Imagine, if you will, a successful local businessperson, the head of the chamber of commerce, perhaps; the highest profile real-estate agent in town; the owner of an expanding group of car dealerships; or maybe the chief operations officer of the department of public works for a small municipality. Now imagine that person's youngest child, barely sixteen, announces their desire to become a composer of symphonic music. This was somewhat the situation of the couple who owned and managed a large and thriving Brooklyn department store in 1915, when Harris and Sarah Copland's son Aaron announced his lofty goal.
Now fast forward a few decades. Imagine that this unusual teenager with impractical aspirations has actually achieved them. That when he turns 50, major American magazines with national circulation—Time, Musical America, The Saturday Review of Literature—feature prominent articles about his remarkable success in a field long dominated by Europeans.
Copland at 50
By the time Aaron Copland turned 50 on November 14, 1950, celebrations of his life and musical achievements abounded. At least four popular magazines ran articles about this 50-year-old American classical composer—a situation hard to imagine today. His colleague, the composer Arthur Berger, at work on a book-length study of Copland’s music, wrote a tribute for the Saturday Review and composer Marion Bauer’s tribute appeared in the Musical Leader in December. Additional articles appeared in Time magazine and Musical America. Some of the headlines featured earthy metaphors: Time dubbed him the “Trail Blazer from Brooklyn” and the Saturday Review called him “The Home-Grown Copland.”
Describing the concert’s honoree in the January 1951 issue of Musical Quarterly, Richard F. Goldman effused, “The external mannerisms have long since been copied; the sounds and patterns have been imitated. But the essential Copland remains inimitable and distinguished.” He went on, “What emerged clearly from the concert was the presence in all the works, covering a period of more than twenty years, of an articulate, complete, and original musical personality. But here one would like to record the indebtedness of American music not only to the composer, but also to the teacher, guide, and active spirit in helpful enterprises. It is surely already possible to say that no American composer has made, or is likely to make, a deeper mark on his own time.”
A special all-Copland concert took place November 5 at the Museum of Modern Art. Supported perhaps by press releases from the League of Composers and Copland’s publisher Boosey & Hawkes, publicity for the November 5 event started four weeks in advance with an announcement in the New York Times, which, like the Herald Tribune, also reviewed it November 6. At the event, Russian-born composer and critic Nicolas Nabokov read congratulatory telegrams from luminaries who could not attend: famed Boston Symphony conductor Serge Koussevitzky, fellow composer Otto Luening, and conductor André Kostelanetz and his wife the singer Lily Pons. The Herald Tribune’s review by Francis Perkins called Copland “one of the most significant and influential figures among contemporary American creative musicians.” The MoMA program consisted of In the Beginning, the Piano Quartet (first New York performance), and selections from Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson.
In program notes distributed at the concert, Arthur Berger emphasized Copland’s modernist beginnings and his recent retreat from overtly folk-song-inspired works: “Aaron Copland’s style, in the course of thirty years, has undergone a series of striking transformations, determined partly by a rare critical faculty and partly by an unusual sense of responsibility to musical audiences.” Berger used the term “’workaday’ music” (related to the German term Gebrauchsmusik) to describe Copland's populist works of the 30s and 40s: “The commission for the ballet, ‘Hear Ye! Hear Ye!’ turned Copland’s attention in 1934 towards the theatre and music for use. This period, characterized by an intense interest in folk song, seems to have endured the longest for Copland and to have provided an important solution for his creative aims.” With the Third Symphony, however, Berger continued, the “balance seemed to be shifting back in the direction of more abstract works in which the gains from his contact with folk music are now consolidated in new and larger forms.”
Other performances of his music abounded as well. By mid-September, Appalachian Spring was planned for five performances in cities from Dallas to Denver. The Clarinet Concerto’s premiere happened via radio a week before Copland’s birthday, followed soon by concert premieres in New York, Europe, and in California. The Chicago Symphony announced four performances of the Third Symphony. Other American ensembles planned performances of Lincoln Portrait, Quiet City and Billy The Kid. Three New York City radio stations planned fiftieth-birthday radio programs. Eleazar de Carvalho, conductor of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, programmed Appalachian Spring ten times at the end of 1950 in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem.
