Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland was an American composer, conductor and teacher often called the “Dean of American Music.” Born in Brooklyn, New York, to Lithuanian Jewish immigrants, he studied in New York and at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau with Nadia Boulanger. Copland’s music drew on jazz, folk songs, marches and dances to create an accessible, distinctly American symphonic style that liberated U.S. concert music from European influence.

His early works such as the “Symphony for Organ and Orchestra” and “Music for the Theater” used jazz idioms; later ballets and film scores—among them “Billy the Kid,” “Rodeo,” “Appalachian Spring” and the rousing “Fanfare for the Common Man”—brought him widespread acclaim. “Appalachian Spring” earned him the Pulitzer Prize in 1945, and the film score for “The Heiress” won an Academy Award in 1949. From the 1950s he devoted more time to conducting and teaching, championing contemporary composers and expanding audiences for American music.