Aaron Copland and his Influence

Darrius Morton

October 11, 2021

 Few classical composers in the United States enjoy the same domestic acclaim as Aaron

Copland. Despite his fame as a composer of truly American music, Copland also dedicated his

life to teaching, writing and later in life conducting. Through focusing on a more vernacular,

musically populist style in the 1930s and 1940s he won great critical esteem for works like Billy

the Kid, Third Symphony, Rodeo, and perhaps most notably Appalachian Spring. The results of

Copland’s exploration in what he called “imposed simplicity,” are often slow moving harmonies

in open spacing that many scholars claim to be evocative of ideas like American nature and

pioneer life. This 20th century composer, perhaps more than any of his other contemporaries,

exemplified what scholar Elizabeth B. Crist, in her Aaron Copland and the Popular Front calls,

“A sense of immediacy and urgency behind the search for creative solutions to vexing cultural

problems as well as the desire to construct an ethical alternative to prevailing economic and

social structures.” 1 In addition to the often radical political underpinnings of his work during the

1930s and 1940s, later in his career Copland would apply similar ideas to his film composition.

Aaron Copland’s career is one of broad cultural significance for the American concert stage,

popular music and film music.

Aaron Copland was born in Brooklyn, New York on November 14, 1900. As a 16

year-old boy, Copland decided to devote himself to composing. Copland regularly attended

concerts at the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Symphony during his younger years.

Copland would go on to spend a productive several years in Paris, studying under Nadia

Boulanger, before returning to America. Throughout Copland’s formative years, he was able to

engage with a variety of performing arts in a variety of cultural contexts. Experiences like these

1
Crist, Elizabeth B. “Aaron Copland and the Popular Front,” Journal of the American Musicological
Society 56 no. 2 (Summer 2003): 459,
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n-copland-popular-front%2Fdocview%2F233179196%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D12085.
would influence the way Copland thought about musical identity in America as it pertained to

classical and popular spheres. Elizabeth B. Crist expounds on the influences of Copland’s

upbringing as they relate to his musical politics in her Aaron Copland and the Popular Front,

“Copland recognized that ‘composers will want to raise the musical level of the masses’ but

argued that ‘they must also be ready to learn from [the masses] what species of song is most

apposite to the revolutionary task.’”2 Here a scholar can see the struggle between modernism and

Copland’s contemporaries in the classical music industry juxtaposed with the more capitalist or

as Crist says “populist” demands of the popular music industry. Through engaging with these

discourses, Copland’s compositional output in the 1930s and 1940s would exude a dynamic,

oftentimes radical blend of old and new ideas that came to be recognized as a uniquely American

interpretation of the musical art.

When Aaron Copland composed songs like “Into the Streets May First,” the work of

Copland was intended to expand the audience of modern music through juxtaposing modernist

harmonies with simple melodic lines. Copland intended to communicate in a simplistic music

way so as to be most comprehensible to an American public whose preference lied with popular

music. Through the composition of mass songs, such as “Into the Streets May First, Copland

imposed his modernist musical aesthetics and leftist politics onto a popular style which would

result in the dissemination of his personal musical identity onto the American public. Through

engaging with what Crist describes as “a search for creative solutions to vexing cultural

problems,” Copland used modernist musical ideals juxtaposed with progressive social

reformation politics to an artistically and commercially fruitful end.3 Aaron Copland’s

2
Crist, Elizabeth B. “Aaron Copland and the Popular Front,” Journal of the American Musicological
Society 56 no. 2 (Summer 2003): 409,
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3
Ibid, 459.
engagement with American ideals and aesthetics are perhaps more striking in his concert works.

Most notably, Appalachian Spring uses Shaker melodies juxtaposed with openly spaced

harmonies to interpret an imagined future of the Lincoln republic.4 By using the communist

Shakers as the focus for this ballet Copland was able to make a distinct ideological comment

about the political leanings of many Americans and as previously stated, an imagined future of

the Lincoln republic. It is no surprise then that Copland’s musical aesthetics and political

influences played a large role in his film composition throughout the 1940s in particular. These

efforts to make music for the Popular Front and the many different American cultures and

ethnicities would influence and inspire contemporary critics, and composers.

Through exploring the entire spectrum of simplicity and complexity in his composition,

Aaron Copland was able to leave a distinct mark on American concert, popular and film music.

His affluent upbringing in New York, and the diverse music he engaged with through his youth

found a formal compositional voice under the tutelage of Nadia Boulanger. Aaron Copland’s

commitment to engaging intersecting audiences is perhaps one of his most overlooked skills as a

composer. Through advocating for the Popular front through music Copland was able to

compose music in the midst of a grass roots, populist cultural movement which had the same

implications for a composer’s musical legacy as any other time in American history. Elizabeth B.

Crist describes Copland’s “desire to construct an ethical alternative to prevailing economic and

social structures,”5 As a continually contested ideology, which perhaps further validates the deep

influence of the composer on the American public and their thoughts about music and politics.

Through engaging with contemporary political discourses in addition to the diverse, modernist

4
Crist, Elizabeth B. “Aaron Copland and the Popular Front,” Journal of the American Musicological
Society 56 no. 2 (Summer 2003): 456-457,
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5
Ibid, 459.
skillset Copland possessed as a composer, the contributions that he made to the American

musical landscape continue to be celebrated by a diverse array of listeners and performers.

 Bibliography

Crist, Elizabeth C. “Aaron Copland and the Popular Front,” Journal of the American
Musicological Society 56, no. 2 (Summer 2003): 409-459.
http://ezproxy.liberty.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fscholarl
y-journals%2Faaron-copland-popular-front%2Fdocview%2F233179196%2Fse-2%3Facc
ountid%3D12085.

Crawford, Richard and Larry Hamberlin. An Introduction to American Music. New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, 2018. https://lccn.loc.gov/2018024789.