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The New Music, 1900-1960, revised and enlarged edition
194 pages, includes index beginning on page 189. Sections Survey of Contemporary European Composers (1900 - 1960) (divided into Late 19th Century, Before 1914, & Music Between the Wars (1918 - 1939)) Composers in America The Present Day Copyright 1968 by Aaron Copland, copyright 1941 by the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.
- GenresMusic
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1941
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About the author
Aaron Copland
388 books79 followersWorks of American composer Aaron Copland include the ballets
Rodeo
(1942) and
Appalachian Spring
(1944), which won a Pulitzer Prize, any of several awards that, conferred annually for accomplishment in various fields of American journalism, literature, and music, Joseph Pulitzer established.
His musical works ranged from orchestral to choral and movie scores. For the better part of four decades, people considered Aaron Copland the premier.
From an older sister, Copland learned to play piano. He decided his career before the time he fifteen years in 1915. His first tentative steps included a correspondence course in writing harmony. In 1921, Copland traveled to Paris to attend the newly founded music school for Americans at Fontainebleau. He, the first such American, studied of the brilliant teacher, Nadia Juliette Boulanger. After three years in Paris, he returned to New York with his first major commission, writing an organ concerto for the American appearances of Boulanger. His "Symphony for Organ and Orchestra" premiered in at Carnegie Hall in 1925.
Growth of Copland mirrored important trends of his time. After his return from Paris, he worked with jazz rhythms in his "Piano Concerto" (1926). Neoclassicism of Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky strongly influenced his "Piano Variations" (1930).
In 1936, he changed his orientation toward a simpler style. This made his music more meaningful to the large loving audience that radio and the movies created. American folklore based his most important works, including "Billy the Kid" (1938) and "Rodeo" (1942), during this period. Another work during this period, a series of movie scores, included "Of Mice and Men" (1938) and "The Heiress" (1948).
In later years, work of Copland reflected the serial techniques of the "12-tone" school of Arnold Schoenberg. People commissioned notable "Connotations" (1962) for the opening of Lincoln center.
Copland after 1970 stopped composing but through the mid-1980s continued to lecture and to conduct. He died at the Phelps memorial hospital in Tarrytown (Westchester county), New York.
His musical works ranged from orchestral to choral and movie scores. For the better part of four decades, people considered Aaron Copland the premier.
From an older sister, Copland learned to play piano. He decided his career before the time he fifteen years in 1915. His first tentative steps included a correspondence course in writing harmony. In 1921, Copland traveled to Paris to attend the newly founded music school for Americans at Fontainebleau. He, the first such American, studied of the brilliant teacher, Nadia Juliette Boulanger. After three years in Paris, he returned to New York with his first major commission, writing an organ concerto for the American appearances of Boulanger. His "Symphony for Organ and Orchestra" premiered in at Carnegie Hall in 1925.
Growth of Copland mirrored important trends of his time. After his return from Paris, he worked with jazz rhythms in his "Piano Concerto" (1926). Neoclassicism of Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky strongly influenced his "Piano Variations" (1930).
In 1936, he changed his orientation toward a simpler style. This made his music more meaningful to the large loving audience that radio and the movies created. American folklore based his most important works, including "Billy the Kid" (1938) and "Rodeo" (1942), during this period. Another work during this period, a series of movie scores, included "Of Mice and Men" (1938) and "The Heiress" (1948).
In later years, work of Copland reflected the serial techniques of the "12-tone" school of Arnold Schoenberg. People commissioned notable "Connotations" (1962) for the opening of Lincoln center.
Copland after 1970 stopped composing but through the mid-1980s continued to lecture and to conduct. He died at the Phelps memorial hospital in Tarrytown (Westchester county), New York.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 29, 2024
skip the jazz chapter
July 20, 2022
Copeland is a good writer too!
He lays out the transition of the German Classical composers to the modern music of Debussy, Bartok, Schoenberg, Cage, Stravinsky...
He lays out the transition of the German Classical composers to the modern music of Debussy, Bartok, Schoenberg, Cage, Stravinsky...
January 7, 2023
very self-serving though
June 12, 2012
Read in 2012, Aaron Copland's 1941 book "Our New Music" is an approachable and informative survey of what was considered to be the new music of the time. It is interesting to note which composers Copland chose to highlight and which names have stuck as well as Copland's perspective on music given both his populist and austere approaches to composition. Written eighty years in the past, the book is not particularly enlightening to the modern reader, yet it is an interesting look into the perspective of a prolific American composer who was approaching the height of his career.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews