Aaron Copland

More than any composer, Aaron Copland came to define the public’s perception of American concert music during the 20th century, often doing so with panache, soulfulness, and grandeur. The son of Jewish Lithuanian immigrants, Copland was born in New York City in 1900 and began piano lessons at the age of 13. After studying theory and composition with Rubin Goldmark, in 1921 he left for Paris, where he became one of the first American pupils of Nadia Boulanger. His first early works, including Music for the Theater (1925) and the Piano Concerto (1926), juggled a Stravinsky-inspired neoclassicism with a jazzy nonchalance. During the Depression, Copland’s music briefly took a more abstract, modernist turn, notably in the Piano Variations (1930). But he rued the gulf between modern composers and their audiences, and soon shifted course. He produced popular orchestral scores that evoked Mexican dance halls, cowboy hoedowns and Shaker hymns, including El salón México (1936), Billy the Kid (1938), Rodeo (1942), and Appalachian Spring (composed in 1944 for Martha Graham). World War II brought muscular patriotism in Lincoln Portrait (1942) and Symphony No. 3 (1944-46), while the postwar era marked a growing (but hardly fruitless) struggle to absorb avant-garde trends. Following a series of vocal works, including 12 Poems of Emily Dickinson (1949-50) and the opera The Tender Land (1954), he produced the stark, serialist Piano Fantasy (1957) and Connotations (1962). A lifelong teacher and generous champion of other composers, Copland wrote books on music and composed several scores for Hollywood. He died in 1990.