With the [Piano] Concerto I felt I had done all I could with the idiom, considering its limited emotional scope. True, it was an easy way to be American in musical terms, but all American music could not possibly be confined to two dominant jazz moods — the blues and the snappy number. What constituted as Jazz was contested by many musicians and scholars. Copland believed that the essence of Jazz was rooted in rhythm. Copland identified any sort of syncopation as metrical phenomenon.
By the s,Copland had come to see the possibilities of Jazz less and less in his compositions, though the idea of syncopated rhythm would continue to feature prominently in many of his works. Although his early focus of jazz gave way to other influences, Copland continued to make use of jazz in more subtle ways in later works.
As he advanced in his career by , he said of himself and advised other composers:. I no longer feel the need of seeking out conscious Americanisms [folksongs and folk rhythms]. Because we live here and work here, we can be certain that when our music is mature it will also be American in quality.
In contradiction to this statement, however, he continued to look for and employ folk material for several more years. He experimented with ambiguous beginnings and endings, rapid key changes, and the frequent use of tritones.
His first published work was The Cat and the Mouse , a piano solo piece based on a fable by Jean de la Fontaine. This ballet, suggested to Copland by the film Nosferatu , a free adaptation of the Dracula tale, provided the source material for his later Dance Symphony. Originally intended as an orchestral exercise while he was studying in Paris, Copland completed it as a full orchestral score after returning to New York in Koussevitzky performed twelve Copland works during his tenure as conductor of the Boston Symphony.
This was followed by the Symphonic Ode and the Piano Variations , both of which rely on the exhaustive development of a single short motive. Other major works of his first period include the Piano Variations , and the Short Symphony However, this jazz-inspired period was relatively brief, as his style evolved toward the goal of writing more accessible works using folk sources.
For Copland, the biggest impact came, not from the music of the people dancing, but from the spirit of the environment. Copland said that he could literally feel the essence of the Mexican people in the dance hall. This prompted him to write a piece celebrating the spirit of Mexico using Mexican Themes. Copland derived freely from two collections of Mexican folk tunes, changing pitches and varying rhythms.
The use of a folk tune with variations set in a symphonic context started a pattern he repeated in many of his most successful works right on through the s. Copland achieved his first major success in ballet music with his groundbreaking score Billy the Kid , based on a Walter Noble Burns novel, with choreography by Eugene Loring.
It was distinctive in its use of polyrhythm and polyharmony, particularly in the cowboy songs. In the early s, Copland produced two important works intended as national morale boosters. Fanfare for the Common Man , scored for brass and percussion, was written in at the request of the conductor Eugene Goossens, conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
It would later be used to open many Democratic National Conventions, and to add dignity to a wide range of other events. Many Americans have performed the recitation, including politicians, actors, and musicians and Copland himself, with Henry Fonda doing the most notable recording.
Continuing his string of successes, in Copland composed the ballet Rodeo, a tale of a ranch wedding, written around the same time as Lincoln Portrait. This was a recreation of Appalachian fiddler W. This fragment lifted from Ruth Crawford Seeger is now one of the best-known compositions by any American composer, having been used numerous times in movies and on television, including commercials for the American beef industry.
Copland was commissioned to write another ballet, Appalachian Spring , originally written using thirteen instruments, which he ultimately arranged as a popular orchestral suite. Graham took the score and created a ballet she called Appalachian Spring from a poem by Hart Crane which had no connection with Shakers. It was an instant success, and the music later acquired the same name. Copland, when I see that ballet and when I hear your music I can see the Appalachians and just feel spring.
He re-orchestrated his early three-movement Organ Symphony omitting the organ, calling the result his First Symphony. The Third Symphony is in the more traditional format four movements; second movement, scherzo; third movement, adagio and is his most famous symphony.
At forty minutes, it is his longest orchestral composition. However, he found the atonality of serialized music to run counter to his desire to reach a wide audience. The piece adapted the twelve-tone system as a ten-note row, reserving the last two notes as a tonal resolution and anchor. The reality, however, was that few found good projects. Copland sought to enter that arena, as both a challenge for his abilities as a composer and an opportunity to expand his reputation and audience for his more serious works.
Unlike the total attention he would hope to get from a concert-goer, Copland wrote that film music had to achieve a balance. No projects seemed suitable at first. But his patience paid off two years later when Copland found a kindred spirit in director Lewis Milestone, who allowed Copland to supervise his own orchestration and who refrained from interfering with his work.
Copland composed three of his five film scores for Milestone. Many silent and early talking films used classical music themes directly, both in the credit sequences and during the action. He often avoided the full orchestra, and he rejected the common practice of using a leitmotiv to identify characters with their own personal themes. He instead matched a theme to the action, while avoiding the underlining of every action with exaggerated emphasis.
Another technique Copland employed was to keep silent during intimate screen moments and only begin the music as a confirming motive toward the end of a scene.
Several themes from his scores are incorporated in the suite Music for Movies. Copland had a large following of pupils—oftentimes mixing his personal life with them. Of notable students, Leonard Bernstein and Victor Kraft were two with whom he continued having intimately personal relationships. Bernstein would go on to champion Copland as one of the greatest American composers of all time while being one of the few people Copland opened up to.
Copland also wrote prolifically on the subject of music. Across decades, Copland has published pieces on music criticism analysis on musical trends, and on his own compositions. Starting with his first critiques in , Copland began a long career as music critic, teacher, and observer, mostly of contemporary classical music.
He was an avid lecturer and lecturer-performer. He wrote reviews of specific works, trends, composers, festivals, books about music, and recordings. He had a long list of notable students see below.
Copland put a good deal of time and energy into supporting young musicians, especially through his association with the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood, both as a guest conductor and teacher. Copland was born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 14, The child of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania, he first learned to play the piano from his older sister.
At the age of sixteen he went to Manhattan to study with Rubin Goldmark, a respected private music instructor who taught Copland the fundamentals of counterpoint and composition. During these early years he immersed himself in contemporary classical music by attending performances at the New York Symphony and Brooklyn Academy of Music. He found, however, that like many other young musicians, he was attracted to the classical history and musicians of Europe.
In France, Copland found a musical community unlike any he had known. It was at this time that he sold his first composition to Durand and Sons, the most respected music publisher in France.
While in Europe Copeland met many of the important artists of the time, including the famous composer Serge Koussevitsky. Koussevitsky requested that Copland write a piece for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. For Copland, jazz was the first genuinely American major musical movement. From jazz he hoped to draw the inspiration for a new type of symphonic music, one that could distinguish itself from the music of Europe.
He had moved away from his interest in jazz and began to concern himself with expanding the audience for American classical music. The decade that followed saw the production of the scores that would spread Copland's fame throughout the world.
The following year Copland won the Pulitzer Prize for the piece. Copland was a renowned composer of film scores as well, working on Of Mice and Men , Our Town and The North Star —receiving Academy Award nominations for all three projects.
He eventually won an Oscar for The Heiress And more than a decade later, Copland composed a stark, unsettling score for the controversial Something Wild In his later compositions, Copland made use of a European derived tonal system.
By the s, he had ceased crafting new works, focusing on teaching and conducting. Having received an array of accolades in his later years, the iconic composer had also worked with Vivian Perlis on a two-volume autobiography, Copland: Through and Copland Since We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!
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