Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland
Aaron Coplandwas an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. Instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, in his later years he was often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers" and is best known to the public 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"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionComposer
Date of Birth14 November 1900
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Aaron Copland quotes about
If one were asked to name one musician who came closest to composing without human flaw, I suppose general consensus would choose Johann Sebastian Bach...
When I speak of the gifted listener, I am thinking of the nonmusician primarily, of the listener who intends to retain his amateur status. It is the thought of just such a listener that excites the composer in me.
There is something about music that keeps its distance even at the moment that it engulfs us. It is at the same time outside and away from us and inside and part of us. In one sense it dwarfs us, and in another we master it. We are led on and on, and yet in some strange way we never lose control.
Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.
Is there a meaning to music? Yes. Can you state in so many words what the meaning is? No.
Music that is born complex is not inherently better or worse than music that is born simple.
So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning.
The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking "Is there a meaning to music?" My answer would be, "Yes", And "Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?" My answer to that would be "No."
To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.
Here were the tart herbs of plain American speech, the pasture, without the flowers of elocution... the clean rhythms... the irony and the homespun tenderness that, in a fine perforation, reached a sustained exaltation.
I don't compose. I assemble materials.
The melody is generally what the piece is all about.
A great symphony is a man-made Mississippi down which we irresistibly flow from the instant of our leave-taking to a long forseen destination.
I hope my recordings of my own works won't inhibit other people's performances. The brutal fact is that one doesn't always get the exact tempo one wants, although one improves with experience.