LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Copland: African Americans
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Aaron Copland is the towering figure of American classsical music. While Gershwin and Bernstein did much to bring jazz and American popular music to a classical audience, Copland was the first to take on the ideas of modern music of the early twentieth century and use it to produce truely American music.
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Copland fell in with left-wing causes; in 1934 he even wrote a song called "Into the Streets May First" for the annual socialist celebration of May Day. And while he was never doctrinaire, he began to honor American folk culture with pieces such as Rodeo, Billy the Kid, and, of course, Appalachian Spring.
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Peter Dickinson's collection is an important contribution not just to Copland studies, in which it will immediately become a central source, but to the study and understanding of twentieth century American music and its reception. MUSIC & LETTERS
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[T]hen, when Copland first set out to compose in the early 1900s, he ... broke the rule that said Americans shouldn’t write serious music at all. In 1921 Copland, the son of a storekeeper, decided to study composition in France because, as he later said, "it was known that any well-educated American had to have the European experience." He ended up at a small school in Fontainebleau for American musicians.
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