Editing Aaron Copland (section)

== Music ==
{{See also|List of compositions by Aaron Copland}}

Vivian Perlis, who collaborated with Copland on his autobiography, writes: "Copland's method of composing was to write down fragments of musical ideas as they came to him. When he needed a piece, he would turn to these ideas (his 'gold nuggets')."{{sfn|Copland|Perlis|1984|p=255}} If one or more of these nuggets looked promising, he would then write a piano sketch and eventually work on them at the keyboard.{{sfn|Copland|Perlis|1984|p=255}} The piano, Perlis writes, "was so integral to his composing that it permeated his compositional style, not only in the frequent use in the instrument but in more subtle and complex ways".{{sfn|Copland|Perlis|1984|p=255}} His habit of turning to the keyboard tended to embarrass Copland until he learned that Stravinsky also did so.{{sfn|Copland|Perlis|1984|p=255}}

Copland would not consider the specific instrumentation for a piece until it was complete and notated.{{sfn|Copland|Perlis|1984|p=255}} Nor, according to Pollack, did he generally work in linear fashion, from beginning to end of a composition. Instead, he tended to compose whole sections in no particular order and surmise their eventual sequence after all those parts were complete, much like assembling a collage.{{sfn|Pollack|1999|pp=10–11}} Copland himself admitted, "I don't compose. I assemble materials."{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=11}} Many times, he included material he had written years earlier.{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=11}} If the situation dictated, as it did with his film scores, Copland could work quickly. Otherwise, he tended to write slowly whenever possible.{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=11}} Even with this deliberation, Copland considered composition, in his words, "the product of the emotions", which included "self-expression" and "self-discovery".{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=11}}

=== Influences ===
While Copland's earliest musical inclinations as a teenager ran toward [[Chopin]], [[Debussy]], [[Verdi]] and the Russian composers, Copland's teacher and mentor Nadia Boulanger became his most important influence.{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=49}} Copland especially admired Boulanger's total grasp of all classical music, and he was encouraged to experiment and develop a "clarity of conception and elegance in proportion". Following her model, he studied all periods of classical music and all forms—from madrigals to symphonies. This breadth of vision led Copland to compose music for numerous settings—orchestra, opera, solo piano, small ensemble, art song, ballet, theater and film. Boulanger particularly emphasized "la grande ligne" (the long line), "a sense of forward motion&nbsp;... the feeling for inevitability, for the creating of an entire piece that could be thought of as a functioning entity".{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=49}}

During his studies with Boulanger in Paris, Copland was excited to be so close to the new post-Impressionistic French music of [[Ravel]], [[Albert Roussel|Roussel]], and [[Satie]], as well as [[Les Six]], a group that included [[Milhaud]], [[Poulenc]], and [[Honegger]]. [[Webern]], [[Alban Berg|Berg]], and [[Bartók]] also impressed him. Copland was "insatiable" in seeking out the newest European music, whether in concerts, score reading or heated debate. These "moderns" were discarding the old laws of composition and experimenting with new forms, harmonies and rhythms, and including the use of jazz and quarter-tone music.{{sfn|Smith|1953|p=39}} Milhaud was Copland's inspiration for some of his earlier "jazzy" works. He was also exposed to [[Schoenberg]] and admired his earlier atonal pieces, thinking Schoenberg's ''[[Pierrot lunaire]]'' above all others.{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=65}} Copland named [[Igor Stravinsky]] as his "hero" and his favorite 20th-century composer.{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=65}} Copland especially admired Stravinsky's "jagged and uncouth rhythmic effects", "bold use of dissonance", and "hard, dry, crackling sonority".{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=65}}

Another inspiration for much of Copland's music was [[jazz]]. Although familiar with jazz back in America—having listened to it and also played it in bands—he fully realized its potential while traveling in Austria: "The impression of jazz one receives in a foreign country is totally unlike the impression of such music heard in one's own country&nbsp;... when I heard jazz played in Vienna, it was like hearing it for the first time."{{sfn|Smith|1953|p=60}} He also found that the distance from his native country helped him see the United States more clearly. Beginning in 1923, he employed "jazzy elements" in his classical music, but by the late 1930s, he moved on to Latin and American folk tunes in his more successful pieces.{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=120}} Although his early focus of jazz gave way to other influences, Copland continued to make use of jazz in more subtle ways in later works.{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=120}} Copland's work from the late 1940s onward included experimentation with Schoenberg's [[twelve-tone]] system, resulting in two major works, the Piano Quartet (1950) and the Piano Fantasy (1957).{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=481}}

