Aaron Copland (1900–90) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later a conductor of his own and other American music. This “Dean of American Composers” is celebrated for a distinctive musical characterization of American themes in an expressive modern style.
Born to Lithuanian-Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn, New York City, Copland studied under composer Rubin Goldmark (the teacher of composer George Gershwin) in New York and under French composer Nadia Boulanger in Paris. After his return to America in 1924, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (1925)—the first to be awarded to a composer.
A series of early works influenced by composer Igor Stravinsky, neoclassical in outlook and employing jazz idioms, was followed by compositions that drew on American tradition, jazz, and folk music, of which the ballets Billy the Kid (1938,) Appalachian Spring (1944,) and A Lincoln Portrait (1942) are representatives. In addition to ballets and film scores, he composed two operas and three symphonies.
Copland’s memoirs are Composer from Brooklyn (1984.) He wrote What to Listen for in Music (1939, 1957) and Music and Imagination (2006.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Aaron Copland
The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, ‘Is there a meaning to music?’ My answer would be, ‘Yes.’ And ‘Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?’ My answer to that would be, ‘No.’
—Aaron Copland
Topics: Art
To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.
—Aaron Copland
Topics: Music
Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or perhaps of sub-consciousness—I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.
—Aaron Copland
Topics: Confidence
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