Aaron Copland 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 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.
Elaine Shaffer was an American flutist and principal of the Houston Symphony Orchestra between 1948 and 1953.
Serge Koussevitzky was a Russian and American conductor, composer, and double-bassist, known for his long tenure as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1924 to 1949.
David Conte is an American composer who has written over 150 works published by E.C. Schirmer, including six operas, a musical, works for chorus, solo voice, orchestra, chamber music, organ, piano, guitar, and harp. Conte has received commissions from Chanticleer, the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, Harvard University Chorus, the Men’s Glee Clubs of Cornell University and the University of Notre Dame, GALA Choruses from the cities of San Francisco, New York, Boston, Atlanta, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., the Dayton Philharmonic, the Oakland Symphony, the Stockton Symphony, the Atlantic Classical Orchestra, the American Guild of Organists, Sonoma City Opera, and the Gerbode Foundation. He was honored with the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) Brock Commission in 2007 for his work The Nine Muses, and in 2016 he won the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) Art Song Composition Award for his work American Death Ballads.
The City is a pioneering short documentary film from 1939 that contrasts the problems of the contemporary urban environment with the superior social and physical conditions that can be provided in a planned community. It was directed and photographed by Ralph Steiner and Willard Van Dyke based on a treatment by Lewis Mumford, which was in turn based on an outline by Pare Lorentz. Aaron Copland wrote the musical score, and Morris Carnovsky provided the narration.
Fanfare for the Common Man is a musical work by the American composer Aaron Copland. It was written in 1942 for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under conductor Eugene Goossens and was inspired in part by a speech made earlier that year by then American Vice President Henry A. Wallace, in which Wallace proclaimed the dawning of the "Century of the Common Man".
Appalachian Spring is an American ballet created by the choreographer Martha Graham and the composer Aaron Copland, later arranged as an orchestral work. Commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, Copland composed the ballet music for Graham; the original choreography was by Graham, with costumes by Edythe Gilfond and sets by Isamu Noguchi. The ballet was well received at the 1944 premiere, earning Copland the Pulitzer Prize for Music during its 1945 United States tour. The orchestral suite composed in 1945 was played that year by many symphony orchestras; the suite is among Copland's best-known works, and the ballet remains essential in the Martha Graham Dance Company repertoire.
William Quincy Porter was an American composer and teacher of classical music.
The Tender Land is an opera with music by Aaron Copland and libretto by Horace Everett, a pseudonym for Erik Johns.
Aaron Copland's Clarinet Concerto was written between 1947 and 1949, although a first version was available in 1948. The concerto was later choreographed by Jerome Robbins for the ballet Pied Piper (1951).
The Red Pony is a 1949 American Technicolor drama film directed by Lewis Milestone and starring Myrna Loy, Robert Mitchum and Louis Calhern. It is based on John Steinbeck's 1937 novella of the same name. Steinbeck also wrote the screenplay for this film. It was distributed by Republic Pictures.
El Salón México is a symphonic composition in one movement by Aaron Copland, which uses Mexican folk music extensively. Copland began the work in 1932 and completed it in 1936, following several visits to Mexico. The four melodies of the piece are based on sheet music he purchased during his visits.
Rodeo is a ballet composed by Aaron Copland and choreographed by Agnes de Mille, which premiered in 1942. Subtitled "The Courting at Burnt Ranch", the ballet consists of five sections: "Buckaroo Holiday", "Corral Nocturne", "Ranch House Party", "Saturday Night Waltz", and "Hoe-Down". The symphonic version omits "Ranch House Party", leaving the other sections relatively intact.
Redes is a Mexican film, released in 1936, about the fishing community of Alvarado on the Gulf Coast of Mexico, near the city of Veracruz. The film's title comes from the Spanish word redes ("nets") in reference to fishing nets. The English-language edition's title is The Wave. Redes was made with a mainly non-professional cast and has been seen as anticipating Italian neorealism. It concerns the struggle of poor fishermen to overcome exploitation. The film was directed by Fred Zinnemann and Emilio Gómez Muriel who were both also among the co-writers.
Dai-Keong Lee was an American composer. His Symphony No. 2 was runner up for the 1952 Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Clare (Ewing) Grundman was an American composer and arranger.
Spirit of the American Range is a classical music album by the Oregon Symphony under the artistic direction of Carlos Kalmar, released by the Dutch record label Pentatone on February 10, 2015. The album was recorded at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland, Oregon in April 2013 and January 2014. It contains works by three American 20th-century composers: Walter Piston's ballet suite from The Incredible Flutist, George Antheil's "A Jazz Symphony", and Aaron Copland's Symphony No. 3. The recording was the third by the orchestra under Kalmar's leadership, following the highly successful Music for a Time of War (2011) and This England (2012). Spirit of the American Range received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Orchestral Performance, and its producer, Blanton Alspaugh, was nominated for Producer of the Year, Classical.
Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson is a song cycle for medium voice and piano by the American composer Aaron Copland.
The Short Symphony, or Symphony No. 2, is a symphony written by the American composer Aaron Copland from 1931 to 1933. The name derives from the symphony's short length of only 15 minutes. The work is dedicated to Copland's friend, the Mexican composer and conductor Carlos Chávez. The symphony's first movement is in sonata-allegro form, and its slow second movement follows an adapted ternary form. The third movement resembles the sonata-allegro but has indications of cyclic form. The composition contains complex rhythms and polyharmonies, and it incorporates the composer's emerging interest in serialism as well as influences from Mexican music and German cinema. The symphony includes scoring for a heckelphone and a piano while omitting trombones and a percussion section. Copland later arranged the symphony as a sextet.