=== Early works ===
Copland's compositions before leaving for Paris were mainly short works for piano and [[art song]]s, inspired by Liszt and Debussy. In them, he experimented with ambiguous beginnings and endings, rapid key changes, and the frequent use of tritones.{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=41}} His first published work, ''[[The Cat and the Mouse]]''&nbsp;(1920), was a piece for piano solo based on the [[Jean de La Fontaine]] fable "[[The Old Cat and the Young Mouse]]".{{sfn|Smith|1953|p=51}} In ''Three Moods'' (1921), Copland's final movement is entitled "Jazzy", which he noted "is based on two jazz melodies and ought to make the old professors sit up and take notice".{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=44}}

The [[Symphony for Organ and Orchestra (Copland)|Symphony for Organ and Orchestra]] established Copland as a serious modern composer. Musicologist Gayle Murchison cites Copland's use melodic, harmonic and rhythmic elements endemic in jazz, which he would also use in his ''Music for the Theater'' and [[Piano Concerto (Copland)|Piano Concerto]] to evoke an essentially "American" sound.{{sfn|Murchison|2012|pp=48–54}} he fuses these qualities with modernist elements such as octatonic and whole-tone scales, polyrhythmic ostinato figures, and dissonant counterpoint.{{sfn|Murchison|2012|pp=48–54}} Murchinson points out the influence of Igor Stravinsky in the work's nervous, driving rhythms and some of its harmonic language.{{sfn|Murchison|2012|pp=48–54}} Copland in hindsight found the work too "European" as he consciously sought a more consciously American idiom to evoke in his future work.{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=128}}

Visits to Europe in 1926 and 1927 brought him into contact with the most recent developments there, including Webern's Five Pieces for Orchestra, which greatly impressed him. In August 1927, while staying in Königstein, Copland wrote ''Poet's Song'', a setting of a text by [[E. E. Cummings]] and his first composition using Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. This was followed by the ''Symphonic Ode'' (1929) and the [[Piano Variations (Copland)|Piano Variations]] (1930), both of which rely on the exhaustive development of a single short motif. This procedure, which provided Copland with more formal flexibility and a greater emotional range than in his earlier music, is similar to Schoenberg's idea of "continuous variation" and, according to Copland's own admission, was influenced by the twelve-tone method, though neither work actually uses a twelve-tone row.{{sfn|Pollack|1999|pp=68, 138, 147}}

The other major work of Copland's first period is the ''[[Short Symphony]]'' (1933). In it, music critic and musicologist [[Michael Steinberg (music critic)|Michael Steinberg]] writes, the "jazz-influenced dislocations of meter that are so characteristic of Copland's music of the 1920s are more prevalent than ever".{{sfn|Steinberg|1998|p=131}} Compared to the ''Symphonic Ode'', the orchestration is much leaner and the composition itself more concentrated.{{sfn|Steinberg|1998|p=131}} In its combination and refinement of modernist and jazz elements, Steinberg calls the ''Short Symphony'' "a remarkable synthesis of the learned and the vernacular, and thus, in all its brevity [the work last just 15 minutes], a singularly 'complete' representation of its composer".{{sfn|Steinberg|1998|p=133}} However, Copland moved from this work toward more accessible works and folk sources.

=== Populist works ===
Copland wrote ''El Salón México'' between 1932 and 1936, which met with a popular acclaim that contrasted the relative obscurity of most of his previous works.{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=302}} Inspiration for this work came from Copland's vivid recollection of visiting the "Salon Mexico" dancehall where he witnessed a more intimate view of Mexico's nightlife.{{sfn|Copland|1939|pages=2–4}} Copland derived his melodic material for this piece freely from two collections of Mexican folk tunes, changing pitches and varying rhythms.{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=299}} The use of a folk tune with variations set in a symphonic context started a pattern he repeated in many of his most successful works right on through the 1940s.{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=300}} It also marked a shift in emphasis from a unified musical structure to the rhetorical effect the music might have on an audience and showed Copland refining a simplified, more accessible musical language.{{sfn|Crist|2005|p=43}}