Copland at 60
Cities across the U.S. celebrated Copland’s 60th birthday year with numerous honors and musical celebrations. According to a Boosey & Hawkes press release, fifteen different works received forty-eight performances, making Copland the contemporary American composer most performed by major U.S. orchestras during the 1959-1960 season. In the calendar year 1960, there were well over one hundred performances of Copland’s orchestral works in venues ranging from liberal arts colleges to small cities (Wakesha, Wisconsin; Pontiac, Michigan), medium-sized cities (Kalamazoo, Toledo), on up to the Cleveland Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. All-Copland solo and chamber music concerts were announced at the Juilliard School, Town Hall, and other venues. Vinyl and the airwaves transmitted Copland’s music far beyond the confines of the concert hall: Skitch Henderson’s “Monitor” program for NBC broadcast excerpts from The Second Hurricane. In an adventurous, two-hour, prime-time program aired on Copland’s birthday, Martin Bookspan interviewed Copland for WQXR and hosted broadcasts of the Prologue from Music for the Theatre, the Orchestral Variations, an excerpt from The Second Hurricane, Statements, and the Suite from The Red Pony. WNYC that day featured Copland standards (Fanfare for the Common Man, Appalachian Spring, Third Symphony, and the Clarinet Concerto) in a one-hour program aired twice on November 14. Doubleday Press released Copland’s newest collection of writings, Copland on Music, that same day.
Like critics ten years earlier, American writers in 1960 noted Copland's pathbreaking career, his willingness to write for general audiences, his support of colleagues and younger composers, and his distinctly American identity.
William Schuman was a fellow composer and friend of Copland who was by 1960 the president of the Juilliard School of Music. As Goldman and Berger had in 1950, his birthday tribute emphasized Copland's importance to the United States. He praised Copland as "a national asset... not only because he is a great composer of our time, but because of the remarkable leadership he has given music in this country. In sum, he represents an ideal for artists functioning in a democratic society." Though Copland's first works premiered just thirty-five years prior, his music was "already, at its tender age, a part of our heritage," Schuman said.
Schuman acknowledged that current aesthetic trends favored international modernism, gently implying that nationalistic Americana was falling out of fashion among composers. But he urged listeners to recognize Copland's impact. "Aaron Copland is an American composer. We should not be afraid in our age of growing internationalism to be accused of chauvinism when we take special satisfaction in the achievements of a fellow-countryman....[Copland's] works have their roots here—in the sights and sounds of our land and in the writings of American authors." He continued, "it is a verity that the composer of major stature writes music for the large arena and that his local origin is of small significance"—but "it is, nonetheless, a joy to know that here is an authentic American voice." Beyond his country's shores, "The Copland sound has enriched the art of music."
Critic Louis Biancolli in the World-Telegram portrayed Copland as an intrepid explorer who defined a tradition. "Most of [Copland’s 60] years have been fruitfully spent composing, teaching, performing, writing and generally helping American music to come of age in a period of tremendous change and turmoil. His influence has been widespread and beneficial."
Copland at 70 & 75
Boosey & Hawkes President Stuart Pope made sure Copland birthday celebrations happened every five years after about 1960. As Pope tells it, a Copland birthday was indeed a wonderful excuse for a party, but the events expressed to Mr. Copland the company's great appreciation for the substantial value his music brought to the publisher. In 1988, while co-writing Copland's autobiography, Vivian Perlis interviewed Pope, who recalled with particular enthusiasm Copland's 70th birthday party at the Essex House in New York City ("the biggest one I did...We got on television, had CBS there.") He and Perlis named a few of the guests, and then Perlis asked, "Didn't Aaron and Lenny [Bernstein] play Danzón Cubano?" "Yes, they did." Pope confirmed. "Lenny was already full of scotch by that time; it was a disaster, but Aaron laughed his way through it," adding a hearty laugh of his own. (The complete interview can be streamed via the Yale University Libraries' OHAM collection online.)
