Copland

America knows Aaron Copland as our greatest composer, famous for Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, Lincoln Portrait, Rodeo; the movie scores for Our Town and Of Mice and Men; and numerous orchestral and chamber works. This book takes us from Copland’s Brooklyn childhood, through his years in Paris studying with the legendary Nadia Boulanger, then his return to America, his early championship of American music, his first successes in Mexico, Hollywood, and as composer of some of the most popular ballets ever produced, and eventually his arrival at Tanglewood. This is not a book about music; it is a book about a genius’ life in music, and its cast of characters, among them Harold Clurman and Clifford Odets, encompasses the elite of all the arts. Vivian Perlis, who has written connecting “interludes” placing the autobiography in its historical context, has obtained recollections by leading figures in Copland’s life (such as Bernstein, Virgil Thomson, and Boulanger) that make up a good part of the text; thus we have their own impressions of the man as well as his impressions of them. Add to all this over a hundred never-before-published photographs, letters, and scores from Copland’s collection, and it is easy to see why Copland is one of the monumental autobiographies of our time.