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177-478: The Léonie Sonning Music Prize , or Sonning Award , which is recognized as Denmark's highest musical honor, is given annually to an international composer or musician. It was first awarded in 1959 to composer Igor Stravinsky . Laureates are now selected by the directors of The Léonie Sonning Music Foundation , which was founded in 1965. The diploma is in Danish, and the prize includes EUR 133,000 (US$ 146,400) and

354-728: A National Historic Landmark in 2008. Copland's health deteriorated through the 1980s, and he died of Alzheimer's disease and respiratory failure on December 2, 1990, in North Tarrytown, New York (now Sleepy Hollow). Following his death, his ashes were scattered over the Tanglewood Music Center near Lenox, Massachusetts. Much of his large estate was bequeathed to the creation of the Aaron Copland Fund for Composers, which bestows over $ 600,000 per year to performing groups. Copland never enrolled as

531-551: A harmonic structure that Stravinsky called "leit-harmony", a portmanteau of leitmotif and harmony used by Rimsky-Korsakov in his opera The Golden Cockerel . The "leit-harmony" was used to juxtapose the protagonist, the Firebird , and the antagonist, Koschei the Deathless : the former was associated with whole-tone phrases and the latter with octatonic harmony. Stravinsky later wrote how he composed The Firebird in

708-632: A monotype by the Danish painter Maja Lisa Engelhardt . Honorees are treated to a concert, typically held in Copenhagen , and are often invited to teach a master class of Danish musicians. The award is not directly related to the Sonning Prize , which is the Danish award presented by a foundation in memory of Sonning's late husband, Carl Johan Sonning  [ da ] . Igor Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (17 June [ O.S. 5 June] 1882 – 6 April 1971)

885-634: A naturalized French citizen, protecting all his future works under copyright in France and the United States. His family subsequently moved to an apartment on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris, where he began writing a two-volume autobiography with the help of Walter Nouvel , published in 1935 and 1936 as Chroniques de ma vie . After the short run of Perséphone , Stravinsky embarked on

1062-586: A "usable past" in American classical composers, he looked toward jazz and popular music, something he had already started to do while in Europe. In the 1920s, Gershwin, Bessie Smith , and Louis Armstrong were in the forefront of American popular music and jazz. By the end of the decade, Copland felt his music was going in a more abstract, less jazz-oriented direction. However, as large swing bands such as those of Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller became popular in

1239-512: A banner of his patriotism. The investigations ceased in 1955 and were closed in 1975. The McCarthy probes did not seriously affect Copland's career and international artistic reputation, however taxing as they might have been on his time, energy, and emotional state. Nevertheless, beginning in 1950, Copland—who had been appalled at Stalin's persecution of Shostakovich and other artists—began resigning from participation in leftist groups. Copland, Pollack states, "stayed particularly concerned about

1416-415: A child to whom Copland later provided financial security, through a bequest from his estate. 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')." If one or more of these nuggets looked promising, he would then write

1593-612: A commission from the Columbia Broadcast System . This was one of his first pieces to convey the landscape of the American West. This emphasis on the frontier carried over to his ballet Billy the Kid (1938), which along with El Salón México became his first widespread public success. Copland's ballet music established him as an authentic composer of American music much as Stravinsky's ballet scores connected

1770-568: A company which also attracted Stella Adler , Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg . Philosophically an outgrowth of Stieglitz and his ideals, the Group focused on socially relevant plays by the American authors. Through it and later his work in film, Copland met several major American playwrights, including Thornton Wilder , William Inge , Arthur Miller , and Edward Albee , and considered projects with all of them. Around 1935 Copland began to compose musical pieces for young audiences, in accordance with

1947-572: A composition impeccable. Boulanger "could always find the weak spot in a place you suspected was weak... She also could tell you why it was weak [italics Copland]." He wrote in a letter to his brother Ralph, "This intellectual Amazon is not only professor at the Conservatoire , is not only familiar with all music from Bach to Stravinsky, but is prepared for anything worse in the way of dissonance . But make no mistake ... A more charming womanly woman never lived." Copland later wrote that "it

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2124-455: A constant in Copland's life, though their romance might have ended by 1944. Originally a violin prodigy when the composer met him in 1932, Kraft gave up music to pursue a career in photography, in part due to Copland's urging. Kraft would leave and re-enter Copland's life, often bringing much stress with him as his behavior became increasingly erratic, sometimes confrontational. Kraft fathered

2301-489: A contract with British publishing house Boosey & Hawkes , who agreed to publish all his future works. Additionally, he revised many of his older works and had Boosey & Hawkes publish the new editions to re-copyright his older works. Around the 1948 premiere of another Balanchine collaboration, the ballet Orpheus , the composer met the young conductor Robert Craft in New York; Craft had asked Stravinsky to explain

2478-662: A contract with the player piano company Pleyel to create piano roll arrangements of his music. He received a studio at their factory on the Rue Rochechouart, where he reorchestrated Les noces for a small ensemble including player piano. The composer transcribed many of his major works for the mechanical pianos, and the Pleyel premises remained his Paris base until 1933, even after the player piano had been largely supplanted by electrical gramophone recording. Stravinsky signed another contract in 1924, this time with

2655-578: A flurry of critical attacks, leading the writer H. G. Wells to publish an open letter in support of the work. During this period, Stravinsky expanded his involvement in conducting and piano performance. He conducted the premiere of his Octet in 1923 and served as the soloist for the premiere of his Piano Concerto in 1924. Following its debut, he embarked on a tour, performing the concerto in over 40 concerts. The Stravinsky family moved again in September 1924 to Nice , France. The composer's schedule

2832-509: A folk tune from Rimsky-Korsakov's opera The Snow Maiden , showing the former's continued reverence for his teacher. Stravinsky's third ballet, The Rite of Spring , caused a near-riot at the premiere due to its avant-garde nature. He had begun to experiment with polytonality in The Firebird and Petrushka , but for The Rite of Spring , he "pushed [it] to its logical conclusion," as Eric Walter White described it. In addition,

3009-506: A half-diploma. As he began spending more time in Rimsky-Korsakov's circle of artists, the young composer became increasingly cramped in the stylistically conservative atmosphere: modern music was questioned, and concerts of contemporary music were looked down upon. The group occasionally attended chamber concerts oriented to modern music, and while Rimsky-Korsakov and his colleague Anatoly Lyadov hated attending, Stravinsky remembered

3186-636: A member of any political party. Nevertheless, he inherited a considerable interest in civic and world events from his father. His views were generally progressive and he had strong ties with numerous colleagues and friends in the Popular Front, including Clifford Odets . Early in his life, Copland developed, in Pollack's words, "a deep admiration for the works of Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser and Upton Sinclair , all socialists whose novels passionately excoriated capitalism's physical and emotional toll on

3363-486: A more consciously American idiom to evoke in his future work. 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

3540-410: A musical connection to his Russian roots. The ballet Pulcinella was commissioned by Diaghilev in 1919 after he proposed the idea of a ballet based on music by 18th-century Italian composers like Giovanni Battista Pergolesi ; by imposing a work based on the harmonic and rhythmic systems of late-Baroque era composers, Stravinsky marked the start of his turn towards 18th-century music. Although

3717-482: A noted teacher and composer of American music (who had given George Gershwin three lessons). Goldmark, with whom Copland studied between 1917 and 1921, gave the young Copland a solid foundation, especially in the Germanic tradition. As Copland stated later: "This was a stroke of luck for me. I was spared the floundering that so many musicians have suffered through incompetent teaching." But Copland also commented that

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3894-423: A piano sketch and eventually work on them at the keyboard. 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". His habit of turning to the keyboard tended to embarrass Copland until he learned that Stravinsky also did so. Copland would not consider the specific instrumentation for

4071-460: A piece until it was complete and notated. 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. Copland himself admitted, "I don't compose. I assemble materials." Many times, he included material he had written years earlier. If

4248-554: A private hearing at the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., Copland was questioned by Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn about his lecturing abroad and his affiliations with various organizations and events. In the process, McCarthy and Cohn neglected completely Copland's works, which made a virtue of American values. Outraged by the accusations, many members of the musical community held up Copland's music as