In Copland's 75th birthday year, among the concerts, parties, published tributes, and symposia appeared two significant exemplars of a growing medium: documentary films. Two major state-supported film documentaries were made about Copland that year. One was for the USIA, or United States Information Agency, which was a propaganda agency of the US government before being integrated into the State Department in 1999. The other was produced by the U.K.’s BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation.
The USIA made and distributed to US embassies a 30-minute "Copland Portrait" film that portrayed Copland as an American success story paralleling the rags-to-riches story of Abraham Lincoln. The BBC film was Happy Birthday Aaron Copland. Produced by Rodney Greenberg and directed by Humphrey Burton, the BBC broadcast it on November 16, 1975, two days after Copland's birthday.
Both films illustrate Copland's usefulness in portraying positive images of U.S. culture. Music historian Emily Abrams Ansari wrote, "Both films consistently focused on two central themes: Copland’s decision to write music 'that expressed the American scene and temperament' and his personal realization of the American Dream." The films also illustrate that by Copland's 75th birthday, celebratory media included more than the magazines, print, and live concerts honoring his 50th, 60th, and 70th birthday.
Copland at 80
Copland's 80th birthday was marked by a major celebration at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, where Copland had been honored just the previous year at the Kennedy Center Honors ceremony. Both events were edited and broadcast on public television.
"Washington 1980 was the last big event in which Copland took an active role," Perlis wrote; his health did not permit his participation in subsequent birthday celebrations. In November 1980, Copland sat in the presidential box with Jimmy and Roslyn Carter, just days after Carter lost the election to Reagan. The all-Copland program included Quiet City, the Piano Concerto, and Lincoln Portrait with Copland as narrator and Bernstein conducting. Perlis further wrote, "Following the concert, Copland's dressing room was filled with people, telegrams, red roses, and colorful balloons... [followed by] a lavish dinner dance hosted by the orchestra." (Complete Copland 334).
Among the other 80th birthday concerts was Carnegie Hall’s on November 9, when Copland and Bernstein both conducted the American Symphony Orchestra in performances of the Short Symphony, Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson, Fanfare for the Common Man, and choral music from Old American Songs and The Tender Land performed by the Oratorio Society of New York, conducted by Lyndon Woodside. Copland also narrated Lincoln Portrait with Bernstein on the podium on this program.
Bernstein alone conducted many Copland celebrations that year, with many other orchestras, ensembles, and soloists following suit. Newspapers, magazines, and specialized publications in the U.S. continued to celebrate Copland as a national treasure.
Copland lived less than a month past his 90th birthday, which was spent quietly at home.
Copland Centenary
As the Copland Centenary approached, Boosey & Hawkes organized a big publicity campaign titled Copland 2000, featuring a Copland caricature drawn for the occasion by Al Hirschfeld. The generous publicity packet included topical essays by Carol J. Oja, and Annotations, a complete set of program notes by Vivian Perlis.
The New York Philharmonic presented a "Completely Copland" festival from November 20-December 12, 1999. It included seven all-Copland orchestra concerts plus a dozen "prelude" concerts of chamber music, open rehearsals, and other pre-concert events, an exhibit, and a program book with essays by renowned scholars and performers including Barbara Haws, Michael Steinberg, Vivian Perlis, Marin Alsop, Stanley Drucker, Andre Previn, William Warfield, Marilyn Horne, David Diamond, Debora Borda (then the New York Philharmonic's executive director), and others.
I myself was charged with planning a substantial celebration, assisted by the staff of the then-under-construction Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland in College Park. The month-long festival-conference “Aaron Copland and American Identity” ran from September 22 to October 22, 2000. It included twelve concerts by visiting artists, faculty artists, and students; movie screenings; nine pre-concert lectures, two mini-conferences featuring Howard Pollack, Vivian Perlis, and other Copland scholars, an exhibit on New Deal-Era Art, and a joint meeting with the American Musicological Society's Capital Chapter.
