Revolutions in Music:
Copland and the American Sound

Fanfare for the Common Man, Appalachian Spring, Rodeo—these pieces sound unmistakably American. But this “American sound” we take for granted has existed for only a hundred years or so. And in many ways this sound was the creation of one man, Aaron Copland.

Beginnings: New York

Aaron Copland grew up in Brooklyn far from the mainstream elegance of Carnegie Hall. The son of a Jewish shopkeeper, he went to public school, took piano lessons, and was mitzvahed at the Kane Street synagogue—places all within a few blocks of each other.

In this world, the young Copland heard a lot of Yiddish popular music, which grew out of a tradition filled with improvisation—with songs for weddings, for somebody’s sick cow, for all kinds of occasions.

He was also influenced by the music of the street, which at that time meant jazz. Copland said from the beginning that he wanted to write music that would let you know how it felt to be alive on the streets of Brooklyn.

Perspective: Paris

But to get that American perspective, Copland had to go to Paris.

“Paris was... where all the new music seemed to be coming from at the time,” he said. “I just knew that that’s where the action was.”

He studied at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, just outside Paris, with a formidable woman named was Nadia Boulanger. Boulanger’s message was “get tough, get serious.”

She instructed him to write lots of notes, but keep only those that really matter. At the same time, she encouraged him to be himself.

She wanted him to develop an American kind of style, based on the Jewish, jazzy, street music he knew so well. In paring it all down, a new kind of leaner and more dangerous music emerged, one with a “sez you” quality.

Avant Garde: Yaddo

Returning to New York, Copland found a city as obsessed with the avant-garde as he was, inspiring pieces ever bolder, more daring, and shocking. Copland’s greatest experiments in the avant-garde would happen at Yaddo, an artists’ retreat in upstate New York.

In 1930, in this idyllic location, he wrote the Piano Variations, his toughest, most uncompromising piece yet. The Piano Variations begins with a clangorous theme of very few notes.

Copland takes the notes in the theme and recombines them in every possible way—exploring every mood he can think of. But no matter how extreme the variations become, you still hear the hulking presence of those primal notes. You also hear the influence of jazz.

The Piano Variations made Copland the standard bearer of modern American music—the leader of the avant-garde pack. But as he was concentrating on his intricate structure in the safe-haven of Yaddo, around him the world was collapsing. America had entered the Great Depression.

The Depression

As the Depression dragged on, Copland survived by teaching at the New School for Social Research. There, he gave the lectures that formed the basis for his definitive book What to Listen for in Music.

There he also met colleagues like Martha Graham, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Stuart Davis. The Depression was a time of enormous social unrest, and many artists identified powerfully with the plight of working people. Copland and his friends engaged in serious debate on the artist’s responsibility to “the masses.”

The Library of Congress had just release recordings of American folk music, and these recordings captivated Copland and his friends. This was music of the people, and Copland wanted to find a way to incorporate the simplicity and power of these songs into his own work.

As it turned out, he would first find what he was looking for not in American folk music, but in the music of Mexico.

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