Aaron Copland and the Hudson Valley
by Rob Schumer

Aaron Copland--Brooklyn-born, world citizen, best-known, perhaps, of all America's composers, tireless and timeless interpreter as well as creator of 20th century American culture--comes alive this summer in the Hudson Valley. Born in 1900, his life was confluent in other ways with the 20th century. He made his home for the final 30 years of his life, until 1990, outside of Peekskill, in northern Westchester County. Still extraordinarily active during his last decades, he settled in this area for its serenity and for its proximity to New York City.

This summer's 16th Annual Bard Music Festival, with events scheduled in July and August as well as in the fall, celebrates the breadth and depth of Copland's life and work. A host of offerings--musical performances, opera, films, dance, lectures, panel discussions--creates a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for immersion in the many facets of this extraordinary individual's creative output. Presented also will be the work of many of his collaborators and contemporaries, providing an in-depth musical and cultural context for Copland's long and productive artistic life. The overall program utilizes the talents of scores of gifted musicians and scholars from across the country.

Aaron Copland is probably best known for the music he wrote for ballet, pieces such as Appalachian Spring, Rodeo, and Billy the Kid, with their folksy melodies and accessible themes. Through these, Copland came to personify, musically, much that is widely felt to be quintessentially American in the "American Century," his scores seeming to capture the promise and the open expanse of the American West. But perhaps paradoxically Copland never resided in the western United States (other than in Hollywood, where he lived while working on film scores), living instead mostly in and around New York City. And he composed his ballet music on commission. His own tastes led him to write many more chamber, piano, vocal and orchestral works than ballet scores, and this summer's offerings provide rare opportunities to hear many of these performed in tight proximity to one another.

In fact, as the body of his work makes apparent--and for Copland himself this was explicit--jazz was a far greater influence than folk melody. Copland was excited by the complex rhythmic and harmonic possibilities in jazz and he heard in such styling an authentic and original American voice. The influence of jazz can be heard in Copland's Music for the Theater, Piano Concerto, and Piano Variations. Indeed, Copland's Clarinet Concerto was composed for Benny Goodman.

Copland was born in Brooklyn in an apartment above his father's store. His older brother and sister played piano and violin, and by age eight young Aaron was making up songs. By 16 he was studying piano and composition with Rubin Goldmark, who later became founding head of the Department of Composition at the new Juilliard School of Music. (Another of Goldmark's students at the time was George Gershwin.)

In his youth, Copland had already been exposed to the mountains around the Hudson Valley; love of the countryside was instilled early. He spent part of one summer during his teenage years in Tannersville, another in Fleischmanns, another in Elka Park, Greene County. In 1921 he moved to Paris where he studied composition with Nadia Boulanger, crossing paths with Stravinsky, Hemingway, Joyce, and other creators of 20th century modernism. Copland returned to New York after three years in Europe, immersing himself in the city's avant-garde literary, music, and art worlds. He began to teach at the New School for Social Research, an activity he continued for years. His course there resulted in the book "What to Listen For in Music" a classic of music appreciation which for several generations made accessible what for many might have been obscure or forbidding. As a composer, Copland made his mark early. Virgil Thompson, years later, said that on hearing the 25-year-old Copland's Symphony for Organ and Orchestra, he thought it was "the voice of America in our generation."

In 1930 Copland first went to the Saratoga artist's colony Yaddo, where in 1932 he organized the first Festival of Contemporary American Music. Through this program, and along with a periodic series of "Copland-Sessions Concerts" that he had presented in New York City from 1928 to 1931, Copland became an early and determined champion of new American music. It was at this time that Copland became instrumental in the "discovery" and popularization of the work of another major American composer, Charles Ives, insurance agent of Danbury, Connecticut, who had been composing mostly for his own pleasure for some 40 years.

Having had already a long and fruitful relationship with Serge Koussevitzky, the conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, in 1940 Copland became one of the first two composition teachers at the new Berkshire Music Center, better known as Tanglewood (the other new teacher was Paul Hindemith). He would spend summers in the Berkshires for many years after, his relationship with Tanglewood proving long and intimate. It also included many occasions for collaborative work with his younger admirer and colleague, Leonard Bernstein. When not engaged at Tanglewood or another of the artist colonies, Copland began vacationing in the southern Hudson valley, living at times in summer homes in Briarcliff Manor, then Bedford, and later in Ridgefield, Connecticut, and just across the river, in Woodstock. He used these summer get-aways to write or to complete some of his major works.

Copland bought his first home along the Hudson at age 52, in Ossining. Eight years later, in 1960, he moved from there to the locale where he would spend nearly half of his adult life, outside of Peekskill. That home is now maintained as Copland House, a privately operated foundation for the furtherance of contemporary musical composition through a composer residency program as well as educational and performance activities.

While he composed relatively little from 1960 on, Copland remained busy with conducting, writing, lecturing, and advocating for American composers. In his later years he remained a visible and active icon of American music. All in all, his life intersected with an astonishing array of cultural giants of 20th century American arts and letters. And yet, as for so many others, it was to the Hudson Valley and its peaceful villages and towns that he often turned for sanctuary and quiet.

Rob Schumer resides locally and practices ophthalmology, as a glaucoma specialist, in Kingston, Red Hook and New York City. With his wife Ruth Oxenberg, he recently produced and directed the documentary film Bluegrass Journey. A music aficionado and player, he enjoys Strayhorn, Stravinsky, the Stanley Brothers, Sondheim, and The Stones more or less equally.

The 16th Annual Bard Music Festival: Aaron Copland And His World

August 12–14 and 19–21, October 21–23, 2005

Featuring performances of works by Aaron Copland, including: Appalachian Spring; Fanfare for the Common Man; Concerto for Piano and Orchestra; Piano Variations; El Salón México; and many others. Also featured: numerous talks and discussions of the significance and context of Copland's world and his work.

For the full schedule, go to www.fishercenter.bard.edu/calendar or call the Fisher Center Box Office (see below).

Highlights of other Copland-related events this summer at Bard:

• The Martha Graham Dance Company performing Appalachian Spring, music by Aaron Copland, as well as works by Samuel Barber and Paul Hindemith (July 8, 9, 10);
• The Tender Land, an opera by Aaron Copland, directed by Erica Schmidt (Six performances, August 4-12);
• A Film Festival including films with scores by Aaron Copland (The Heiress (winner of four Academy Awards including Best Score, July 31); Of Mice and Men (August 4) and Our Town (August 11) and others.

The full Bard SummerScape schedule and tickets for all events may be obtained at the Fisher Center Box Office at (845) 758-7900, open Monday through Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., or online, at www.fishercenter.bard.edu/boxoffice.

Copland House is located in Cortlandt Manor, adjacent to Peekskill, and is open to the public on a limited basis by appointment only, and maintains an active residency program for composers. It presents numerous regional public performances throughout the year. Outside of the Bard Music Festival, where Music from Copland House will perform, this summer's events include:

• Saturday, June 18, 2005, 8:00 PM
  Spencertown Academy, 790 Route 203, Spencertown, NY (518) 392-3693
• Thursday, July 28, 2005, 7:30 P.M.

Caramoor International Music Festival, Katonah, NY (914) 232-1252

For more information, visit www.coplandhouse.org online or call (914) 788-4659