Aaron Copland
Few figures in American music loom as large as Aaron Copland. As one of the first wave of literary and musical expatriates in Paris during the 1920s, Copland returned to the United States with the means to assume, for the next half-century, a central role in American music as composer, promoter, and educator. His sheer popularity and iconic status are such that his music has transcended the concert hall and entered the popular consciousness; it both accompanies solemn and joyous celebrations the world over (Fanfare for the Common Man) and punctuated the familiar words "Beef: It's What's for Dinner!" (Rodeo) for millions of television viewers.
Copland was the youngest of five children born to Harris and Sarah Copland, Lithuanian Jewish immigrants who owned a department store in Brooklyn. He did not take formal piano lessons until he was 13, by which time he had also begun writing small pieces. Instead of attending college, Copland studied theory and composition with Rubin Goldmark and piano with Victor Wittgenstein and Clarence Adler, and attended as many concerts, operas, and ballets as possible. In 1921, he went to Fontainebleau, France, taking conducting and composition classes at the American Conservatory. Copland went on to study in Paris with Ricardo Viñes and Nadia Boulanger and spent the next three years soaking up all the European culture, both new and old, that he could. He learned to admire not only composers like Stravinsky, Milhaud, Fauré, and Mahler, but others such as author André Gide. Boulanger's performance of Copland's 1924 Organ Symphony with Koussevitzky was the beginning of a friendship between the conductor and composer that led to Copland teaching at the Berkshire Music Center (Tanglewood) from 1940 until 1965.
After his return to America, Copland drifted toward an incisive, austere style that captured something of the sobriety of Depression-torn America. The most representative work of this period -- the Piano Variations (1930) -- remains one of the composer's seminal efforts. He tried to avoid taking a university position, instead writing for journals and newspapers, organizing concerts, and taking on administrative duties for composers' organizations, trying to promote American music. By the mid-'30s, taking the direct engagement of and communication with audiences as one of his central tenets, Copland's compositions developed (in parallel with other composers like Virgil Thomson and Roy Harris) an "American" style marked by folk influences, a new melodic and harmonic simplicity, and an appealing directness free from intellectual pretension. This is nowhere more in evidence than in Copland's ballets of this period, and it finally earned him the respect of the general public.
While Copland gradually became less prolific from the mid-'50s on, he continued to experiment and explore "fresh" means of musical expression, including a highly individual adoption of 12-tone principles in works like the Piano Fantasy and Connotations for orchestra. Still, the fundamentally lyrical nature of Copland's language remained intact and occasionally emerged -- with an often surprising retrospective air -- in works like the Duo for flute and piano (1971). He continued to teach and write and received numerous awards both in America and abroad. In 1958, he began conducting orchestras around the world, performing works by 80 other composers as well as his own over the next 20 years. By the mid-'70s, Copland had for all intents and purposes ceased composing. One of the last of his creative accomplishments was the completion of his two-volume autobiography (with musicologist Vivian Perlis), an essential document in understanding the growth of American music in the 20th century.
© TiVo Staff /TiVo
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Copland Conducts Copland: Symphony No. 3
Classica - Pubblicato da Sony Classical il 2 giu 1979
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Pride of Oklahoma 1989
The University of Oklahoma Marching Band
Classica - Pubblicato da Tresona il 1 gen 2012
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Bernstein Conducts Copland
New York Philharmonic, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein
Classica - Pubblicato da Music Manager il 6 feb 2013
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Contemporary American Composers : Aaron Copland / "Billy the Kid", Fred Grofé / "Rodeo" & "Grand Canyon"
Classica - Pubblicato da ISIS il 15 lug 2016
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Aaron Copland: Violin Sonata, Trio, Piano Sonata
Classica - Pubblicato da NWCRI il 1 giu 2010
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Contemporary American Music (Remastered)
Barber, Diamond, Aaron Copland, Creston
Classica - Pubblicato da RevOla il 9 mag 2019
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The Great Conductors: Aaron Copland (Remastered 2016)
London Symphony Orchestra, Leo Smit, Aaron Copland, Radio Rome Symphony Orchestra
Classica - Pubblicato da Jube Classic il 1 apr 2016
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
Barber: Concerto pour violon - Copland: Concerto pour piano (Mono Version)
Louis Kaufman, Leo Smit, Aaron Copland
Generi vari - Pubblicato da BNF Collection il 1 gen 1956
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Finnegan's Wake
Classica - Pubblicato da Albany Records il 1 set 2004
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Copland Music For Piano Duo (Produced)
Arianna Goldina and Rémy Loumbrozo
Classica - Pubblicato da Phoenix USA il 15 apr 2004
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Music by My Friends
Classica - Pubblicato da Albany Records il 1 ott 2004
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Works for Violin and Piano
Classica - Pubblicato da Globe il 3 giu 2016
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Copland: Symphony No. 3 (Transferred from the Original Everest Records Master Tapes)
London Symphony Orchestra, Aaron Copland
Classica - Pubblicato da Everest il 6 ott 2017
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Aaron Copland & Leonard Bernstein Play Their Works
Classica - Pubblicato da Naxos Classical Archives il 1 gen 2013
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Copland: Appalachian Spring / Gould: Spirituals for String Choir and Orchestra
Classica - Pubblicato da Everest Records il 10 lug 1958
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Copland: Third Symphony
Aaron Copland, London Symphony Orchestra
Classica - Pubblicato da Music Manager il 12 set 2019
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Drunk as Hell
Country - Pubblicato da Aaron Copeland il 8 ott 2018
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American Composers
Eastman-Rochester Orchestra, Aaron Copland, Sir Eugene Goosens
Classica - Pubblicato da Music Manager il 4 nov 2015
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Aaron Copland: Orchestral Variations - Alfonso Letelier - Aculeo, Suite for Orchestra
The Louisville Orchestra, Robert Whitney
Classica - Pubblicato da First Edition il 14 gen 2014
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Copland: Modern Vocal Premieres - Old American Songs, Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson - Warfield, Lipton, and Copland
Aaron Copland, William Warfield, Martha Lipton
Classica - Pubblicato da Soundmark il 1 ott 1951
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Copland: Appalachian Spring Suite (Recorded 1945) (Live)
New York Philharmonic, Artur Rodzinski
Classica - Pubblicato da New York Philharmonic il 8 dic 2017
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo