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Aaron Copland Biography Career Several composers rejected the notion of writing music for the elite during the Depression, thus the common American folklore served as the basis for his work along with revival hymns, and cowboy and folk songs. At a time when conservatories were teaching more astringent methods of composition, Copland held onto the respect of academics with the reasonable statement that he wanted to see if he couldn't say what he had to say in the simplest possible terms. His second period, the vernacular period, began about 1936 with Billy the Kid and El Salón México. Fanfare for the Common Man, perhaps Copland's most famous work, scored for brass and percussion, was written in 1942 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. The fanfare was also used as the main theme of the fourth movement of Copland's Third Symphony, where it first appears in a quiet, pastoral manner, then in the brassier form of the original. The same year Copland wrote A Lincoln Portrait which became popular with a wider audience, leading to a strengthening in his association with American music. He was commissioned to write a ballet, Appalachian Spring, which later he arranged as a popular orchestral suite. The ballet Rodeo, a tale of a ranch wedding, written around the same time as Lincoln Portrait in 1942 is another enduring composition for Copland, and the Hoe-Down from the ballet is one of the most well-known compositions by any American composer, having been used numerous times in movies and on television. In the early- to mid-1990s, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association used Hoe-Down as the background music to their marketing campaign “Beef...it's what's for dinner,” and was also used during the 78th Academy Awards. Copland composed three numbered symphonies, but applied the word “symphony” to more than just symphonies. His early three-movement Organ Symphony was rewritten omitting the organ, calling the result his First Symphony. His fifteen-minute Short Symphony was the Second Symphony, though it also exists as the Sextet. The Third Symphony in the more traditional format (four movements; second movement, scherzo; third movement, adagio) with a forty-five minute approximate run-time. His Dance Symphony, was hurriedly extracted from the earlier unproduced ballet Grohg to meet an RCA Records commission deadline. Copland was an important contributor to the genre of film music; his score for William Wyler's 1949 film, The Heiress won an Academy Award. Several themes he created are encapsulated in the suite Music for Movies, and his score for the film adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel The Red Pony was given a suite of its own. This suite was one of Copland's personal favourites. His score for the 1961 independent film Something Wild was released in 1964 as Music For a Great City. Posthumously, his music was used for Spike Lee's 1998 film, He Got Game, which featured a neighborhood basketball set to the music of Hoe-Down. It is difficult to overestimate the influence Copland has had on film music. Virtually every composer who scored for western movies, particularly between 1940 and 1960, was shaped by the style Copland developed. Having defended the Communist Party USA during the 1936 presidential election, Copland was investigated by the FBI during the red scare of the 1950s, and found himself blacklisted. Because of the political climate of that era, A Lincoln Portrait was withdrawn from the 1953 inaugural concert for President Eisenhower. That same year, Copland was called before Congress of the United States where he testified that he was never a communist. Outraged by the accusations, many members of the musical community, held up Copland's music as a banner of his patriotism. The investigations ceased in 1955, and were closed in 1975. Copland was never shown to be a member of the Communist Party. A friend of Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), Copland exerted a major influence on his composition style. Bernstein was considered the finest conductor of Copland's works. British progressive rock band Emerson, Lake & Palmer recorded two songs based on Copland works: Fanfare for the Common Man and Hoe-Down. Several of their live recordings of Fanfare for the Common Man incorporated the closing of the second movement of Copland's Symphony no. 3 as well. Copland died in North Tarrytown, New York (now Sleepy Hollow), on December 2, 1990. Copland was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in composition for Appalachian Spring. In 2007, he will be inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame. He is also a recipient of the Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia's distinguished Charles E. Lutton Man of Music Award for 1970. Notable students Selected works Film
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