4425-883: A seat at the Institut de France further dissociated him from France, and shortly after the beginning of World War II in September 1939 he moved to the United States. Upon arriving in the United States, Stravinsky resided with Edward W. Forbes , the director of the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures series at Harvard University . The composer was contracted to deliver six lectures for the series, beginning in October 1939 and ending in April 1940. The lectures, written with assistance from Pyotr Suvchinsky and Alexis Roland-Manuel , were published in French under

4602-478: A series of lectures. Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum, Russia—a town now called Lomonosov , about thirty miles (fifty kilometers) west of Saint Petersburg —on 17 June [ O.S. 5 June] 1882. His mother, Anna Kirillovna Stravinskaya (née Kholodovskaya), was an amateur singer and pianist from an established family of landowners. His father, Fyodor Ignatyevich Stravinsky ,

4779-572: A set of bagatelles , a "chanson comique", and a cantata , showing the use of classical musical techniques that would later define Stravinsky's neoclassical period. The musicologist Stephen Walsh described this time in Stravinsky's musical career as "aesthetically cramped" due to the "cynical conservatism" of Rimsky-Korsakov and his music. Rimsky-Korsakov thought the Symphony in E-flat (1907)

4956-579: A special dinner with close friends. In general, his music seemed to evoke Protestant hymns as often as it did Jewish chant. Copland characteristically found connections among various religious traditions. But if Copland was discreet about his Jewish background, he never hid it, either. Pollack states that Copland was gay and that the composer came to an early acceptance and understanding of his sexuality. Like many at that time, Copland guarded his privacy, especially in regard to his homosexuality. He provided few written details about his private life, and even after

5133-441: A state of "revolt against Rimsky", and that he "tried to surpass him with ponticello , col legno , flautando , glissando , and fluttertongue effects". Stravinsky defined his musical character in his second ballet Petrushka . The Russian influence can be seen in the use of a number of Russian folk tunes in addition to two waltzes by Viennese composer Joseph Lanner and a French music hall tune. Stravinsky also used

5310-582: A structural point of view. From the 1960s onward, Copland's activities turned more from composing to conducting. He became a frequent guest conductor of orchestras in the U.S. and the UK and made a series of recordings of his music, primarily for Columbia Records . Aaron Copland was born in Brooklyn , New York, on November 14, 1900. He was the youngest of five children in a Conservative Jewish immigrant family of Lithuanian origins. While emigrating from Russia to

5487-591: A successful three-month tour of the United States with Dushkin; he visited South America for the first time the following year. The composer's son Soulima was an excellent pianist, having performed the Capriccio in concert with his father conducting. Continuing a line of solo piano works, the elder Stravinsky composed the Concerto for Two Pianos to be performed by them both, and they toured the work through 1936. Around this time came three American-commissioned works:

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5664-530: A summer school program for American musicians at the Fontainebleau School of Music , offered by the French government, encouraged Copland still further. His father wanted him to go to college, but his mother's vote in the family conference allowed him to give Paris a try. On arriving in France, he studied at Fontainebleau with pianist and pedagog Isidor Philipp and composer Paul Vidal . When Copland found Vidal too much like Goldmark, he switched at

5841-567: A surprisingly large number of people. In many ways, this shift mirrored the German idea of Gebrauchsmusik ("music for use"), as composers sought to create music that could serve a utilitarian as well as artistic purpose. This approach encompassed two trends: first, music that students could easily learn, and second, music which would have wider appeal, such as incidental music for plays, movies, radio, etc. Toward this end, Copland provided musical advice and inspiration to The Group Theatre ,

6018-477: A tennis court, playing piano duet music, and later organizing group readings with their other cousins of books and political tracts from Fyodor Stravinsky's personal library. In July 1901, Stravinsky expressed infatuation with Lyudmila Kuxina, Nosenko's best friend, but after the self-described "summer romance" had ended, Nosenko and Stravinsky's relationship began developing into a furtive romance. Between their intermittent family visits, Nosenko studied painting at

6195-415: A toll on the elderly composer; January 1967 marked his last recording session, and his final public concert came the following May. After spending the autumn of 1967 in the hospital due to bleeding stomach ulcers and thrombosis , Stravinsky returned to domestic touring in 1968 (only appearing as an audience member) but stopped composing due to his gradual decline in physical health. In his final years,

6372-620: A twelve-tone row. The other major work of Copland's first period is the Short Symphony (1933). In it, music critic and musicologist 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". Compared to the Symphonic Ode , the orchestration is much leaner and the composition itself more concentrated. In its combination and refinement of modernist and jazz elements, Steinberg calls

6549-493: A work about what he called "a solemn pagan rite: sage elders, seated in a circle, watched a young girl dance herself to death". He immediately shared the idea with Nicholas Roerich , a friend and painter of pagan subjects. When Stravinsky told Diaghilev about the idea, the impresario excitedly agreed to commission the work. After the premiere of Petrushka , Stravinsky settled at his family's residence in Ustilug and fleshed out

6726-437: Is an introspective composition with a jazz influence. Copland finished the 1940s with two film scores, one for William Wyler 's The Heiress and one for the film adaptation of John Steinbeck 's novel The Red Pony . In 1949, Copland returned to Europe, where he found French composer Pierre Boulez dominating the group of post-war avant-garde composers there. He also met with proponents of twelve-tone technique, based on

6903-461: Is often divided into three main periods: his Russian period (1913–1920), his neoclassical period (1920–1951), and his serial period (1954–1968). During his Russian period, Stravinsky was heavily influenced by Russian styles and folklore. Works such as Renard (1916) and Les noces (1923) drew upon Russian folk poetry, while compositions like L'Histoire du soldat (1918) integrated these folk elements with popular musical forms, including

7080-558: The 1936 presidential election and his strong support of Progressive Party candidate Henry A. Wallace during the 1948 presidential election, Copland was investigated by the FBI during the Red scare of the 1950s. He was included on an FBI list of 151 artists thought to have Communist associations and found himself blacklisted , with A Lincoln Portrait withdrawn from the 1953 inaugural concert for President Eisenhower . Called later that year to

7257-593: The Académie Colarossi in Paris. The two married on 24 January 1906, at the Church of the Annunciation five miles (eight kilometers) north of Saint Petersburg – because marriage between first cousins was banned, they procured a priest who did not ask their identities, and the only guests present were Rimsky-Korsakov's sons. The couple soon had two children: Théodore , born in 1907, and Ludmila, born

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7434-759: The Aeolian Company in London, producing rolls that included comments about the work by Stravinsky that were engraved into the rolls. He stopped working with player pianos in 1930 when the Aeolian Company's London branch was dissolved. The interest in Pushkin shared by Stravinsky and Diaghilev led to Mavra , a comic opera begun in 1921 that exhibited the composer's rejection of Rimsky-Korsakov's style and his turn towards classic Russian operatists like Tchaikovsky, Glinka , and Dargomyzhsky . Yet, after

7611-781: The Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel . After a service at Santi Giovanni e Paolo with a performance of the Requiem Canticles conducted by Craft, Stravinsky was buried on the cemetery island of San Michele in Venice, several yards from the tomb of Sergei Diaghilev. Much of Stravinsky's music is characterized by short, sharp articulations with minimal rubato or vibrato . His student works were primarily assignments from his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov and were mainly influenced by Russian composers. His first three ballets, The Firebird , Petrushka , and The Rite of Spring , marked

7788-482: The Khrushchev Thaw , partly due to the composer's 1962 visit. During his three-week visit he met with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and several leading Soviet composers, including Shostakovich and Aram Khachaturian . Stravinsky did not return to Los Angeles until December 1962 after eight months of almost continual traveling. Stravinsky revisited biblical themes for many of his later works, notably in

7965-513: The New York Symphony , where he heard the standard classical repertory, Copland continued his musical development through an expanding circle of musical friends. After graduating from high school, Copland played in dance bands. Continuing his musical education, he received further piano lessons from Victor Wittgenstein, who found his student to be "quiet, shy, well-mannered, and gracious in accepting criticism." Copland's fascination with

8142-568: The Russian Revolution and its promise for freeing the lower classes drew a rebuke from his father and uncles. In spite of that, in his early adult life, Copland would develop friendships with people who had socialist and communist leanings. Copland's passion for the latest European music, plus glowing letters from his friend Aaron Schaffer, inspired him to go to Paris for further study. An article in Musical America about

