Aaron Copland
From Philosopedia
Aaron Copland (14 November 1900 - 2 December 1990)
Brooklyn-born Copland, the son of parents who were of Lithuanian Jewish descent and whose father was a Kaplan before anglicizing the name to Copland, took an interest in music when 15. He studied with Leopold Wolfsohn and Rubin Goldmark (who also was one of George Gershwin's teachers). In Paris he studied with Nadia Boulanger at the Fontainebleau School of Music from 1921 to 1924. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1925 and also in 1926.
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His Work and Honors
Aiming to write music that could be recognized as being American in character, he included jazz sounds in his Short Symphony (1933, Music for the Theater (1925), and Piano Variations (1930. During the Depression, his works sounded more like cowboy and folk songs: Billy the Kid, El Salón México, and what is his best-known work, Fanfare for the Common Man (1942). The latter work was a main theme in his Third Symphony. He wrote music for two ballets, Appalachian Spring (1944) and Dance Panels (1959, revised in 1962). Also well-known are his works for The Red Pony (19480, Clarinet Concerto (commissioned by Benny Goodman, 1947-1948); and Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson (1950).
As for reaching the goal he had aimed for, his Argentine friend and colleague Alberto Ginastera wrote: Copland has created American music in the same way Stravinsky did Russian music, or Falla Spanish, or Bartok Hungarian.
In 1945 Copland received the Pulitzer Prize. His score for William Wyler's The Heiress (1946) won an an Academy Award. In 1964 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
His Defense of the Rights of Communists
During the 1926 presidential election, Copland defended the Communist Party USA, was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and was blacklisted - in 1953 his music was not allowed to be played at President Dwight Eisenhower's inaugural concert. Copland, however, was never a member of the party. in the 1950s things had begun to change. Copland became preoccupied with more complex works, his political leaning was questioned by Senator McCarthy's Un-American Activities Committee and, despite some support, a few critics began to recognise a confusion in his work which in turn baffled Copland's listeners, to his discomfort.
The American Academy of Arts and Letters
But Copland was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he became known as "the dean of American composers," and in musical circles he became known as one of the country's leading musicians. Leonard Bernstein became known as the finest conductor of Copland's works.
After receiving the American Academy's Gold Medal, which he placed into a pocket, he reached into his pocket at the festivities which followed and sneaked a look at the medal, saying to journalist Warren Allen Smith who was standing nearby, "Oh, I thought my name would be on it." The two looked, then Smith asked, "Mr. Copland, how many sides does a coin or a medal have?" He was hesitant until looking at the medal's edge, where his name had been inscribed. Thanking him and asking who Smith was, he was told that he wrote for a gay atheist British journal. "Oh, just the magazine for me!" he joked, both using their "gaydar" to understand they had things in common, including having three sides to their orientation, Copeland quipped.
On Religion
Copland lived and died as a nonbeliever.
"[A]lthough retaining strong memories of the music he heard in the synagogue and at Jewish weddings," Professor Howard Pollack wrote, "Copland evidenced little direct connection with Judaism or Jewish culture. He was neither religious nor observant. He rarely attended a synagogue service. . . . His friend and protege, Leonard Bernstein, would tease him by saying that he was not a 'real Jew.' To all appearances, and by all accounts, he was what many might call a secular humanist."
Professor Leon Botstein wrote: "He emerged as an adult without an ongoing connection to religion." The Protestant sentiments in lyrics such as "Simple Gifts" from Appalachian Spring reflect, of course, the beliefs of Shaker American settlers, not Copland's own world view. Aaron Copland lived and died as a nonbeliever. His will specified that his funeral service, if any, be "non-religious."
In "A Modernist Defends Modern Music," a New York Times (25 December 1949) article quoted Copland on "inspiration":
- To explain the creative musician's basic objective in elementary terms, I would say that a composer writes music to express and communicate and put down in permanent form certain thoughts, emotions and states of being. These thoughts and emotions are gradually formed by the contact of the composer's personality with the world in which he lives. He expresses these thoughts . . . in the musical language of his own time.
(Leon Botstein, "Copland Reconfigured," Aaron Copland and His World (Carol Oja and Judith Tick, editors,) Princeton University Press, 2005)
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Personal Life
Copland, however, out of natural tact stayed closeted although fellow members of the Academy understood why, many of them also forced vehemently to deny and deliberately misinform inquirers. At one time Copland was accused of being the leader of a Jewish or homosexual or leftist cabal, or all three. Actually, he was secular and assimilated, hardly a leader of anything Jewish.
At his 14 November 1937 birthday party, Copland invited young Harvard undergraduate Leonard Bernstein to a party at his loft on West 63rd Street in Manhattan. Present were bisexual and gay intellectuals Paul Bowles and Virgil Thomson. Learning that Bernstein loved his Piano Variations, Copland dared him to play it. "It'll ruin the party," said Bernstein. "Not this party," Copland replied, and the guests were mesmerized. From that point on, Copland became something of a father figure and composition adviser. One of Bernstein's biographers, Humphrey Burton, suggests that the two might have been lovers for awhile. One of the first to "out" Copland was Charles Kaiser's The Gay Metropolis, 1940 - 1996 (1997). He related how Bernstein confided to Copland such news that he had fallen in love with an Israeli Army officer. The never-married Copland, however, did not reveal to anyone the names of any individuals with whom he had been intimate.
Professor Howard Pollack, writing about Copland's views in Carol J. Oja's and Judith Tick's Aaron Copland and His World (Princeton, 1987), stated,
- [A]lthough retaining strong memories of the music he heard in the synagogue and at Jewish weddings, Copland evidenced little direct connection with Judaism or Jewish culture. He was neither religious nor observant. He rarely attended a synagogue service. In fact, in a 1974 letter, he reminded a young friend that he had ‘resigned from the Jewish church.’ . . . His friend and protégé, Leonard Bernstein, would tease him by saying that he was not a ‘real Jew.’ To all appearances, and by all accounts, he was what many might call a secular humanist.
Copland was once described as a "tall, rather loosely knit man, who surveys the scene through plain spectacles with clear blue eyes." Others have mentioned his beaked nose, his buck teeth, his slight stoop in his old age, his being almost six feet tall, and his "simple, unassuming and urbane" manner. Sensitive about his looks and saying he resembled a giraffe and was an ugly duckling, for years he avoided smiling for photographers because of his crooked teeth.
For many years, Copland lived in the Empire Hotel near what is now Lincoln Center before moving to a modest house in Westchester County, north of New York City.
His Final Days
Copland showed the first signs of having Alzheimer's disease in the 1970s, after which he composed very little. But he continued to conduct until he was 83. His final compositions, both being based on earlier material, were Midday Thoughts and Proclamation, the latter of which was performed during a concert celebrating his 85th birthday in 1982.
At the age of 90, Copland died December 2, 1990, at his home in North Tarrytown, New York. The specific cause of death was a respiratory failure brought on by pneumonia. Copland, who was suffering from diabetes, had had two strokes within the last three weeks of his life. There were no religious services or memorials.
