November, 2000 issue

Born in Brooklyn to Lithuanian immigrant parents, Mr. Copland grew up over his family's department store. The youngest of five children, Mr. Copland began playing the piano at eleven years of age. He determined to make a living with music, and in the 1920's he won a Guggenheim fellowship which allowed him to travel and study in Europe.

Already knowledgeable about harmony, counterpoint, and sonata form from studies with Rubin Goldmark, Mr. Copland found his mentor, Nadia Boulanger, during a stay in Paris. At the time Igor Stravinsky was the acknowleged leading composer in Europe. Mr. Copland became immersed in the styles of the day and gradually realized there was no American complement to the music created by the Europeans.

Mr. Copland determined to create "a naturally American strain of so-called serious music."

Upon his return to the United States, Serge Koussevitzky, whom he had met in Paris, conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the American's Organ Symphony, with Boulanger as soloist. When it was repeated in New York City, under Walter Damrosch, it was a sensation.

Mr. Copland was committed to introducing the "new music" to the country. He worked ceaselessly, not only composing, but lecturing, writing and organizing concerts, many featuring Europeans, in New York. As the country moved into the Depression and then World War II, the composer completed such defining works as "Billy the Kid" and "Lincoln Portrait."

In an interview with the New York Times on the eve of his 80th birthday, Mr. Copland recalled being approached by Martha Graham to write a ballet work for her. The result was the Pulitzer Prize winning "Appalachian Spring," so named by Ms. Graham because it reminded her of Appalchia.

By the middle of the century, Aaron Copland, who had never gone to college, became the first American composer to hold the position of Norton Professor of Poetics at Harvard University. He was a member of the faculty for 25 years at the Berkshire Music Center (Tanglewood) and constantly nurtured the careers of other musicians. Leonard Bernstein, who Mr. Copland met on an opportune November 14, became a legendary friend.

During the period Mr. Copland wrote scores for several movies, including "Something Wild," starring Caroll Baker, and"The Heiress" in 1949 which won him an Academy Award.

The list of Mr. Copland's other awards include The Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Kennedy Center Award, and the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. He received honorary doctorates from over 40 colleges and universities and in 1982, The Aaron Copland School of Music was established in his honor at Queens College of the City University of New York.

The tremedous scope of Mr. Copland's life-long commitment is indicated by the numerous organizations he served. He was president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters; a fellow of the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal Society of Arts in England; a founder of the American Composers Alliance; a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers; served as director or board member of the American Music Center, the Koussevitzky Foundation, the League of Composers, among others.

In December 1952, Mr. Copland moved into a home, a converted barn, on Shady Lane Farm Road in Ossining. This was where he wrote he wrote the opera "The Tender Land." Unfortunately the building was demolished by General Electric in 1987 to make way for a corporation baseball field.

From Ossining in 1960, Mr. Copland moved to "Rock Hill," a 1940's house set on two and a half acres in the Town of Cortlandt. Spacious, yet unostentatious, the house reflects Mr. Copland's rugged elegance and natural simplicity. Picture windows in the studio open onto a terrace with views of the Hudson River.

During the following 30 years, Mr. Copland spent much of his time conducting, an activity he started in his fifties, but he composed "Piano Fantasy" at Rock Hill. In the New York Times interview, Mr. Copland explained that he composed by improvisation. "...when I start improvising and fiddling with notes, the music then begins to flow," he said.

Shortly after Mr. Copland's death on December 2, 1990, The Copland Heritage Association undertook to restore and preserve this historic residence as a living, enduring creative center, and, in the spirit of Copland's legacy of support for his fellow composers, created The Aaron Copland Awards.

The idea for the Heritage Association came to Ed Mashberg, a Cortlandt resident and arts enthusiast, when he saw the property was for sale. With retired librarian Florence Stevens, he created the association and persuaded the Manhattan-based Aaron Copland Fund for Music, which owned the building to lease it to the Town of Cortlandt for $1 a year. In turn, the town subleases it to the association, plus assists with some of the maintenance.

In late 1996 The Copland Society was established as the broadly-based, national membership constituency of The Copland Heritage Association. Individual, institutional, and corporate members of The Society provide annual contributions to underwrite all the association's activities. By early 2000, barely three years after it was established, The Society had grown to nearly 300 members all over the world.

The Society raised sufficient funds for theHeritage Association to make the repairs required and to re-furnish the house -- as many of the contents had been sent to the Smithsonian Museum.

Four to six emerging or mid-career American composers each year are invited to reside, one at a time, at the Copland House, to concentrate on their creative work, free from distractions. They are the guests of the association for periods ranging from approximately one to two months; meals, housekeeping, reasonable local transportation and other services are provided, based on the resident's specific needs.

The residencies started in 1998-99, and thus far approximately 20 emerging composers have been guests of the association.

They are greeted by a framed quotation from Copland's autobiography that Ms. Stevens has hung in the house: "The fact is that the creative artist is a kind of gambler, since there are no guaantees of success. Yet every true artist has a sense of the importance of his or her contribution, if only because the artist knows in his deepest innards that only the individual can conceive what he or she alone can create.

"I think it is for this reason that I have given so much time and energy to advancing the interests of my fellow composers."