''El Salón'' prepared Copland to write the ballet score ''Billy the Kid'', which became, in Pollack's words, an "archetypical depiction of the legendary American West".{{sfn|Pollack|1999|pp=318–19, 325}} Based on a Walter Noble Burns novel, with choreography by Eugene Loring, ''Billy'' was among the first to display an American music and dance vocabulary.{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=315}} Copland used six cowboy folk songs to provide period atmosphere and employed [[polyrhythm]] and [[polyharmony]] when not quoting these tunes literally to maintain the work's overall tone.{{sfn|Pollack|1999|pp=317, 320}}{{sfn|Smith|1953|p= 189}} In this way, Copland's music worked much in the same way as the murals of [[Thomas Hart Benton (painter)|Thomas Hart Benton]], in that it employed elements that could be grasped easily by a mass audience.{{sfn|Oja|Tick|2005|p=94}} The ballet premiered in New York in 1939, with Copland recalling: "I cannot remember another work of mine that was so unanimously received."{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=323}} Along with the ballet ''Rodeo'', ''Billy the Kid'' became, in the words of musicologist Elizabeth Crist, "the basis for Copland's reputation as a composer of Americana" and defines "an uncomplicated form of American nationalism".{{sfn|Crist|2005|p=111}}

Copland's brand of nationalism in his ballets differed from that of European composers such as Béla Bartók, who tried to preserve the folk tones they used as close to the original as possible.{{sfn|Oja|Tick|2005|pp=255–57}} Copland enhanced the tunes he used with contemporary rhythms, textures and structures. In what could seem contradictory, he used complex harmonies and rhythms to simplify folk melodies and make them more accessible and familiar to his listeners.{{sfn|Oja|Tick|2005|p=255}} Except for the Shaker tune in ''Appalachian Spring'', Copland often [[syncopation|syncopates]] traditional melodies, changes their [[metre (music)|metric patterns]] and note values.{{sfn|Oja|Tick|2005|p=256}} In ''Billy the Kid'', he derives many of the work's sparse harmonies from the implied harmonic constructions of the cowboy tunes themselves.{{sfn|Oja|Tick|2005|p=256}}

Like Stravinsky, Copland mastered the ability to create a coherent, integrated composition from what was essentially a mosaic of divergent folk-based and original elements.{{sfn|Oja|Tick|2005|p=257}} In that sense, Copland's Populist works such as ''Billy the Kid'', ''Rodeo'', ''Appalachian Spring'' are not far removed from Stravinsky's ballet ''[[The Rite of Spring]]''.{{sfn|Oja|Tick|2005|pp=257–29}} Within that framework, however, Copland preserved the American atmosphere of these ballets through what musicologist Elliott Antokoletz calls "the conservative handling of open diatonic sonorities", which fosters "a pastoral quality" in the music.{{sfn|Oja|Tick|2005|p=263}} This is especially true in the opening of ''Appalachian Spring'', where the harmonizations remain "transparent and bare, suggested by the melodic disposition of the Shaker tune".{{sfn|Oja|Tick|2005|p=263}} Variations which contrast to this tune in rhythm, key, texture and dynamics, fit within Copland's compositional practice of juxtaposing structural blocks.{{sfn|Oja|Tick|2005|p=263}}

=== Film scores ===
When Hollywood beckoned concert hall composers in the 1930s with promises of better films and higher pay, Copland saw both a challenge for his abilities as a composer as well as an opportunity to expand his reputation and audience for his more serious works.{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=336}} In a departure from other film scores of the time, Copland's work largely reflected his own style, instead of the usual borrowing from the late-Romantic period.{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=349}} He often avoided the full orchestra, and he rejected the common practice of using a [[leitmotif]] to identify characters with their own personal themes. He instead matched a theme to the action, while avoiding the underlining of every action with exaggerated emphasis. Another technique Copland employed was to keep silent during intimate screen moments and only begin the music as a confirming motive toward the end of a scene.{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=342}} [[Virgil Thomson]] wrote that the score for ''[[Of Mice and Men (1939 film)|Of Mice and Men]]'' established "the most distinguished populist musical style yet created in America".{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=343}} Many composers who scored for Western movies, particularly between 1940 and 1960, were influenced by Copland's style, though some also followed the late Romantic "Max Steiner" approach, which was considered more conventional and desirable.{{sfn|Pollack|1999|p=349}}{{sfn|Lerner|2001|p=491–99}}

=== 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}}