Aaron Copland: THE LIFE AND WORK OF AN UNCOMMON MAN (Music in American Life)
by Howard Pollack
from University of Illinois Press
Opening with a 12-page chapter that gives a sharper impression of the great American composer's personality than many full-length books, this superb biography goes from strength to strength as it elucidates Aaron Copland's background, beliefs, affiliations, and achievements. Music historian Howard Pollack depicts Copland (1900-90) as a man whose inner serenity and self-confidence enabled him to encompass "startling dichotomies" in his life and work. "A participant in the avant-garde, he wrote works of popular appeal," comments the author. "A Jewish, homosexual, liberal New Yorker, he became a national hero." Moving forward in a generally chronological manner, the narrative mixes two kinds of chapters. Some pursue themes over time: his feelings about European music (he adored Stravinsky, was ambivalent about Mozart), his political commitments (which got him into trouble during the McCarthy era), and his relationships with fellow composers and a host of nonmusical artists all equally determined to give America its own distinctive culture. Others concentrate on describing and analyzing groups of compositions: perennial favorites like Appalachian Spring and Billy the Kid, of course, but also the concertos and symphonies respected by his peers. In either mode, Pollack writes with a clarity and dignity eminently suitable to his subject, who seems as warmly appealing as his music. --Wendy Smith
The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Aaron Copland (1900-1990) became one of America's most beloved and esteemed composers. His work, which includes Fanfare for the Common Man, A Lincoln Portrait, and Appalachian Spring, has been honored by a huge following of devoted listeners. But the full richness of Copland's life and accomplishments has never, until now, been documented or understood. Howard Pollack's meticulously researched and engrossing biography explores the symphony of Copland's life: his childhood in Brooklyn; his homosexuality; Paris in the early 1920s; the Alfred Stieglitz circle; his experimentation with jazz; the communist witch trials; Hollywood in the forties; public disappointment with his later, intellectual work; and his struggle with Alzheimer's disease. Furthermore, Pollack presents informed discussions of Copland's music, explaining and clarifying its newness and originality, its aesthetic and social aspects, its distinctive and enduring personality.
Aaron Copland (Getting to Know the World's Greatest Composers)
from Children's Press (CT)
Presents a biography of Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland's America: A Cultural Perspective
by Gail Levin
from Watson-Guptill Publications
Published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Heckscher Museum in Huntington, New York, this fresh and engaging look at a great American composer reveals a little-known but critically important passion in his life: cherished friendships with some of the most remarkable artists of the twentieth century, many of whom had a significant influence on Copland's music throughout his long and illustrious career. There are two essays, one that focuses on Copland's interactions with the art world (visual and otherwise), the other on his music. The book looks at how the composer's fascination with folk and popular culture, native arts, jazz, cinema, and the search for an American national art gave form to his music, which sprang not only from his personal talent but also from connections to the powerful creative forces around him. Also documented are Copland's friendships with painters such as Georgia O'Keeffe and Diego Rivera; choreographers Martha Graham and Agnes de Mille; and writers Hart Crane, Gertrude Stein, and others. Appalachian Spring and other great Copland works are discussed in context, with photos of ballets and films for which Copland composed included. Paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures by Picasso, de Kooning, Noguchi, and others suggest the parallels between Copland's genius and that of his fellow artists.
The Selected Correspondence of Aaron Copland
by Aaron Copland
from Yale University Press
Copland was a gifted and natural letter writer who revealed much more about himself in his letters than in formal writings in which he was conscious of his position as spokesman for modern music. The collected letters offer insights into his music, personality, and ideas, along with fascinating glimpses into the lives of such other well-known musicians as Leonard Bernstein, Carlos Chávez, William Schuman, and Virgil Thomson.
Aaron Copland: A Guide to Research (Composer Resource Manuals)
by Marta Robertson
from Routledge
This book offers an annotated reference guide to the life and works of this important American composer, whose life spanned the 20th century. Covering Copland's entire career, the work opens with a unique chronological chart showing the three spheres of Copland's career: Biography; Compositions; Writings. The work balances the comprehensive annotation of Copland's published and manuscript articles and books with a selective compilation of the significant secondary literature. This book illuminates Copland's contributions as conductor, critic, commentator, author, mentor, and teacher, in addition to composer and musician.
Copland: Since 1943
by Aaron Copland
from St. Martin's Press
Hailed as important, entertaining, and revealing, Copland: Since 1943 is composer Aaron Copland's irresistible account of the latter half of his career--a career that brought us such pioneering works as Appalachian Spring and Lincoln Portrait, the movie scores for Of Mice and Men and Our Town, and numerous other orchestral and chamber works. It tells the story of how a self-described "brash young man from Brooklyn" went on to become one of the founding fathers of "serious" American music. Featuring cameos by luminaries such as Leonard Bernstein, Martha Graham, Agnes de Mille, Benny Goodman, and other peers of Aaron Copland during this explosively creative period, Copland: Since 1943 is an invaluable memoir that charts the crescendo of one of the most accomplished careers in the modern canon.
