Perhaps best known for "Appalachian Spring" and "Fanfare for the Common Man", Aaron Copland is widely recognized for helping to create a distinctive American presence in world music. What is less well known is that throughout his long career as a composer, Copland came to know some of the most remarkable artists of the 20th century - among them painters Charles Demuth, Thomas Hart Benton, Georgia O'Keeffe, Diego Rivera, Charles Sheeler and Stuart Davis; photographers Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand; composers Virgil Thomson and Darius Milhaud; choreographers Martha Graham and Agnes de Mille; and writers Hart Crane, e.e. cummings and Gertrude Stein. This volume, in conjunction with an exhibition at the Heckscher Museum in Huntington, Long Island, documents some of these little-known friendships and the direct exchange of ideas they engendered, and examines aesthetic parallels between Copland's music and the work of visual artists who were contemporaries. At the same time, it looks at how Copland's fascination with folk and popular culture, native and so-called primitive arts, jazz, cinema, and the search for an American national art gave form to his work, which represents not only his personal talent but powerful concerns that shaped the times.
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Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Gail Levin, a professor of art history at Baruch College, is the author of numerous scholarly articles and books, including a biography of Edward Hopper and a catalogue raisonn of his work. When not on curatorial assignments or lecture tours around the United States or abroad, she is based in New York. Judith Tick, the author of a book about the composer Ruth Crawford Seeger, is a professor of music at Northeastern University in Boston.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Copland Illuminated by his Cultural Context,
By A Customer
This review is from: Aaron Copland's America: A Cultural Perspective (Hardcover)
This book reproduces the paintings & fills in the story of Aaron Copland's friendships & interactions with the world of the the arts, from his visits to the Brooklyn Museum, Paris, & adventures in New York. A lively & informative review of the show for which the book is a catalogue & interpretive essay, appeared in the New York Times, written by John Russell: [December 22, 2000, Friday] ART REVIEW; Fanfare for Copland, A Fervent Adventurer By JOHN RUSSELL Source: The New York Times Section: Leisure/Weekend Desk [1007 words] Abstract: John Russell reviews Heckscher Museum exhibit illustrating America of composer Aaron Copland. [photo (M)] -------------------------------------------------------------------Lead Paragraph: To walk through ''Aaron Copland's America'' at the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, on Long Island, is a considerable adventure. The exhibition is a biographical study of one of the best-loved American composers of the 20th century. But it is much more: a freewheeling, farsearching trawl through an America that, though vital to Copland, was not his only concern...... Born in 1900, Copland lived until near the end of a tumultuous century. He lived more than one of that century's adventures. As a younger American composer, John Adams, said last year, Copland "reached his maturity at the same point that the country was seriously searching for its own cultural identity." He added: "Copland, like Robert Frost and Edward Hopper, found a way of expressing in the most simple and direct language deeply felt intuitions about the American experience." [full review available from NYTimes archive] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- What I found moving was the way the book shows what kinds of music, art, ideas were exciting people as Copland matured & how he got into the swim, indeed helped to shape it. For me the music becomes more exciting because the book gives it a context & illustrates & evokes the culture in which Copland made his way.
3 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Copland is great, the book could be better,
By A Customer
This review is from: Aaron Copland's America: A Cultural Perspective (Hardcover)
Copland is one of the great american composers. This book makes an effort to capture that perspective in the written word but falls somewhat short. Listen to music for music don't read about it. This book is enjoyable to the huge copland fans who crave everything that has his name on it, but in general is not all to interesting otherwise.
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