Biography
Aaron Copland’s parents were Russian Jews who emigrated to the USA.
Their name was originally Kaplan, but this was misspelt by the emigration authorities and Copland it became.
Copland showed no great aptitude for music until about the age of eleven, when his sister was having piano lessons and, inspired by the music she was playing, he decided that he would like to have lessons himself.
Fascinated, too, by the whole art of creating music, he had lessons in harmony and composition with Rubin Goldmark when he was about seventeen years old.
Wanting desperately to pursue his interest in music, he made his way to Paris four years later to study with Nadia Boulanger (a celebrated and much revered musicologist and teacher).
He returned to America some seven years later, having absorbed the modernist influences of Paris and Madame Boulanger.
In 1925 his Symphony for Organ and Orchestra was performed, and the conductor Walter Damrosch turned to the audience and said: ‘If a young man at twenty-three can write a symphony like that, in five years time he’ll be ready to commit murder!’ This appears not to have bothered Copland too much at the time, but as the years passed he began to address this most serious of issues – the relationship between the composer and the audience.
This is a matter that many contemporary composers are guilty of neglecting, which is why there is little public interest in much of what is being produced today.
Cast your mind back to the days of Bach and Handel, or Mozart and Haydn, when the public couldn’t wait to hear the latest works of these composers and would make a point of being present at the first performances.
Nowadays composers are lucky to see a sprinkling of academic admirers alongside the critics at the first performances of their works, whilst many people are confused and bewildered at the aural assaults to which they are subjected.
Copland became aware of this and astutely took it on board.
He then really began to write from the heart – romantic music with a distinctly American flavour to it: El Salón México was followed by the ballet Billy the Kid, An Outdoor Overture, Quiet City, Rodeo and in 1945 the all-time favouritethe ballet Appalachian Spring.
Copland was honoured with the Pulitzer Prize and the award of the New York Music Critics for Appalachian Spring, and this piece paved the way for his longest work, the Symphony No. 3, which has been described as being ‘all about America’.
Copland’s works sit perfectly alongside those of Gershwin, these two composers being the two great representatives of American music: Gershwin with his jazzy populist style and Copland with his amazing gift for writing pieces that capture the spirit of ‘the great outdoors’ and the American people.
Rodeo
Ballet
Rodeo is an exciting story of a cow-girl who invades a male sport and ends up beating the boys at their own game.
Tender Land
Opera
Copland certainly stuck to his favourite theme when he wrote this opera, whose main theme is about true love on the range. It was once cruelly described as an upmarket ‘Oklahoma’.
El Salón México
1937, Orchestral
Aaron Copland wrote in 1932: ‘If you have ever been in Mexico you probably know why a composer should want to write a piece of music about it.’
Indeed, he went on to write a work that seemed to combine the folk melody, rhythm and harmony of Mexico without removing the freshness and beauty of true Mexican song.
In fact, a Mexican critic wrote that the American’s music embodied ‘the very elements of our folk song in the purest and most perfect form’, which is probably the highest praise Copland could have received.
The ‘Salón México’ was a nightclub with a grand Cuban Orchestra where Copland spent a lot of time during his travels around the country. It amused the composer to find that the club was divided into three halls: one for tourists, one for workers and one for barefoot dancing, where a sign on the wall read: ‘Please don’t throw lighted cigarette butts on the floor so the ladies don’t burn their feet’! After spending many nights there, Copland decided to use his inspiration to work a piece from Mexican folk songs, to which end he set about buying collections of traditional Mexican music and familiarising himself with them fully.
The end result is not merely a collection of melodies, but rather a cohesive whole from which one can almost imagine the scenes that so inspired the composer. ‘El Salón México’ set Copland on a path of folk-music inspired works which included ‘Billy the Kid’ and ‘Appalachian Spring’.
Billy the Kid
1939, Ballet
Like the majority of composers at some point in their lives, Copland was keen to explore and exploit the folk music of his native land and, having played with some Mexican folk tunes in his ‘El Salón México’, he now turned to traditional American songs with a view to producing a cowboy ballet. He took as his source the famous ballad of Billy the Kid, which goes as follows:
When Billy the Kid was a very young lad,
In Old Silver City, he went to the bad;
At twelve years of age the Kid killed his first man,
Then blazed a wide trail with a gun in each hand.
Fair Mexican maidens played soft on guitars
And sang of ‘Billito’ their king ‘neath the stars;
He was a brave lover, and proud of his fame,
And no man could stand ‘gainst the Kid’s deadly aim.
Now Billy ranged wide, and his killings were vile;
He shot fast, and first, when his blood got a-rile,
And, ‘fore his young manhood did reach its sad end,
His six-guns held notches for twenty-one men.
Copland felt that his ballet music should contain some recognisable melodies from traditional cowboy songs, and the final work includes parts of ‘The Old Chisholm Trail’, ‘Git Along, Little Dogies’, Great Granddad’ and ‘The Dying Cowboy’. He refused to include ‘Home on the Range’, saying that he had to draw the line somewhere!
The action begins on a prairie while a bouncy cowboy tune (‘Great Granddad’) is played on a piccolo. Later we find ourselves in a frontier town with cowboys sauntering by. Trombones begin to play another cowboy tune. Soon we are into Billy’s violent life and the music continues to depict his turbulent days up to his death at the age of only twenty-one.
Appalachian Spring
1944, Ballet
On 30 October 1944 a choreographer, producer and dancer called Martha Graham staged three new works by contemporary composers, adapted for ballet. One of these was Aaron Copland’s ‘Appalachian Spring’, and it was fairly well received. However, the following spring Graham and her company took just ‘Appalachian Spring’ up to New York, and from this point things really took off.
Firstly, the music was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music, and a little time later it received an award from the Music Critics Circle of New York. America seemed to be beginning to accept Copland as a composer of some worth. As a result Copland decided to arrange an orchestral suite from his ballet music, and this was first performed by the New York Philharmonic in October 1945.
The story of the ballet was described by the ‘Herald Tribune’ as follows:
’ . . . a pioneer celebration in early spring around a newly built farm-house . . . in the early part of the last century. The bride-to-be and the young farmer husband enact the emotions . . . their new partnership invites. An older neighbour suggests now and then the rocky confidence of experience. A revivalist and his followers remind the new householders of the strange and terrible aspects of human fate. At the end the couple are left quiet and strong in their new house.’
The music is divided into eight sections and Copland gives a little description of each.
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Very slowly – Introduction of characters.
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Fast – Sudden burst of unison strings starts the action. The main theme is played on a trumpet.
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Moderate – Duo for the Bride and her Intended – scene of tenderness and passion.
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Quite fast – The revivalist and his flock. Folksy feelings – suggestions of square dances and country fiddlers.
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Still fast – Solo dance of the bride.
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Very slowly.
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Calm and flowing – Scenes of daily life with variations on a theme by Shaker.
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Moderate – The bride takes her place among her neighbours and the couple are left . . . quiet and strong in their new house.’
Clarinet Concerto
1948, Concerti, Orchestral
Copland wrote this clarinet concerto especially for Benny Goodman, the famous jazz clarinettist of the day, and it is indeed a ‘finger-snapping’ work.