8319-650: The Second Viennese School like Arnold Schoenberg 's twelve-tone technique . In Memoriam Dylan Thomas (1954) was the first of his compositions to be fully based on the technique, and Canticum Sacrum (1956) was his first to be based on a tone row . Stravinsky's last major work was the Requiem Canticles (1966), which was performed at his funeral. While many supporters were confused by Stravinsky's constant stylistic changes, later writers recognized his versatile language as important in

8496-475: The Second Viennese School . Stravinsky's time before meeting Diaghilev was spent learning from Rimsky-Korsakov and his collaborators. Only three works survive from before Stravinsky met Rimsky-Korsakov in August 1902: " Tarantella " (1898), Scherzo in G minor (1902), and The Storm Cloud , the first two being works for piano and the last for voice and piano. Stravinsky's first assignment from Rimsky-Korsakov

8673-585: 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". However, Copland moved from this work toward more accessible works and folk sources. 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. Inspiration for this work came from Copland's vivid recollection of visiting

8850-556: The Sorbonne , attended plays, and frequented Shakespeare and Company , the English-language bookstore that was a gathering-place for expatriate American writers. Among this group in the heady cultural atmosphere of Paris in the 1920s were Paul Bowles , Ernest Hemingway , Sinclair Lewis , Gertrude Stein , and Ezra Pound , as well as artists like Pablo Picasso , Marc Chagall , and Amedeo Modigliani . Also influential on

9027-804: The Stonewall riots of 1969, showed no inclination to "come out." However, he was one of the few composers of his stature to live openly and travel with his intimates. They tended to be talented, younger men involved in the arts, and the age-gap between them and the composer widened as he grew older. Most became enduring friends after a few years and, in Pollack's words, "remained a primary source of companionship." Among Copland's love affairs were ones with photographer Victor Kraft , artist Alvin Ross, pianist Paul Moor, dancer Erik Johns, composer John Brodbin Kennedy, and painter Prentiss Taylor . Victor Kraft became

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9204-473: The Symphonic Ode (1929) and Short Symphony (1933) caused Copland to rethink this approach. It was financially contradictory, particularly during the Depression. Avant-garde music had lost what cultural historian Morris Dickstein calls "its buoyant experimental edge" and the national mood toward it had changed. As biographer Howard Pollack points out, Copland observed two trends among composers in

9381-577: The University of Saint Petersburg , and he enrolled there in 1901. However, according to his own account, he was a bad student and attended few of the optional lectures. In exchange for agreeing to attend law school, his parents allowed for lessons in harmony and counterpoint . At university, Stravinsky befriended Vladimir Rimsky-Korsakov, son of the leading Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov . During summer vacation of 1902, Stravinsky traveled with Vladimir Rimsky-Korsakov to Heidelberg – where

9558-411: The sonata form , modernizing it by disregarding the standard ordering of themes and traditional tonal relationships for different sections. Baroque counterpoint was used throughout the choral Symphony of Psalms (1930). In the jazz -influenced Ebony Concerto (1945), Stravinsky fused big band orchestration with Baroque forms and harmonies. Stravinsky's neoclassical period ended in 1951 with

9735-563: The white émigré -hub Biarritz in May 1921, partly due to the presence of his other lover Vera de Bosset . At the time, de Bosset was married to the former Ballet Russes stage designer Serge Sudeikin , though de Bosset later divorced Sudeikin to marry Stravinsky. Though Yekaterina Stravinsky became aware of her husband's infidelity, the Stravinskys never divorced, likely due to the composer's refusal to separate. In 1921, Stravinsky signed

9912-411: The "Salon Mexico" dancehall where he witnessed a more intimate view of Mexico's nightlife. Copland derived his melodic material for this piece freely from two collections of Mexican folk tunes, changing pitches and varying rhythms. 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. It also marked

10089-399: The 1922 premiere, the work's tame nature – compared to the innovative music Stravinsky had come to be known for – disappointed critics. In 1923, Stravinsky finished orchestrating Les noces , settling on a percussion ensemble including four pianos. The Ballets Russes staged the ballet-cantata that June, and although it initially received moderate reviews, the London production received

10266-572: The 1930s, Copland took a renewed interest in the genre. Inspired by the example of Les Six in France, Copland sought out contemporaries such as Roger Sessions , Roy Harris , Virgil Thomson , and Walter Piston , and quickly established himself as a spokesperson for composers of his generation. He also helped found the Copland-Sessions Concerts to showcase these composers' chamber works to new audiences. Copland's relationship with these men, who became known as "commando unit,"

10443-453: The 1930s: first, a continuing attempt to "simplify their musical language" and, second, a desire to "make contact" with as wide an audience as possible. Since 1927, he had been in the process of simplifying, or at least paring down, his musical language, though in such a manner as to sometimes have the effect, paradoxically, of estranging audiences and performers. By 1933 ... he began to find ways to make his starkly personal language accessible to

10620-662: The 1950s and early 1960s to observe the avant-garde styles of Europe, hear compositions by Soviet composers not well known in the West, and experience the new school of Polish music. While in Japan, he was taken with the work of Tōru Takemitsu and began a correspondence with him that would last over the next decade. Copland revised his text "The New Music" with comments on the styles that he encountered. He found much of what he heard dull and impersonal. Electronic music seemed to have "a depressing sameness of sound," while aleatoric music

10797-426: The 1961 chamber cantata A Sermon, a Narrative and a Prayer , the 1962 musical television production The Flood , the 1963 Hebrew cantata Abraham and Isaac , and the 1966 Requiem Canticles , the last of which was his final major composition. Between tours, the composer worked relentlessly to devise new tone rows, even working on toilet paper from airplane lavatories. The intense touring schedule began taking

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10974-546: The Boston Symphony Orchestra of the orchestral suites from Appalachian Spring and The Tender Land ; these recordings were later reissued on CD, as were most of Copland's Columbia recordings (by Sony). From 1960 until his death, Copland resided at Cortlandt Manor, New York . Known as Rock Hill , his home was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2003 and further designated

11151-626: The Common Man became patriotic standards. Also important was the Third Symphony . Composed in a two-year period from 1944 to 1946, it became Copland's best-known symphony. The Clarinet Concerto (1948), scored for solo clarinet, strings, harp, and piano, was a commission piece for band-leader and clarinetist Benny Goodman and a complement to Copland's earlier jazz-influenced work, the Piano Concerto (1926). His Four Piano Blues

11328-481: The Concerto while on tour until 1933. That year, Stravinsky received another ballet commission from Ida Rubenstein for a setting of a poem by André Gide . The resulting melodrama Perséphone only received three performances in 1934 due to its lukewarm reception, and Stravinsky's disdain towards the work was evident in his later suggestion that the libretto be rewritten. In June of that year, Stravinsky became

11505-476: The February 1909 premiere of two new Stravinsky works: Scherzo fantastique and Feu d'artifice , both lively orchestral movements featuring bright orchestration and unique harmonic techniques. The vivid color and tone of Stravinsky's works intrigued Diaghilev, and the impresario subsequently commissioned Stravinsky to orchestrate music by Chopin for parts of the ballet Les Sylphides . This ballet

11682-514: The German idea of Gebrauchsmusik ("music for use"), music that could serve utilitarian and artistic purposes. 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. During the late 1940s, Copland became aware that Stravinsky and other fellow composers had begun to study Arnold Schoenberg 's use of twelve-tone (serial) techniques . After he had been exposed to

11859-533: The Mariinsky Theatre, where he was introduced to Russian repertoire as well as Italian and French opera; by sixteen, he attended rehearsals at the theater five or six days a week. By age fourteen, Stravinsky had mastered the solo part of Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 1 , and at age fifteen, he transcribed for solo piano a string quartet by Alexander Glazunov . Despite his musical passion and ability, Stravinsky's parents expected him to study law at

12036-553: The Moscow Free Theatre. In early 1914, his wife Yekaterina contracted tuberculosis and was admitted to a sanatorium in Leysin , Switzerland, where the couple's fourth child, Maria Milena, was born. Here Stravinsky finished The Nightingale , but after the Moscow Free Theatre closed before the premiere, Diaghilev agreed to stage the opera. The May 1914 premiere was moderately successful; critics' high expectations after

12213-711: The Mouse  (1920), was a piece for piano solo based on the Jean de La Fontaine fable " The Old Cat and the Young Mouse ". 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". The 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

12390-517: The Populist mores that infused his work of the 1930s and 40s. Beginning in the 1940s, intellectuals assailed Popular Front culture, to which Copland's music was linked, and labeled it, in Dickstein's words, as "hopelessly middlebrow, a dumbing down of art into toothless entertainment." They often linked their disdain for Populist art with technology, new media and mass audiences—in other words,

12567-705: The Russian composers, Copland's teacher and mentor Nadia Boulanger became his most important influence. 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 ...

