The Life of Aaron Copland
On July 4, 1776, we declared our independence from Britain. This meant (though some of us didn’t know it) we no longer thought like britain, or acted like britain. We had stopped copying europe for most things, except in the arts. Things like art and literature we had explored, but in classical music, we were still depending on the europe tradition. This is where Aaron Copland comes into the view.
Aaron Copland was born in 1900. He was from Brooklyn, and his parents were jewish. His mom was and immigrant, and at age five she came to America and lived in the midwest throughout her childhood. She met Aaron’s father there and moved to New York to marry him. He emigrated when he was 16. Aaron had four siblings. His family had to work hard to have a good life in New York. His parents payed for Aaron’s siblings to have piano lessons, but not him. Aaron finally persuaded them to let him have piano lessons. He was very successful at the piano, and he learned quickly.
When he was in puplic school, he studied music theory and he went to concerts. His family offered to put him through college, but when he was 15 he knew his dream was to become a composer, so he declined their offer. Aaron wanted to go to a school in France called Fontainbleau. That school was for americans. With hard work at his father's store, and savings from his allowance money, and a scholarship from the school in 1921, Aaron headed off to France.
When he was in France he studied privately with one of the best teachers around, Nadia Boulanger. She was very talented musically, and Aaron worked hard. He thought that meeting Nadia was the most important moment of his life. Nadia had a concert in New York, and she wanted him to write a symphony for it. It took a lot of persuading, because he was nervous that the people wouldn’t like his music even though it was European tradition, like all music. He finally agreed, though, and the concert was successful. Then he returned to america, hoping to begin his life of fame.
Here comes Aaron Copland’s second big break back in america. A well known conductor named Koussevitzky performed Aaron’s piece. This brought more fame to Aaron. Kusevitsky supported aaron again by showing people Aaron’s other compositions for the next few decades.
Other european composers were starting to break with tradition, and others were reaching to their home country’s. Aaron was exposed to these ideas, but it took him a while to start doing it himself. 1925 through 1935 he put jazz elements into music similar to the music being played in europe. He was troubled by the growing gap between the new, complex music and the general concert audience. He began to write music that was simpler, and more lyrical. One of the first of this kind of music that copland wrote was El Salon Mexico. He portrayed the atmosphere of mexican dance hall using energetic folk melodies. He followed that success and made many other compositions. He also made a play opera and many movie scores.
In his later life he played with 12-tone technique. Most of the time though, he organized performances for musicians follow in his footsteps, and he performed his pieces and personally helped people all around the world.
