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Copland: Aaron Copland
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Aaron Copland, one of America's greatest composers, was the fifth child born into a family of Russian-Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn, New York. He was born on November 14, 1900. However, it was not until he reached his teens that Copland began to show an interest in music. He learned to play the piano from his older sister Laurine, and in less than one year, Copland had learned everything she could teach him. Following much pestering of his father, Copland was allowed to take formal lessons. After attending his first concert at age 15, Copland decided to become a composer.
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Aaron Copland was an American composer of film and concert music. He was ... a talented pianist, teacher, author and conductor. He was born on November 14, 1900 to Jewish Lithuaniun parents in Brooklyn New Jersey. His family name had originally been Kaplan before his father angilised it to Copland before emigrating to the United States. Although never formally introducted to music by his parents Copland displayed a keen interest in music and at the age of 15 expressed a desire to become a conductor. He attended the Fontainbleau School Of Music, Paris in 1921 and statyed there for 3 years until 1924.
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Aaron Copland (1900-1990) seems to have presented concert-goers with two apparently contradictory voices. He created the extraordinarily popular and accessible works that have become twentieth-century icons: emblems of the American landscape and spirit (Appalachian Spring, Rodeo, El Salon Mexico). Copland ... produced a series of cerebral-sounding, tightly argued works throughout his career. Connotations is one of them. It was written thirty years ago in 1962, commissioned by Leonard Bernstein for the opening of Philharmonic hall. But as Bernstein himself observed, the contrast between this work and Copland’s others is only on the surface.
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Amid this glitz and glamour, Aaron Copland and Roger Sessions--two composers in their late twenties--staged a pair of concerts at the Edyth Totten Theatre on West 48th Street. Dubbing their enterprise "The Copland-Sessions Concerts of Contemporary Music," they had a straightforward goal. "It is in the interests of the younger generation of American composers," declared a manifesto in their opening program, "that the present series of concerts has been inaugurated." From the very start their arms were open wide to a diverse spectrum of new compositions. "American music will receive the chief emphasis though an occasional European work of corresponding interest may be included," they continued. "Furthermore, ‘youth' will be interpreted in the most elastic sense. Works by composers of more achieved reputation will ... find a place provided they are appropriate to the nature of the program."
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Because of his father's role in the Synagogue's religious school, Aaron Copland began attending the Talmud Torah four afternoons per week at age four, two years younger than the youngest of the other students. The curriculum offered students instruction in Hebrew reading, writing and speaking, the Prayer Book, the Bible, Jewish music, Jewish history and religion. Students sat in rows on benches behind long tables. At the end of each year, in May or June, there were public examinations. Copland became a Bar Mitzvah in this very sanctuary in 1913.
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Aaron Copland was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1900. At age 21, after nine years studying piano and music composition, he received a scholarship to study in Paris. While in France, Copland began writing music for ballets and symphonies. These traditional formats provided Copland and other classically trained musicians ready arenas for their work. But Copland broke with custom when he incorporated folk styles into his compositions. He created sounds that listeners described as unlike anything that had been heard before in a concert hall.
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Aaron Copland