View this Free Essay in PDF format

This free essay has been submitted by: Guest User

Aaron Copeland

Aaron Copland was born on November 14, 1900 in New York City. Considered a premier American composer for the better part of four decades, Copland's musical works ranged from ballet and orchestral music to choral music and movie scores. He learned to play piano from an older sister and by the time he was fifteen he had decided to become a composer.

Some aspects of Aaron Copland's style changed throughout the course of his career. This is because some aspects of his composing mirrored important rends in composition of the time. Early on in Copland's career, he studied in Paris, France as the first American student of the famous French teacher Nadia Boulanger. During this period, Copland's compositions utilized jazz idioms and dissonance, as heard in such pieces as Music for Theater (1925) and the Piano Concerto (1927). The Piano Concerto was strongly influenced by Stravinsky's Neoclassicism. More reservation and harmonic complexity were traits in his music that followed this period.

In a later period of Copland's life, he started to place a greater emphasis on simplicity, diatonic harmonies, and the use of traditional and folk songs. One of the reasons for why he composed in such a manner was to appeal to a wider audience than he had been doing and to compose for recent technological developments such as the radio and movies. Pieces considered to be part of this period, known as the period "for use" include El Salon Mexico, Billy the Kid, Rodeo, The Second Hurricane, and scores for films such as Our Town.

In arguably Copland's most identifiable piece titled Appalachian Spring, the so-called "apex" of this trend in usable music was reached. Copland included a rendition or outtake of the famous shaker song "Tis the Gift to be Simple" in a section of this piece. Such ideas as American ideals and country fiddling are generated throughout the piece.

In what some historians consider his third period, Copland also used motifs derived from folk tunes and incorporated some aspects of twelve-tone technique in his music. Such pieces of music which incorporated this twelve-tone technique included songs on the Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson, the Piano Quartet, the Piano Fantasy, and the Inscape.

After 1970 Copland stopped composing, though he continued to lecture and conduct through the mid-1980s. He died on December 2, 1990 in Tarrytown, New York.

Add a Review for this free essay

Name: Rate: Select 10 (Good) 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 (Bad)

Comments Characters Left
Verify:*

Sticky Note Text....