Born On This Day- November 14th... Composer Aaron Copeland

Unlike many gay men of his age, Aaron Copland was neither ashamed of or tortured by his sexuality. He apparently understood & accepted it from an early age. Throughout his life he was involved in relationships with other men. His affairs were mostly with younger men, usually musicians or artists, whom he mentored, including composer Leonard Bernstein, dancer & artist Erik Johns, photographer Victor Kraft, & music critic Paul Moor.


Copland was an American composer of concert & film music, as well as an accomplished pianist. Instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, he was widely known as "the dean of American composers". While his orchestral music & his ballets found success on the stages & in the concert halls of America, Aaron Copland sought to enter another arena, the emerging industry of motion pictures. He saw this as both a challenge for his abilities as a composer & an opportunity to expand his reputation & audience. However, the tendency of studios to edit & cut movie scores went against Copland’s desire for creative control over his work. Copland found a kindred spirit in director Lewis Milestone, who recognized the benefits of allowing Copland to supervise his own orchestration & refrained from interfering with his work. This collaboration resulted in the notable film Of Mice and Men (1939) that earned Copland his first nomination for an Academy Award. In a departure from other film scores of the time, Copland’s work largely reflected his own style, instead of borrowing from the late Romantic period. Additionally, he rejected the common practice of using melodies to identify characters with their own personal themes.

His score for William Wyler's 1949 film, The Heiress won an Academy Award. Several themes he created are encapsulated in the suite Music for Movies, & his score for the film adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel The Red Pony was given a suite of its own. This suite was one of Copland's personal favorites. It is difficult to overestimate the influence Copland has had on film music. Virtually every composer who scored for western movies, particularly between 1940 & 1960, was shaped by the style Copland developed.


Copland was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in composition for Appalachian Spring. His scores for Of Mice and Men (1939), Our Town (1940), and The North Star (1943) all received Academy Award nominations, while The Heiress won Best Music in 1949.Copland's best known piece of music is probably Fanfare For the Common Man (1942), a popular choice for opening ceremonies, with its dramatic opening fanfare, & turned into a worldwide pop hit in the 1970s by Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Copland's homosexuality was documented in Howard Pollack's biography, Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man. Copland died of Alzheimer's disease & respiratory failure in Sleepy Hallow, New York (now Sleepy Hollow),  December 2, 1990, just weeks after his 100th birthday.