Aaron Copeland
Born in Brooklyn on November 14, 1900, Aaron Copland was the youngest of five children. American music had no internationally recognized voice of its own when Copland was growing up. His destiny was to supply one. He was the son of Jewish immigrants. Early music training came from an older sister Laurine. He soon turned to other teachers, and began attending symphonic concerts, soaking up the music of the standard symphonic repertoire. While in high school, he studied harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration with Rubin Goldmark, who tried to steer his tastes down a conservative path. Later he went abroad to complete his musical education at a new conservatory for American musicians established at Fontainebleau, near Paris. In his travels through Europe, he was exposed to a wide variety of new styles.
He lectured at the New School for Social Research and built his reputation as a composer. His early music mixes very modern musical ideas with hints of jazz influence. Aaron Copland said that it was his good fortune that he was "twenty in the twenties. " From 1928 to 1931 he coordinated a series of concerts with the composer Roger Sessions that presented important new works to the American public. On January 11, 1924 his Symphony for Organ and Orchestra was performed by the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, with Nadia Boulanger as soloist and Walter Damrosch as conductor. " When he returned to New York it was in the midst of an artistic and social revival, and he immediately became a part of that renewal. With Roger Sessions, Copland co-founded the Copland-Sessions Concerts of Contemporary Music New York in 1929. Because Copland summed up so well so many strands of the experience of being an American, he can be regarded as our national musical voice maybe even more popular than George Gershwin. He was awarded $5,000 prize from the RCA Victor Competition for Dance Symphony, which was written in 1925. He wrote Symphonic Ode, for the fiftieth anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1930. He was the musical father to more than one generation of young composers. The music he wrote came to be regarded as the most representative echo of the American spirit. In the fall of 1921, he sold his first piano piece, "Scherzo Humoristique" (The Cat and the Mouse), to the publisher Durand. Copland joined the League of Composers. He assisted Alma Morgenthau Wertheim in establishing the Cos Cob Press, which later became Arrow Music Press.
Common topics in this essay:
Aaron Copland,
Rubin Goldmark,
Social Research,
Cat Mouse,
Symphony Orchestra,
Dance Symphony,
League Composers,
Appalachian Spring,
Music York,
George Gershwin,
roger sessions,
boston symphony,
boston symphony orchestra,
symphony orchestra,
aaron copland,
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Acceptance Essays
