Aaron Copland

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Lore & Background

Aaron Copland was born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 14, 1900, the youngest of five children in a Conservative Jewish immigrant family of Lithuanian origin. His father, Harris Morris Copland, may have Anglicized his surname "Kaplan" to "Copland" while living in Scotland to pay for his boat fare to the United States; Copland himself believed for many years the change was caused by an Ellis Island official. Copland began writing songs at age eight and a half, and his earliest notated music—about seven bars written when he was 11—was for an opera scenario he called Zenatello. After piano lessons with Leopold Wolfsohn from 1913 to 1917, he decided to become a composer at age 15 following a concert by Polish composer-pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski. He studied harmony, theory, and composition with Rubin Goldmark from 1917 to 1921, then traveled to Paris, where he studied with Isidor Philipp and Paul Vidal before switching to Nadia Boulanger. He studied three years with Boulanger, whose eclectic approach inspired his own broad taste. Returning to the U.S., he found composing modernist orchestral music unprofitable, particularly in light of the Great Depression, and shifted in the mid-1930s to a more accessible style mirroring the German idea of Gebrauchsmusik. During the Depression years, he traveled extensively to Europe, Africa, and Mexico, formed an important friendship with Mexican composer Carlos Chávez, and began composing his signature works. In the late 1940s, aware that Stravinsky and others had begun studying Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone techniques, and after exposure to works of Pierre Boulez, Copland incorporated serial techniques into his Piano Quartet (1950), Piano Fantasy (1957), Connotations for orchestra (1961), and Inscape for orchestra (1967). From the 1960s onward, his activities turned more from composing to conducting; he became a frequent guest conductor of orchestras in the U.S. and the UK and made recordings for Columbia Records.

Reader's Guide

Aaron Copland's significance rests on his role as the "Dean of American Music", a title given by his peers and critics. His populist works from the 1930s and 1940s—including the ballets Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, and Rodeo, as well as Fanfare for the Common Man and the Third Symphony—defined a distinctly American sound with open, slowly changing harmonies that evoke the vast American landscape and pioneer spirit. Copland shifted from a modernist style to a more accessible "vernacular" style in the mid-1930s, adapting the German concept of Gebrauchsmusik to serve utilitarian and artistic purposes during the Great Depression. Later, he incorporated twelve-tone techniques into works like the Piano Quartet (1950), Piano Fantasy (1957), Connotations (1961), and Inscape (1967), but used tone rows as sources for melodies and harmonies rather than as complete statements. His legacy also includes his work as a critic, writer, teacher, and conductor who championed American music. Copland died on December 2, 1990.

Did You Know?

• Copland's father may have Anglicized the family name from 'Kaplan' to 'Copland' while living in Scotland to pay for his boat fare to the United States; Copland himself was unaware until late in life that the name had been Kaplan.
• Copland's earliest notated music, about seven bars written when he was 11, was for an opera scenario he created and called Zenatello.
• He decided to become a composer at age 15 after attending a concert by Polish composer-pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski.
• Copland studied three years with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, finding her eclectic approach crucial to his development; he initially had reservations because no one to his knowledge had ever thought of studying with a woman.
• From the 1960s onward, Copland turned more from composing to conducting, becoming a frequent guest conductor of orchestras in the U.S. and the UK and making recordings for Columbia Records.

Roots in Brooklyn and the Spark of Composition

Aaron Copland was born in Brooklyn on November 14, 1900, the youngest of five in a Conservative Jewish family of Lithuanian origin. His father had spent two or three years working in Scotland to fund the family's emigration, and it was probably during that stretch that the surname Kaplan became Copland—a detail Aaron would not learn until late in life. The household sat above the family's general store on Washington Avenue, and the children all pitched in to help. Aaron was not athletic; instead he was a sensitive reader who passed hours on the front steps with Horatio Alger stories. Music came to him through his mother Sarah, who sang and played piano, and especially through his older sister Laurine, a Metropolitan Opera School student who gave him his first lessons and brought home libretti for him to study. He began composing songs at eight and a half and had a seven-bar opera sketch called Zenatello by eleven. A Paderewski concert at fifteen locked in his decision to become a composer, and hearing his first symphony at sixteen at the Brooklyn Academy of Music only sharpened that resolve.

Paris, the Depression, and the Vernacular Turn

After initial harmony and composition studies with Rubin Goldmark in New York, Copland traveled to Paris, where he worked with Isidor Philipp, Paul Vidal, and most formatively with Nadia Boulanger for three years. Boulanger's eclectic, wide-ranging approach to music kindled in him a broad curiosity that would shape his entire career. Back in the United States, Copland resolved to live as a full-time composer, giving lecture-recitals, accepting commissions, and doing some teaching and writing. Yet he discovered that writing orchestral music in the modernist idiom he had absorbed abroad was financially unviable, especially during the Great Depression. In the mid-1930s he pivoted toward a deliberately accessible style he called his vernacular approach, echoing the German concept of Gebrauchsmusik—music designed to serve both practical and artistic ends. During these Depression years he traveled widely to Europe, Africa, and Mexico, forged a close friendship with the Mexican composer Carlos Chávez, and began producing the works that would define his public identity.

The Sound of America and the Populist Masterpieces

Copland's most celebrated output arrived in the 1930s and 1940s, when he embraced what critics labeled his populist style. The open, slowly shifting harmonies of these works came to be heard as the very voice of American music, conjuring images of vast open landscapes and a pioneering spirit. Among the pieces most associated with this period are the ballets Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, and Rodeo, the rousing Fanfare for the Common Man, and his Third Symphony. Peers and critics alike bestowed on him the title Dean of American Music, a recognition that his accessible idiom had become inseparable from the nation's cultural self-image. Beyond ballets and large orchestral works, Copland also wrote chamber music, vocal pieces, opera, and film scores, demonstrating a range that belied the singular American label often attached to his name. His commitment to making music that could be heard and understood by broad audiences, rather than only by specialists, set him apart in a generation that increasingly prized difficulty for its own sake.

Serialism, Conducting, and the Later Years

By the late 1940s, Copland noticed that Stravinsky and other composers in his circle were turning to Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone serial techniques. After encountering the work of the French composer Pierre Boulez, he began weaving serial methods into his own writing. The results appear in the Piano Quartet of 1950, the Piano Fantasy of 1957, Connotations for orchestra in 1961, and Inscape for orchestra in 1967. What distinguished his serial practice from Schoenberg's was his treatment of tone rows: rather than letting them function as self-contained structural statements, Copland used them much as he had used tonal material—generating melodies and harmonies, reserving full row statements for only the most structurally critical moments. From the 1960s onward, his professional energy shifted increasingly from the composing desk to the podium. He became a frequent guest conductor with orchestras in the United States and the United Kingdom and produced a series of recordings of his own works, primarily for Columbia Records, ensuring that his music reached listeners through the medium of the gramophone as well as the concert hall.