LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Copland: Copland's Music
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The Copland-Sessions Concerts was one of many responsibilities of the directors. Neither imagined that in the future, these modest events would be the topic of discussions and historical research and writings. It was part of their lives for a brief time, to be followed by other shared experiences: in the forties, the two served on the board of the League of Composers; in the fifties, Copland lectured on his colleague's music at Tanglewood, and in l955, Sessions took Copland's place at at the Music Center for the summer. In l959, they were two of four pianists requested by Stravinsky to perform in Les Noces. (Lukas Foss and Samuel Barber were the others).
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[One] inspiration for much of Copland's music was jazz. His earlier works especially demonstrate the influence of jazz rhythmic, timbral, and harmonic practices, and that influence is again apparent in later works such as the Clarinet Concerto commissioned by Benny Goodman. Certainly this aspect of his work as much as any other contributed to the common identification of his music as representative of a burgeoning school of uniquely American art music in the twentieth century.
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[B]egan a journey for Copland that significantly shaped the course of his life. After three years of study in Paris, Copland returned home to America and began a full life of composing, performing, writing, lecturing and eventually conducting. Musical audiences in America were first introduced to Copland's music at the 1925 premiere of his Symphony for Organ and Orchestra by the New York Symphony Orchestra under Walter Damrosch, whose comment at the concert was, "Ladies and gentlemen, I am sure you will agree that if a gifted young man can write a symphony like this at 23, within five years he will be ready to commit murder!" Fortunately, Damrosch's joke was never taken seriously. Today, Aaron Copland's music is well known and performed to audiences throughout the world.
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Upon completion of his studies in 1924, Copland returned to America and composed the Symphony for Organ and Orchestra, his first major work, which Boulanger played in New York in 1925. Music for the Theater (1925) and a Piano Concerto (1926) explored the possibilities of jazz idioms in symphonic music; from this period dates the interest of Serge Koussevitzky, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, in Copland's music - a sponsorship that proved important in gaining a wider audience for his own and much of America's music.
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Copland defended the Communist Party USA during the 1936 presidential election. As a result, he was later 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 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.
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The famous conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Serge Koussevitzky, learned about Copland's music. Koussevitzky led the orchestra for the first performance of Copland's early work, "Music for the Theater", in 1925. Koussevitzky ... conducted Copland's "Concerto for Piano and Orchestra" in 1927. This work was unusual because Copland used ideas from jazz music in his concerto.
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Copland's Music