Editing Aaron Copland (section)

=== Later works ===
{{ external media |float= center |width= 200px |audio1= Copland conducting the [[Columbia Symphony Orchestra]] with [[Benny Goodman]] in his compositions: <br /> [[Clarinet Concerto (Copland)|Clarinet Concerto]] <br /> "[[Old American Songs]]" <br /> in 1963 [https://archive.org/details/lp_clarinet-concerto-old-american-songs_aaron-copland-benny-goodman-william-warfie_0/disc1/01.01.+Clarinet+Concerto.mp3 '''Here on Archive.org''']}}

Copland's work in the late 1940s and 1950s included use of Schoenberg's twelve-tone system, a development that he had recognized but not fully embraced. He had also believed the atonality of serialized music to run counter to his desire to reach a wide audience. Copland therefore approached dodecaphony with some initial skepticism. While in Europe in 1949, he heard a number of serial works but did not admire much of it because "so often it seemed that individuality was sacrificed to the method".{{sfn|Copland|Perlis|1984|p=151}} The music of French composer Pierre Boulez showed Copland that the technique could be separated from the "old Wagnerian" aesthetic with which he had associated it previously. Subsequent exposure to the late music of Austrian composer Anton Webern and twelve-tone pieces by Swiss composer [[Frank Martin (composer)|Frank Martin]] and Italian composer [[Luigi Dallapiccola]] strengthened this opinion.{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=461}}

Copland came to the conclusion that composing along serial lines was "nothing more than an angle of vision. Like fugal treatment, it is a stimulus that enlivens musical thinking, especially when applied to a series of tones that lend themselves to that treatment."{{sfn|Pollack|1999|pp=445–46}} He began his first serial work, the "Piano Fantasy", in 1951 to fulfill a commission from the young virtuoso pianist [[William Kapell]]. The piece became one of his most challenging works, over which he labored until 1957.{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=445}} During the work's development, in 1953, Kapell died in an aircraft crash.{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=481}} Critics lauded the "Fantasy" when it was finally premiered, calling the piece "an outstanding addition to his own oeuvre and to contemporary piano literature" and "a tremendous achievement". Jay Rosenfield stated: "This is a new Copland to us, an artist advancing with strength and not building on the past alone."{{sfn|Pollack|1999|pp=484–85}}

Serialism allowed Copland a synthesis of serial and non-serial practices. Before he did this, according to musicologist Joseph Straus, the philosophical and compositional difference between non-tonal composers such as Schoenberg and tonal composers like Stravinsky had been considered too wide a gulf to bridge.{{sfn|Straus|2009|p=61}} Copland wrote that, to him, serialism pointed in two opposite directions, one "toward the extreme of total organization with electronic applications" and the other "a gradual absorption into what had become a very ''freely interpreted tonalism'' [italics Copland]".{{sfn|Straus|2009|pp=61–62}} The path he said he chose was the latter one, which he said, when he described his ''Piano Fantasy'', allowed him to incorporate "elements able to be associated with the twelve-tone method and also with music tonally conceived".{{sfn|Straus|2009|pp=61–62}} This practice differed markedly from Schoenberg, who used his tone rows as complete statements around which to structure his compositions.{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=447}} Copland used his rows not very differently from how he fashioned the material in his tonal pieces. He saw his rows as sources for melodies and harmonies, not as complete and independent entities, except at points in the musical structure that dictated the complete statement of a row.{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=447}}

Even after Copland started using 12-tone techniques, he did not stick to them exclusively but went back and forth between tonal and non-tonal compositions.{{sfn|Straus|2009|p=60}} Other late works include: ''[[Dance Panels]]'' (1959, ballet music), ''[[Something Wild (1961 film)|Something Wild]]'' (1961, his last film score, much of which would be later incorporated into his ''Music for a Great City''), ''[[Connotations (Copland)|Connotations]]'' (1962, for the new Lincoln Center Philharmonic hall), ''Emblems'' (1964, for wind band), ''[[Night-Thoughts (piano piece)|Night Thoughts]]'' (1972, for the [[Van Cliburn International Piano Competition]]), and ''Proclamation'' (1982, his last work, started in 1973).{{sfn|Pollack|1999|pp=487–515}}