12744-410: The Stravinskys and Craft moved to New York to be closer to medical care, and the composer's travel was limited to visiting family in Europe. Soon after being discharged from Lenox Hill Hospital after contracting pulmonary edema , Stravinsky moved with his wife to a new apartment on Fifth Avenue . The composer died there on 6 April 1971 at the age of 88. A funeral service was held three days later at

12921-605: The Stravinskys lived in Switzerland until 1920, initially residing in Clarens and later Morges . During the first months of the war, the composer intensely researched Russian folk poetry and prepared librettos for numerous works to be composed in the coming years, including Les noces , Renard , Pribaoutki , and other song cycles . Stravinsky met numerous Swiss-French artists during his time in Morges, including

13098-487: The Theater and Piano Concerto to evoke an essentially "American" sound. he fuses these qualities with modernist elements such as octatonic and whole-tone scales, polyrhythmic ostinato figures, and dissonant counterpoint. Murchinson points out the influence of Igor Stravinsky in the work's nervous, driving rhythms and some of its harmonic language. Copland in hindsight found the work too "European" as he consciously sought

13275-494: The U.S. to make his way as a full-time composer, Copland gave lecture-recitals, wrote works on commission and did some teaching and writing. However, he found that composing orchestral music in a modernist style, which he had adopted while studying abroad, was a financially contradictory approach, particularly in light of the Great Depression . He shifted in the mid-1930s to a more accessible musical style which mirrored

13452-525: The United States, Stravinsky diligently attended church, participated in charity work, and studied religious texts. The composer later wrote that he was contacted by God at a service at the Basilica of Saint Anthony of Padua , leading him to write his first religious composition, the Pater Noster for a cappella choir. In 1925, Stravinsky asked the French writer and artist Jean Cocteau to write

13629-524: The United States, Copland's father, Harris Morris Copland, lived and worked in Scotland for two to three years to pay for his boat fare to the United States. It was there that Copland's father may have Anglicized his surname "Kaplan" to "Copland," though Copland himself believed for many years that the change had been caused by an Ellis Island immigration official when his father entered the country. Copland was, however, unaware until late in his life that

13806-706: The accents seemingly at random to create asymmetry. The Rite of Spring is one of the most famous and influential works of the 20th century; the musicologist Donald Jay Grout described it as having "the effect of an explosion that so scattered the elements of musical language that they could never again be put together as before." The musicologist Jeremy Noble said that Stravinsky's "intensive researches into Russian folk material" took place during his time in Switzerland from 1914 to 1920. Béla Bartók considered Stravinsky's Russian period to have begun in 1913 with The Rite of Spring due to its use of Russian folk songs, themes, and techniques. The use of duple or triple meters

13983-513: The areas of radio, television and motion pictures, for which Copland either had or soon would write music, as well as his popular ballets. While these attacks actually began at the end of the 1930s with the writings of Clement Greenberg and Dwight Macdonald for Partisan Review , they were based in anti-Stalinist politics and would accelerate in the decades following World War II. Despite any difficulties that his suspected Communist sympathies might have posed, Copland traveled extensively during

14160-503: The author Charles F. Ramuz , with whom he collaborated on the small-scale theater work L'Histoire du soldat . The eleven-musician and two-dancer show was designed for easy travel, but after a premiere run funded by Werner Reinhart , all other performances were canceled due to the Spanish flu epidemic . Stravinsky's income from performance royalties was suddenly cut off when his Germany-based publisher suspended operations due to

14337-635: The average man." Even after the McCarthy hearings, he remained a committed opponent of militarism and the Cold War, which he regarded as having been instigated by the United States. He condemned it as "almost worse for art than the real thing." Throw the artist "into a mood of suspicion, ill-will, and dread that typifies the cold war attitude and he'll create nothing". While Copland had various encounters with organized religious thought, which influenced some of his early compositions, he remained agnostic. He

14514-619: The ballet Jeu de cartes for Balanchine, the Brandenburg-Concerto -like work Dumbarton Oaks , and the lamenting Symphony in C for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra 's 50th anniversary. Stravinsky's last years in France from late 1938 to 1939 were marked by the deaths of his eldest daughter, his wife, and his mother, the former two from tuberculosis. In addition, the increasingly hostile criticism of his music in major publications and failed run for

14691-584: The ballet's experimental nature caused a near-riot at its premiere at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on 29 May 1913. Soon after, Stravinsky was admitted to a hospital for typhoid fever and stayed in recovery for five weeks; numerous colleagues visited him, including Debussy, Manuel de Falla , Maurice Ravel , and Florent Schmitt . Upon returning to his family in Ustilug, he continued work on his opera The Nightingale , now with an official commission from

14868-662: The ballet. Diaghilev continued to organize Ballets Russes shows across Europe, including two charity concerts for the Red Cross where Stravinsky made his conducting debut with The Firebird . When the Ballets Russes traveled to Rome in April 1917, Stravinsky met the artist Pablo Picasso , and the two adventured around Italy; a commedia dell'arte they saw in Naples inspired the ballet Pulcinella , which premiered in Paris in May 1920 with designs by Picasso. After

15045-488: The beginning of his international fame and a departure from 19th-century styles. Stravinsky's music is often divided into three periods of composition: his Russian period (1913–1920), where he was greatly influenced by Russian artists and folklore; his neoclassical period (1920–1951), where he turned towards techniques and themes from the classical period ; and his serial period (1954–1968), where he used highly structured composition techniques pioneered by composers of

15222-663: The choral Symphony of Psalms , a deeply religious work that premiered in December of that year. While touring in Germany, Stravinsky visited his publisher's home and met the violinist Samuel Dushkin , who convinced him to compose the Violin Concerto with Dushkin's help on the solo part. Impressed by Dushkin's virtuosic ability and understanding of music, the composer wrote more music for violin and piano and rearranged some of his earlier music to be performed alongside

15399-411: The complex meter in the music consists of phrases combining conflicting time signatures and odd accents , such as the "jagged slashes" in the "Sacrificial Dance". Both polytonality and unusual rhythms can be heard in the chords that open the second episode, "Augurs of Spring", consisting of an E-flat dominant 7 superimposed on an F-flat major triad written in an uneven rhythm, Stravinsky shifting

15576-529: The composer sought to correct myths surrounding him and discuss his relationships with other artists. The article was later expanded into a book, and over the next four years, three more interview-style books were published. Continued international tours brought Stravinsky to Washington, D.C. in January 1962, where he attended a dinner at the White House with then-President John F. Kennedy in honor of

15753-582: The composer with Russian music and came at an opportune time. He helped fill a vacuum for American choreographers to fill their dance repertory and tapped into an artistic groundswell, from the motion pictures of Busby Berkeley and Fred Astaire to the ballets of George Balanchine and Martha Graham , to both democratize and Americanize dance as an art form. In 1938, Copland helped form the American Composers Alliance to promote and publish American contemporary classical music. Copland

15930-565: The composer's 80th birthday. Although it was largely an anti-Soviet political stunt, Stravinsky remembered the event fondly, composing the Elegy for J.F.K. after the president's assassination a year later . In September 1962, he returned to Russia for the first time since 1914, accepting an invitation from the Union of Soviet Composers to conduct six performances in Moscow and Leningrad . After