Charles Ives and Aaron Copland - A Listener's Guide: Parallel Lives Series, No. 1 Their Lives and Their Music (Parallel Lives)
by Daniel Felsenfeld
from Amadeus Press
The title of this book is a misnomer: there are no parallels between these two composers' lives except that both were Americans and musical innovators. They were as different as they could be. Copland was an open-hearted, open-minded cosmopolitan New Yorker, who, actively engaged in human and social affairs, wrote mainly accessible music and books for the people. Ives was an embittered, idealistic, secretive recluse who wrote mainly inaccessible music and books for himself while selling insurance for a living. Yet, as Daniel Felsenfeld shows in this thoughtful, enlightening book, each in his own way laid the foundation for what came to be defined as the "American" sound and spirit in music. Convinced that a composer's work is inseparable from his life and personality, Felsenfeld divides his book into three inventively organized sections. Beginning with a brief biography and ending with a discussion of some of his subjects' striking characteristics, he shows how their training and experiences influenced their work and careers and then devotes the central part to analyzing their music. Guidance for listening and understanding is aided by a CD of their most familiar compositions in excellent performances.
Copland, son of Jewish Polish-Lithuanian immigrants, studied with Nadja Boulanger, but being surrounded by French music and culture only strengthened his resolve to become an "American" composer. Despite a brief flirtation with serialism, he was determined to close the gap between composer and audience, and he succeeded admirably: his colorful scores, often suffused with folk and jazz idioms, speak to everyone; he became not only one of the most popular, but most respected composers of his time. Ives, whose musician father opened his ears to unheard-of musical combinations, was born into a New England family steeped in transcendental philosophy. His music, eccentric and deliberately perverse, is an acquired taste. Any composer who feels impelled to write a long, linguistically and philosophically impenetrable essay explaining his "magnum opus" can hardly expect to capture a large audience. Felsenfeld makes the best possible case for it, but one senses admiration rather than love. The author's style is not always felicitous (Copland's teacher "feared that Ives' influence might improperly influence the talented young man"), but having obviously read all of Copland's popular and Ives' indigestible writings, he was perhaps improperly influenced himself. --Edith Eisler
This book explains-in vivid picturesque detail-why we still listen with admiration to the work of these men, and how their personalities and the era in which they lived affected their music. The accompanying CD includes a sampling of their music from masterworks such as Appalachian Spring and The Unanswered Question to less common gems and includes guided listenings of exactly how the pieces work.
Music for the Common Man: Aaron Copland during the Depression and War
by Elizabeth B. Crist
from Oxford University Press, USA
In the 1930s, Aaron Copland began to write in an accessible style he described as "imposed simplicity." Works like El Salon Mexico, Billy the Kid, Lincoln Portrait, and Appalachian Spring feature a tuneful idiom that brought the composer unprecedented popular success and came to define an American sound. Yet the cultural substance of that sound--the social and political perspective that might be heard within these familiar pieces--has until now been largely overlooked.
While it has long been acknowledged that Copland subscribed to leftwing ideals, Music for the Common Man is the first sustained attempt to understand some of Copland's best-known music in the context of leftwing social, political, and cultural currents of the Great Depression and Second World War. Musicologist Elizabeth Crist argues that Copland's politics never merely accorded with mainstream New Deal liberalism, wartime patriotism, and Communist Party aesthetic policy, but advanced a progressive vision of American society and culture. Copland's music can be heard to accord with the political tenets of progressivism in the 1930s and '40s, including a fundamental sensitivity toward those less fortunate, support of multiethnic pluralism, belief in social democracy, and faith that America's past could be put in service of a better future. Crist explores how his works wrestle with the political complexities and cultural contradictions of the era by investing symbols of America--the West, folk song, patriotism, or the people--with progressive social ideals.
Much as been written on the relationship between politics and art in the 1930s and '40s, but very little on concert music of the era. Music for the Common Man offers fresh insights on familiar pieces and the political context in which they emerged.
Copland the Populist.(Review) (sound recording review): An article from: Sensible Sound
This digital document is an article from Sensible Sound, published by Sensible Sound on January 1, 2001. The length of the article is 387 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Copland the Populist.(Review) (sound recording review)
Author: John Puccio
Publication: Sensible Sound (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2001
Publisher: Sensible Sound
Page: 88
Article Type: Sound Recording Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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