in Paris with the influential French teacher Nadia Boulanger. Although his earliest work was heavily influenced by the French impressionists, he soon began to develop a personalized style. After experimenting with jazz rhythms in such works as Music for the Theater (1925) and the Piano Concerto (1927), Copland turned to more austere and dissonant compositions. Concert pieces such as the Piano Variations (1930) and Statements (1933-1935) rely on nervous, irregular rhythms, angular melodies, and highly dissonant harmonies.

In the mid-1930s Copland turned to a simpler style, more melodic and lyrical, frequently drawing on elements of American folk music. His best work of the 1940s expresses distinctly American themes; in Lincoln Portrait (1942), for orchestra and narrator, and in the ballets Billy the Kid (1938), Rodeo (1942), and Appalachian Spring (1944; Pulitzer Prize, 1945), he uses native themes and rhythms to capture the flavor of early American life. He adapted Mexican folk music for El salón México (1937). Other orchestral works are the Symphony for Organ and Orchestra (1925), the Symphonic Ode (1932), and the Third Symphony (1946), which incorporates the Fanfare for the Common Man (1942). Also from this period is the opera for high school students, The Second Hurricane (1937).

His music for films includes Of Mice and Men (1937), Our Town (1940), and The Heiress (1949; Academy Award, best dramatic film score). In the 1950s Copland returned to his earlier austere style. In the complex, virtuosic Piano Fantasy (1957) and such later orchestral works as Connotations (1962), commissioned for the opening of Lincoln Center in New York City, and Inscape (1967), he assimilated the twelve-tone system of composition. Copland's Proclamation (1982), a piano piece orchestrated by Phillip Ramey, was performed in 1985 at a concert celebrating Copland's 85th birthday.

Copland died in North Tarrytown, New York, on December 2, 1990.

A distinguished teacher (Berkshire Music Center, 1940-1965), Copland also did much to promote the music of contemporary composers. He wrote What to Listen for in Music (1939), Our New Music (1941; revised as The New Music, 1968), Music and Imagination (1952), and Copland on Music (1960).