16107-469: The composer's contemporaries, at a time when other conductors were programming only a few of Copland's works. Soon after his return to the United States, Copland was exposed to the artistic circle of photographer Alfred Stieglitz . While Copland did not care for Stieglitz's domineering attitude, he did admire his work and took to heart Stieglitz's conviction that American artists should reflect "the ideas of American Democracy." This ideal influenced not just

16284-493: The composer, but also a generation of artists and photographers, including Paul Strand , Edward Weston , Ansel Adams , Georgia O'Keeffe , and Walker Evans . Evans's photographs inspired portions of Copland's opera The Tender Land . In his quest to take up the slogan of the Stieglitz group, "Affirm America", Copland found only the music of Carl Ruggles and Charles Ives upon which to draw. Without what Copland called

16461-447: The concerts as intriguing and intellectually stimulating, being the first place he was exposed to French composers like Franck , Dukas , Fauré , and Debussy . Nevertheless, Stravinsky remained loyal to Rimsky-Korsakov – the musicologist Eric Walter White suspected that the composer believed compliance with Rimsky-Korsakov was necessary to succeed in the Russian music world. Stravinsky later wrote that his teachers' musical conservatism

16638-506: The death of Puccini ", according to Taruskin. Aaron Copland Aaron Copland ( / ˈ k oʊ p l ə n d / , KOHP -lənd ; November 14, 1900 – December 2, 1990) was an American composer, critic, writer, teacher, pianist and later a conductor of his own and other American music. Copland was referred to by his peers and critics as the "Dean of American Composers". The open, slowly changing harmonies in much of his music are typical of what many people consider to be

16815-529: The details of the ballet with Roerich, later finishing the work in Clarens , Switzerland. The result was The Rite of Spring ( Le sacre du printemps ), which depicted pagan rituals in Slavonic tribes and used many avant-garde techniques, including uneven rhythms and meters , superimposed harmonies, atonality , and extensive instrumentation . With radical choreography by the young Vaslav Nijinsky ,

16992-637: The development of modernist music. Stravinsky's revolutionary ideas influenced composers as diverse as Aaron Copland , Philip Glass , Béla Bartók , and Pierre Boulez , who were all challenged to innovate music in areas beyond tonality , especially rhythm and musical form . In 1998, Time magazine listed Stravinsky as one of the 100 most influential people of the century. Stravinsky died of pulmonary edema on 6 April 1971 in New York City, having left six memoirs written with his friend and assistant Robert Craft , as well as an earlier autobiography and

17169-413: 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. 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. Copland's work from

17346-653: The family name had been Kaplan, and his parents never told him this. Throughout his childhood, Copland and his family lived above his parents' Brooklyn shop, H. M. Copland's, at 628 Washington Avenue (which Aaron would later describe as "a kind of neighborhood Macy's "), on the corner of Dean Street and Washington Avenue, and most of the children helped out in the store. His father was a staunch Democrat. The family members were active in Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes , where Aaron celebrated his bar mitzvah . Not especially athletic,

17523-421: The feeling for inevitability, for the creating of an entire piece that could be thought of as a functioning entity". During his studies with Boulanger in Paris, Copland was excited to be so close to the new post-Impressionistic French music of Ravel , Roussel , and Satie , as well as Les Six , a group that included Milhaud , Poulenc , and Honegger . Webern , Berg , and Bartók also impressed him. Copland

17700-443: The first goal of American Gebrauchsmusik. These works included piano pieces ( The Young Pioneers ) and an opera ( The Second Hurricane ). During the Depression years, Copland traveled extensively to Europe, Africa, and Mexico. He formed an important friendship with Mexican composer Carlos Chávez and would return often to Mexico for working vacations conducting engagements. During his initial visit to Mexico, Copland began composing

17877-514: The first of his signature works, El Salón México , which he completed in 1936. In it and in The Second Hurricane Copland began "experimenting", as he phrased it, with a simpler, more accessible style. This and other incidental commissions fulfilled the second goal of American Gebrauchsmusik, creating music of wide appeal. Concurrent with The Second Hurricane , Copland composed (for radio broadcast) "Prairie Journal" on

18054-735: The following year. After finishing the many revisions of the Symphony in E-flat in 1907, Stravinsky wrote Faun and Shepherdess , a setting of three Pushkin poems for mezzo-soprano and orchestra. Rimsky-Korsakov organized the first public premiere of his student's work with the Imperial Court Orchestra in April 1907, programming the Symphony in E-flat and Faun and Shepherdess . Rimsky-Korsakov's death in June 1908 caused Stravinsky deep mourning, and he later recalled that Funeral Song , which he composed in memory of his teacher,

18231-455: The form of two books — What to Listen for in Music (1937, revised 1957) and Our New Music (1940, revised 1968 and retitled The New Music: 1900–1960 ). During this period, Copland also wrote regularly for The New York Times , The Musical Quarterly and a number of other journals. These articles would appear in 1969 as the book Copland on Music . During his time at The New School, Copland

18408-407: The group of Russian classical composers known as The Five , according to the musicologist Richard Taruskin ); Diaghilev's company settled on the subject of the mythical Firebird . Diaghilev asked multiple composers to write the ballet's score, including Lyadov and Nikolai Tcherepnin , but after none committed to the project, the impresario turned to the 27-year-old Stravinsky, who gladly accepted

18585-588: 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). Copland's compositions before leaving for Paris were mainly short works for piano and art songs , inspired by Liszt and Debussy. In them, he experimented with ambiguous beginnings and endings, rapid key changes, and the frequent use of tritones. His first published work, The Cat and

18762-520: The latter's death in 1908. Stravinsky met the impresario Sergei Diaghilev soon after, who commissioned the composer to write three ballets for the Ballets Russes 's Paris seasons: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and The Rite of Spring (1913), the last of which caused a near-riot at the premiere due to its avant-garde nature and later changed the way composers understood rhythmic structure. Stravinsky's compositional career

18939-537: The latter's family was staying – bringing a portfolio of pieces to demonstrate to Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. While the elder composer was not stunned, he was impressed enough to insist that Stravinsky continue lessons but advised against him entering the Saint Petersburg Conservatory due to its rigorous environment. Importantly, Rimsky-Korsakov agreed personally to advise Stravinsky on his compositions. After Stravinsky's father died in 1902 and

19116-512: The libretto for an operatic setting of Sophocles' tragedy Oedipus Rex in Latin. The May 1927 premiere of his opera-oratorio Oedipus rex was staged as a concert performance since there was too little time and money to present it as a full opera, and Stravinsky attributed the work's critical failure to its programming between two glittery ballets. Furthermore, the influence from Russian Orthodox vocal music and 18th-century composers like Handel

19293-500: The libretto in November 1947; American writer Chester Kallman was later brought in to assist Auden. Stravinsky finished the opera of the same name in 1951, and despite its widespread performances and success, the composer was dismayed to find that his newer music did not captivate young composers. Craft had introduced Stravinsky to the serial music of the Second Viennese School shortly after The Rake's Progress premiered, and

19470-487: The maestro had "little sympathy for the advanced musical idioms of the day" and his "approved" composers ended with Richard Strauss . Copland's graduation piece from his studies with Goldmark was a three-movement piano sonata in a Romantic style . But he had also composed more original and daring pieces which he did not share with his teacher. In addition to regularly attending the Metropolitan Opera and

19647-667: The middle movement of which used music from an unused score for The Song of Bernadette (1943). The couple's poor English led to the formation of a predominantly European social circle and home life: the estate staff consisted of mostly Russians, and frequent guests included musicians Joseph Szigeti , Arthur Rubinstein , and Sergei Rachmaninoff . However, Stravinsky eventually joined popular Hollywood circles, attending parties with celebrities and becoming closely acquainted with European authors Aldous Huxley , W. H. Auden , Christopher Isherwood , and Dylan Thomas . In 1945, Stravinsky received American citizenship and subsequently signed

19824-423: The more intimate setting of television and could also be used in the "college trade," with more schools mounting operas than they had before World War II. The resulting opera, The Tender Land , was written in two acts but later expanded to three. As Copland feared, when the opera premiered in 1954 critics found the libretto to be weak. In spite of its flaws, the opera became one of the few American operas to enter