Meanwhile the Library of Congress held a “Copland Centennial Celebration” from November 14-18, 2000. It consisted of two concerts (one broadcast live on National Public Radio), exhibits of materials from the Aaron Copland Collection, a symposium of seven scholarly papers titled “Copland at the Millennium,” and the world premieres of four specially commissioned fanfares by American composers: Tania Léon, Lukas Foss, David Diamond, and Roberto Sierra.
In addition to the Library of Congress concerts, NPR broadcast a series of programs devoted to Copland and published a companion website with an essay by NPR's Executive Producer for Cultural Programming Andy Trudeau ("An Artistic Biography"). I contributed program notes for each broadcast and a biographical essay. Harvard University's undergraduate radio station, WHRB ran a marathon radio show that presented the complete recorded output of Copland in May 2000.
The Washington Post and The New York Times critics published tributes. Magazines ranging from The New Yorker to Billboard magazine ran feature articles. Copland House, the artists' retreat in Peekskill, held concerts and celebrations organized by its director, pianist Michael Boriskin. Carnegie Hall hosted a forum on the Copland-Sessions concerts. A list of all the Copland performances between the fall of 1999 and the spring of 2001 would fill its own separate article! Howard Pollack's 1999 Copland biography, the first to emerge since the composer's death in December 1990, was a significant addition to the literature about Copland.
Copland 125
This season marks the 125th anniversary of Copland's birth and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, a fitting coincidence that has added to the continuation of milestone celebrations of the Dean of American Composers. Like other aspects of contemporary culture, this celebration is decentralized, busy, and online. Social media posts, blog articles, and YouTube or Spotify playlists float—or dart—through cyberspace, appearing in front of people's eyes and ears according to statistical algorithms. Live and livestreamed performances of Copland's music abound this season, though major retrospectives seem to be in short supply; only three all-Copland events have occurred by my count: a Copland concert in Bristol England, a festival at the Bloomingdale School of Music, a community music school in New York City, and WHRB's fourth "Copland Orgy" from the undergraduate radio station at Harvard. Sarasota Orchestra will have a dedicated Copland concert in January.
The Philadelphia Orchestra will offer a concert called “Copland’s American Inspiration” in the spring, and a plethora of individual performances are taking place in concert halls, schools, and other settings: Tucson, Naples (FL), Kansas City, Los Angeles, Des Moines, Tuscaloosa, Victoria British Columbia, Baltimore, and Pasadena. For those looking to hear Copland’s music this anniversary season, find a performance (or live stream!) near you in the aaroncopland.com events calendar, and enjoy the chance to hear how fresh his stylistically varied output sounds from a vantage point 100 years after his first works were premiered.
Sources & Further Reading
- Abrams Ansari, Emily. “Aaron Copland and the Politics of Cultural Diplomacy” Journal of the Society for American Music (2011) Volume 5, Number 3, pp. 335–364. doi:10.1017/S1752196311000162
- Berger, Arthur. “The Home-Grown Copland,” Saturday Review of Literature, 25 November 1950, 72-76.
- Biancolli, Louis. “Copland Leads 60th Birthday Program,” World-Telegram, 12 November 1960.
- Copland, Aaron and Vivian Perlis. The Complete Copland. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2013.
- Goldman, Richard F. “Current Chronicle,” Musical Quarterly, January 1951.
- Lindegaard, Kevin. “The Copland 125 Anniversary Concert – ‘A Triumph!’” aaron-copland.com, 19 November 2025, https://aaron-copland.com/the-copland-125-anniversary-concert-a-triumph/
- Lindegaard, Kevin. “Tune in for WHRB’s Radio Copland ‘Orgy’ 2-6 December!” aaron-copland.com, 1 December 2025, https://aaron-copland.com/tune-in-for-whrbs-radio-copland-orgy-2-5-december/
- “Music: Trail Blazer from Brooklyn,” Time, 20 November 1950, 50-52.
- Sabin, Robert. “Aaron Copland Reaches the Half-Century Mark,” Musical America 15 November 1950.
- Schuman, William. “A Birthday Salute to Aaron Copland,” New York Herald Tribune, 30 October 1960; reprinted in Juilliard program book 14 November 1960.
