Copland, 'the Dean of American music' was born into a Russian-Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York. He learned
the piano from the age of three and began theory studies with Goldmark at 17; but Copland rebelled against the latter's strict traditional approach, taking an interest
in Debussy, Scriabin, Mussorgsky and others.
He spent the years from 1920 to 1924 in Paris, studying with Nadia Boulanger, and enjoying the city's stimulating cultural atmosphere. At the time
Diaghilev's dance company Ballets Russes was performing works by Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky who all clearly influenced Copland's firs major work,
Grohg (1922-5, reworked a the Dance Symphony in 1930). Boulanger
commissioned his Organ Symphony (1924) for her first American tour as an
organist, a work which established Copland as a leading American composer.
While in Paris he became aware of the various emerging European national styles, and resolved to develop at American equivalent. Some early works such as the
Piano Concerto of 1926, employ jazz rhythms and blues harmonies. But Piano Variations (1931), which
Copland described as 'one of the best things I've done', typified his early mature style of modernist abstraction and economy o expression. Its unmistakable
Copland flavour, recognizable throughout his music, became far more important that jazz elements in defining the mere American classical music.
The worsening world economic are political situation in the 1930s led Copland to seek a more popular, socially relevant style, epitomized by the three
'cowboy ballets', Billy the Kid (1938), Rodeo (1942) and the Pulitzer Prize-winning
Appalachian Spring (1944). These reached large audiences and became the models, along
with his own film scores (he won an Oscar for The Heiress in 1948), for countless musical
backdrops to Hollywood's Wild West. His popular style also reflected a left-win political stance, or 'Communist
leanings according to the McCarthy Committee, which in 1953 temporarily restricted the availability of his music. The music
world however, united to support him.
Copland's style borrows heavily from American folk songs, but he hardly eve quoted these exactly, inserting
rhythmic idiosyncrasies, and always setting them ii the context of his unique, expansive musical landscapes. The final movement of his
Third Symphony (1944-6) is an extensive fantasia on his own famous folk
anthem Fanfare for the Common Man (1942).
Copland never abandoned serious abstract idioms and even belatedly explored 12-note techniques in the two orchestral pieces
Connotations (1962) and Inscape (1967), but by then he was responding to American music rather than
shaping it. His inspiration gradually diminishes and he ceased composing in the 1970s.
Regarded universally with affection, Copland encouraged younger colleague who had been his students at
Tanglewood and Harvard, and who now gradually succeeded him. In later years he took great pleasure in conducting, but in 1983 he retired, a victim of Alzheimer's disease. He chose
Appalachian Spring for his final concert, perhaps for its variations on the Shaker melody
Simple Gifts, reflecting a contribution in music that reached out to million during an age of increasing complexity.
Appalachian Spring - suite from the ballet
Billy the Kid
Clarinet Concerto
Piano Concerto
Piano Sonata
Symphony No. 3
El salon Mexico