20001-550: The museum's Centennial exhibitions. From the 1960s onward, Copland turned increasingly to conducting. Though not enamored with the prospect, he found himself without new ideas for composition, saying, "It was exactly as if someone had simply turned off a faucet." He became a frequent guest conductor in the United States and the United Kingdom and made a series of recordings of his music, primarily for Columbia Records . In 1960, RCA Victor released Copland's recordings with

20178-618: The music community. After a fruitful stay in Paris, Copland returned to America optimistic and enthusiastic about the future, determined to make his way as a full-time composer. He rented a studio apartment on New York City's Upper West Side in the Empire Hotel , close to Carnegie Hall and other musical venues and publishers. He remained in that area for the next 30 years, later moving to Westchester County, New York . Copland lived frugally and survived financially with help from two $ 2,500 Guggenheim Fellowships in 1925 and 1926 (each of

20355-471: The musicologist Jeremy Noble considered Stravinsky's neoclassical period to have begun in 1920 with his Symphonies of Wind Instruments , Bartók argued that the period "really starts with his Octet for Wind Instruments, followed by his Concerto for Piano ". During this period, Stravinsky used techniques and themes from the classical period of music . Greek mythology was a common theme in Stravinsky's neoclassical works. His first Greek mythology-based work

20532-409: The new music were the French intellectuals Marcel Proust , Paul Valéry , Jean-Paul Sartre , and André Gide ; the latter cited by Copland as being his personal favorite and most read. Travels to Italy, Austria, and Germany rounded out Copland's musical education. During his stay in Paris, Copland began writing musical critiques, the first on Gabriel Fauré , which helped spread his fame and stature in

20709-711: The opera The Rake's Progress . Taruskin described the opera as "the hub and essence of 'neo-classicism'". He pointed out how the opera contains numerous references to Greek mythology and other operas like Mozart's Don Giovanni and Bizet's Carmen , but still "embod[ies] the distinctive structure of a fairy tale". Stravinsky was inspired by the operas of Mozart in composing the music, particularly Così fan tutte , but other scholars also point out influence from Handel , Gluck , Beethoven , Schubert , Weber , Rossini , Donizetti , and Verdi . The Rake's Progress has become an important work in opera repertoire , being "[more performed] than any other opera written after

20886-494: The opera's composer began studying and listening to the music of Anton Webern and Arnold Schoenberg . During the 1950s, Stravinsky continued touring extensively across the world, occasionally returning to Los Angeles to compose. In 1953, he agreed to compose a new opera with a libretto by Dylan Thomas, but development on the project came to a sudden end following Thomas's death in November of that year. Stravinsky completed In Memoriam Dylan Thomas , his first work fully based on

21063-439: The premiere and subsequent performances, he met many figures in the Paris art scene; Debussy was brought on stage after the premiere and invited Stravinsky to dinner, beginning a lifelong friendship between the two composers. The Stravinsky family moved to Lausanne , Switzerland, for the birth of their third child, Soulima , and it was there that Stravinsky began work on a Konzertstück for piano and orchestra depicting

21240-580: The premiere, beginning decades of collaborations between Stravinsky and the choreographer. Nevertheless, some critics found it to be a turning point in Stravinsky's neoclassical music, describing it as a pure work that blended neoclassical ideas with modern methods of composition. A new commission for a ballet from Ida Rubinstein in 1928 led Stravinsky again to Tchaikovsky. Basing the music on romantic ballets like Swan Lake and borrowing many themes from Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky wrote The Fairy's Kiss with Hans Christian Andersen's tale The Ice-Maiden as

21417-577: The revision of the Symphonies of Wind Instruments for an upcoming concert. The two quickly became friends and Stravinsky invited Craft to Los Angeles; the young conductor soon became Stravinsky's assistant, collaborator, and amanuensis until the composer's death. As Stravinsky became more familiar with English, he developed the idea to write an English-language opera based on a series of paintings by 18th-century artist William Hogarth titled The Rake's Progress . The composer joined Auden to write

21594-474: The role of the artist in society". He decried the lack of artistic freedom in the Soviet Union, and in his 1954 Norton lecture he asserted that loss of freedom under Soviet Communism deprived artists of "the immemorial right of the artist to be wrong." He began to vote Democratic, first for Stevenson and then for Kennedy. Potentially more damaging for Copland was a sea-change in artistic tastes, away from

21771-420: The sensitive young man became an avid reader and often read Horatio Alger stories on his front steps. Copland's father had no musical interest. His mother, Sarah Mittenthal Copland, sang, played the piano, and arranged for music lessons for her children. Copland had four older siblings: two older brothers, Ralph and Leon, and two older sisters, Laurine and Josephine. Of his siblings, his oldest brother Ralph

21948-673: The serial twelve-tone technique , the following year. The 1956 cantata Canticum Sacrum premiered at the International Festival of Contemporary Music in Venice, inspiring Norddeutscher Rundfunk to commission the musical setting Threni in 1957. With the Balanchine ballet Agon , Stravinsky fused neoclassical themes with the twelve-tone technique, and Threni showed his full shift towards use of tone rows . In 1959, Craft interviewed Stravinsky for an article titled Answers to 35 Questions , in which

22125-408: The situation dictated, as it did with his film scores, Copland could work quickly. Otherwise, he tended to write slowly whenever possible. Even with this deliberation, Copland considered composition, in his words, "the product of the emotions", which included "self-expression" and "self-discovery". While Copland's earliest musical inclinations as a teenager ran toward Chopin , Debussy , Verdi and

22302-589: The sonata, the student began his large-scale Symphony in E-flat , the first draft of which he finished in 1905. That year, the dedicatee of the Piano Sonata, Nikolay Richter, performed it at a recital hosted by the Rimsky-Korsakovs, marking the first public premiere of a Stravinsky piece. After the events of Bloody Sunday in January 1905 caused the university to close, Stravinsky was not able to take his final exams, resulting in his graduation with

22479-959: The sound of American music, evoking the vast American landscape and pioneer spirit. He is best known for the works he wrote in the 1930s and 1940s in a deliberately accessible style often referred to as "populist" and which the composer labeled his "vernacular" style. Works in this vein include the ballets Appalachian Spring , Billy the Kid and Rodeo , his Fanfare for the Common Man and Third Symphony . In addition to his ballets and orchestral works, he produced music in many other genres, including chamber music, vocal works, opera and film scores. After some initial studies with composer Rubin Goldmark , Copland traveled to Paris, where he first studied with Isidor Philipp and Paul Vidal , then with noted pedagogue Nadia Boulanger . He studied three years with Boulanger, whose eclectic approach to music inspired his own broad taste. Determined upon his return to

22656-553: The standard classical fare. Copland's first public music performance was at a Wanamaker's recital. By the age of 15, after attending a concert by Polish composer-pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski , Copland decided to become a composer. At age 16, Copland heard his first symphony at the Brooklyn Academy of Music . After attempts to further his music study from a correspondence course , Copland took formal lessons in harmony , theory , and composition from Rubin Goldmark ,

22833-640: The standard repertory. In 1957, 1958, and 1976, Copland was the music director of the Ojai Music Festival , a classical and contemporary music festival in Ojai, California . For the occasion of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Centennial , Copland composed Ceremonial Fanfare for Brass Ensemble to accompany the exhibition "Masterpieces of Fifty Centuries." Leonard Bernstein , Piston, William Schuman , and Thomson also composed pieces for

23010-403: The subject. The November 1928 premiere was not well-received, likely due to the disconnect between each of the ballet's sections and the mediocre choreography, of which Stravinsky disapproved. Diaghilev's fury with Stravinsky for accepting a ballet commission from someone else caused an intense feud between the two, one that lasted until the impresario's death in August 1929. Most of that year

23187-406: The success of The Firebird and The Rite of Spring in the 1910s, Stravinsky's music was respected and frequently performed in the Soviet Union, influencing young Soviet composers at the time like Dmitri Shostakovich . However, after Stalin began consolidating power in the early 1930s, Stravinsky's music nearly vanished and was formally banned in 1948. A new interest in his works was born during

23364-449: The suggestion of a fellow student to Nadia Boulanger , then aged 34. He had initial reservations: "No one to my knowledge had ever before thought of studying with a woman." She interviewed him, and recalled later: "One could tell his talent immediately." Boulanger had as many as 40 students at once and employed a formal regimen that Copland had to follow. Copland found her incisive mind much to his liking and found her ability to critique

23541-413: The summer went to various camps. Most of his early exposure to music was at Jewish weddings and ceremonies, and occasional family musicales. Copland began writing songs at the age of eight and a half. His earliest notated music, about seven bars he wrote when age 11, was for an opera scenario he created and called Zenatello . From 1913 to 1917 he took piano lessons with Leopold Wolfsohn, who taught him

23718-469: The tale of a puppet coming to life. After Diaghilev heard the early drafts, he convinced Stravinsky to turn it into a ballet for the 1911 season. The resulting work, Petrushka (under the French spelling Petrouchka ), premiered in Paris on 13 June 1911 to equal popularity as The Firebird , and Stravinsky became established as one of the most advanced young theater composers of his time. While composing The Firebird , Stravinsky conceived an idea for

23895-401: The tango, waltz, ragtime , and chorale . His neoclassical period exhibited themes and techniques from the classical period , like the use of the sonata form in his Octet (1923) and use of Greek mythological themes in works including Apollon musagète (1927), Oedipus rex (1927), and Persephone (1935). In his serial period, Stravinsky turned towards compositional techniques from

24072-457: The task. During the ballet's production, Stravinsky became close with Diaghilev's artistic circle, who were impressed by his enthusiasm to learn more about non-musical art forms. The Firebird premiered in Paris (as L'Oiseau de feu ) on 25 June 1910 to widespread critical acclaim, and made Stravinsky an overnight sensation. Many critics praised the composer's alignment with Russian nationalist music. Stravinsky later recollected that after

24249-539: The title Poétique musicale ( Poetics of Music ) in 1941, with an English translation following in 1947. Between lectures, Stravinsky finished the Symphony in C and toured across the country, meeting de Bosset upon her arrival in New York. Stravinsky and de Bosset finally married on 9 March 1940 in Bedford, Massachusetts . After the completion of his lecture series, the couple moved to Los Angeles, where they applied for American naturalization . Money became scarce as

24426-440: The tumultuous Rite of Spring were not met, though fellow composers were impressed by the music's emotion and free treatment of counterpoint and themes . In early July 1914, while his family resided in Switzerland near his sick wife, the composer traveled to Russia to retrieve texts for his next work, a ballet-cantata depicting Russian wedding traditions titled Les noces . Soon after he returned, World War I began, and

24603-421: The two equivalent to $ 43,435 in 2023). Lecture-recitals, awards, appointments, and small commissions, plus some teaching, writing, and personal loans, kept him afloat in the subsequent years through World War II. Also important, especially during the Depression, were wealthy patrons who underwrote performances, helped pay for publication of works and promoted musical events and composers. Among those mentors

24780-523: The voices were placed in the orchestra, as they were meant to accompany the action on stage. L'Histoire du soldat was composed in 1918 with the Swiss novelist Charles F. Ramuz as a small musical theatre production for dancers, a narrator, and a septet . It mixed the Russian folktales in the narrative with common musical structures of the time, like the tango , waltz , rag , and chorale . Even as his style changed in later years, Stravinsky maintained

24957-508: The war ended, Stravinsky decided that his residence in Switzerland was too far from Europe's musical activity, and briefly moved his family to Carantec , France. In September 1920, they relocated to the home of Coco Chanel , an associate of Diaghilev's, where Stravinsky composed his early neoclassical work the Symphonies of Wind Instruments . After his relationship with Chanel developed into an affair, Stravinsky relocated his family to

25134-567: The war stopped the composer from receiving European royalties, making him take up numerous conducting engagements and compose commercial works for the entertainment industry, including the Scherzo à la russe for Paul Whiteman and the Scènes de ballet for a Broadway revue. Some discarded film music made it into larger works, as with the war-inspired Symphony in Three Movements ,

25311-402: The war. To keep his family afloat, the composer sold numerous manuscripts and accepted commissions from wealthy impresarios; one such commission included Renard , a theater work completed in 1916 upon a request from Princesse Edmond de Polignac . Additionally, Stravinsky made a new concert suite from The Firebird and sold it to a London publisher in an attempt to regain copyright control over

25488-460: The works of Arnold Schoenberg, and found himself interested in adapting serial methods to his own musical voice. In 1950, Copland received a U.S.-Italy Fulbright Commission scholarship to study in Rome, which he did the following year. Around this time, he also composed his Piano Quartet, adopting Schoenberg's twelve-tone method of composition, and Old American Songs (1950), the first set of which

25665-430: The works of French composer Pierre Boulez , he incorporated serial techniques into his Piano Quartet (1950), Piano Fantasy (1957), Connotations for orchestra (1961) and Inscape for orchestra (1967). Unlike Schoenberg, Copland used his tone rows in much the same fashion as his tonal material—as sources for melodies and harmonies, rather than as complete statements in their own right, except for crucial events from

25842-475: The young composer became more independent, he became increasingly involved in Rimsky-Korsakov's circle of artists. His first major task from his new teacher was the four-movement Piano Sonata in F-sharp minor in the style of Glazunov and Tchaikovsky – he paused temporarily to write a cantata for Rimsky-Korsakov's 60th birthday celebration, which the elder composer described as "not bad". Soon after finishing

26019-481: Was Serge Koussevitzky , the music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and known as a champion of "new music". Koussevitsky would prove to be very influential in Copland's life, and was perhaps the second most important figure in Copland's career after Boulanger. Beginning with the Symphony for Organ and Orchestra (1924), Koussevitzky would perform more of Copland's music than that of any

26196-571: 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 ... when I heard jazz played in Vienna, it was like hearing it for the first time." He also found that

26373-772: 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. 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. Copland named Igor Stravinsky as his "hero" and his favorite 20th-century composer. Copland especially admired Stravinsky's "jagged and uncouth rhythmic effects", "bold use of dissonance", and "hard, dry, crackling sonority". Another inspiration for much of Copland's music

26550-492: Was "standing in the fork in the high road, the two branches of which lead respectively to popular and artistic success". Even some of the composer's friends, such as composer Arthur Berger , were confused about Copland's simpler style. One, composer David Diamond , went so far as to lecture Copland: "By having sold out to the mongrel commercialists half-way already, the danger is going to be wider for you, and I beg you dear Aaron, don't sell out [entirely] yet." Copland's response

26727-545: Was "the best of my works before The Firebird ". In 1898, the impresario Sergei Diaghilev founded the Russian art magazine Mir iskusstva , but after it ended publication in 1904, he turned towards Paris for artistic opportunities rather than his native Russia. In 1907, Diaghilev presented a five-concert series of Russian music at the Paris Opera ; the following year, he staged the Paris premiere of Rimsky-Korsakov's version of Boris Godunov . Diaghilev attended

26904-562: Was a Russian composer and conductor with French citizenship (from 1934) and American citizenship (from 1945). He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century and a pivotal figure in modernist music . Born to a musical family in Saint Petersburg , Russia, Stravinsky grew up taking piano and music theory lessons. While studying law at the University of Saint Petersburg , he met Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and studied music under him until

27081-597: Was a deeply lonely child and I wanted a sister of my own. Catherine, who was my first cousin, came into my life as a kind of long-wanted sister   ... We were from then until her death extremely close, and closer than lovers sometimes are, for mere lovers may be strangers though they live and love together all their lives   ... Catherine was my dearest friend and playmate ... until we grew into our marriage. The two had grown close during family trips, encouraging each other's interest in painting and drawing, swimming together often, going on wild raspberry picks, helping build

27258-661: Was a famous bass at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, descended from a line of Polish landowners. The name "Stravinsky" is of Polish origin, deriving from the Strava river in eastern Poland. The family was originally called "Soulima-Stravinsky", bearing the Soulima arms, but "Soulima" was dropped after Russia's annexation during the partitions of Poland . Oranienbaum, the composer's birthplace,

27435-462: Was active as a presenter and curator, using The New School as a key location to present a wide range of composers and artists from the United States as well as across the globe. Copland's compositions in the early 1920s reflected the modernist attitude that prevailed among intellectuals, that the arts need be accessible to only a cadre of the enlightened, and that the masses would come to appreciate their efforts over time. However, mounting troubles with

27612-401: Was aware of the potential pitfalls of that genre, which included weak libretti and demanding production values, he had also been thinking about writing an opera since the 1940s. Among the subjects he had considered were Theodore Dreiser 's An American Tragedy and Frank Norris 's McTeague He finally settled on James Agee 's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men , which seemed appropriate for

27789-455: Was based on a folktale collected by Alexander Afanasyev . Many of Stravinsky's Russian period works featured animal characters and themes, likely due to inspiration from nursery rhymes he read with his children. Stravinsky also used unique theatrical styles. Les noces blended the staging of ballets with the small instrumentation of early cantatas, a unique production described on the score as "Russian Choreographic Scenes". In Renard ,

27966-469: Was close with Zionism during the Popular Front movement, when it was endorsed by the left. Pollack writes: Like many contemporaries, Copland regarded Judaism alternately in terms of religion, culture, and race; but he showed relatively little involvement in any aspect of his Jewish heritage. At the same time, he had ties to Christianity, identifying with such profoundly Christian writers as Gerard Manley Hopkins and often spending Christmas Day at home with

28143-604: Was divided between spending time with his family in Nice, performing in Paris, and touring other locations, often accompanied by de Bosset. At this time, Stravinsky was going through a spiritual crisis onset by meeting Father Nicolas, a priest near his new home. He had abandoned the Russian Orthodox Church during his teenage years, but after meeting Father Nicolas in 1926 and reconnecting with his faith, he began regularly attending services. From then until moving to

28320-714: Was educated by the family's governess until age eleven, when he began attending the Second Saint Petersburg Gymnasium , a school he recalled hating because he had few friends. From age nine, Stravinsky studied privately with a piano teacher. He later wrote that his parents saw no musical talent in him due to his lack of technical skills; the young pianist frequently improvised instead of practicing assigned pieces. Stravinsky's excellent sight-reading skill prompted him to frequently read vocal scores from his father's vast personal library. At around age ten, he began regularly attending performances at

28497-450: Was especially prevalent in Stravinsky's Russian period music; while the pulse may have remained constant, the time signature would often change to constantly shift the accents. While Stravinsky did not use as many folk melodies as he had in his first three ballets, he often used folk poetry. The ballet-cantata Les noces was based on texts from a collection of Russian folk poetry by Pyotr Kireevsky , and his opera-ballet Renard

28674-519: Was followed by the Symphonic Ode (1929) and the 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

28851-469: Was for those "who enjoy teetering on the edge of chaos." As he summarized, "I've spent most of my life trying to get the right note in the right place. Just throwing it open to chance seems to go against my natural instincts." In 1952, Copland received a commission from the League of Composers , funded by a grant from Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein , to write an opera for television. While Copland

29028-426: Was justified, and helped him build the foundation that would become the base of his style. In August 1905, Stravinsky announced his engagement to Yekaterina Nosenko , his first cousin whom he had met in 1890 during a family trip. He later recalled: From our first hour together we both seemed to realize that we would one day marry—or so we told each other later. Perhaps we were always more like brother and sister. I

29205-447: Was not well received in the press after the May 1927 premiere; neoclassicism was not popular with Parisian critics, and Stravinsky had to publicly assert that his music was not part of the movement. This reception from critics was not improved by Stravinsky's next ballet, Apollon musagète , which depicted the birth and apotheosis of Apollo using an 18th-century ballet de cour musical style. George Balanchine choreographed

29382-591: Was one of both support and rivalry, and he played a key role in keeping them together until after World War II. He also was generous with his time, with nearly every American young composer he met during his life, later earning the title "Dean of American Music." With the knowledge he had gained from his studies in Paris, Copland came into demand as a lecturer and writer on contemporary European classical music. From 1927 to 1930 and from 1935 to 1938, he taught classes at The New School for Social Research in New York City. Eventually, his New School lectures would appear in

29559-618: Was premiered by Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten , the second by William Warfield . During the 1951–52 academic year, Copland gave a series of lectures under the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard University . These lectures were published as the book Music and Imagination . Because of his leftist views, which had included his support of the Communist Party USA ticket during

29736-436: Was presented by Diaghilev's ballet company, the Ballets Russes , in April 1909, and while the company scored successes with Parisian audiences, Stravinsky was working on Act I of his first opera The Nightingale . As the Ballets Russes faced financial issues, Diaghilev wanted a new ballet with distinctly Russian music and design, something that had recently become popular with French and other Western audiences (likely due to

29913-462: Was president of the organization from 1939 to 1945. In 1939, Copland completed his first two Hollywood film scores, for Of Mice and Men and Our Town , and composed the radio score "John Henry", based on the folk ballad . While these works and others like them that would follow were accepted by the listening public at large, detractors accused Copland of pandering to the masses. Music critic Paul Rosenfeld , for one, warned in 1939 that Copland

30090-484: Was spent composing a new solo piano work, the Capriccio , and touring across Europe to conduct and perform piano; the Capriccio's success after the December 1929 premiere caused a flurry of performance requests from many orchestras. A commission from the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1930 for a symphonic work led Stravinsky back to Latin texts, this time from the book of Psalms . Between touring concerts, he composed

30267-468: Was swayed too much by Glazunov 's style, and disliked the modernist influence on Faun and Shepherdess (1907); however, critics found the works to not stand out from his teacher's music. Russian composers often used large orchestration to feature many different timbres , and Stravinsky harnessed this idea in his first three ballets, often surprising the musicians and performers due to the orchestra's great force at certain moments. The Firebird used

30444-647: Was that his writing as he did and in as many genres was his response to how the Depression had affected society, as well as to new media and the audiences made available by these new media. As he himself phrased it, "The composer who is frightened of losing his artistic integrity through contact with a mass audience is no longer aware of the meaning of the word art." The 1940s were arguably Copland's most productive years, and some of his works from this period would cement his worldwide fame. His ballet scores for Rodeo (1942) and Appalachian Spring (1944) were huge successes. His pieces Lincoln Portrait and Fanfare for

30621-643: Was the ballet Apollon musagète (1927), choosing the leader of the Muses and the god of art Apollo as the subjects. Stravinsky would use themes from Greek mythology in future works like Oedipus rex (1927), Persephone (1935), and Orpheus (1947). Richard Taruskin wrote that Oedipus rex was "the product of Stravinsky's neo-classical manner at its most extreme," and that musical techniques "thought outdated" were juxtaposed against contemporary ideas. In addition, Stravinsky turned towards older musical structures and modernized them. His Octet (1923) uses

30798-538: Was the four-movement Piano Sonata in F-sharp minor , which was also his first work to be performed in public. Rimsky-Korsakov often gave Stravinsky the task of orchestrating various works to allow him to analyze the works' form and structure. Many of Stravinsky's early works showed influence from French composers as well, notably in the minimal use of large doublings and different combinations of tone colors. A number of Stravinsky's student compositions were performed at Rimsky-Korsakov's gatherings at his home; these include

30975-487: Was the most advanced musically; he was proficient on the violin. His sister Laurine had the strongest connection with Aaron; she gave him his first piano lessons, promoted his musical education, and supported him in his musical career. A student at the Metropolitan Opera School and a frequent opera-goer, Laurine also brought home libretti for Aaron to study. Copland attended Boys High School and in

31152-819: Was where his family vacationed during summers; their primary residence was an apartment along the Kryukov Canal in central Saint Petersburg, near the Mariinsky Theatre. Stravinsky was baptized hours after birth and joined to the Russian Orthodox Church in St. Nicholas Cathedral . Constantly in fear of his short-tempered father and indifferent towards his mother, Igor lived there for the first 27 years of his life with three siblings: Roman and Yury, his older siblings who irritated him immensely, and Gury, his close younger brother with whom he said he found "the love and understanding denied us by our parents". Igor

31329-569: Was wonderful for me to find a teacher with such openness of mind, while at the same time she held firm ideas of right and wrong in musical matters. The confidence she had in my talents and her belief in me were at the very least flattering and more – they were crucial to my development at this time of my career." Though he had planned on only one year abroad, he studied with her for three years, finding that her eclectic approach inspired his own broad musical taste. Along with his studies with Boulanger, Copland took classes in French language and history at

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