Aaron Copland - Nominee

“To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.”

– Aaron Copland

He graduated from the Fontainebleau School of Music in 1921, having earned a reputation as a radical young composer. His first major composition, the Symphony for Organ and Orchestra (1924), was premiered by the New York Symphony. In the late 1920s, Copland turned to creating music with an American accent and, by the 1930s, he had become the acknowledged leader of young American composers. He is acclaimed for his balletic scores for Billy the Kid (1938), Rodeo (1942) and Appalachian Spring (1944) and for his film scores including Of Mice and Men (1939), Our Town (1940), The Red Pony and The Heiress (both 1948). Among Copland’s most enduring works are A Lincoln Portrait and Fanfare for the Common Man (both 1942). The Third Symphony (1946), his most famous, is regarded by many as the greatest American symphony ever written. Copland was an affable, modest and mild-mannered man who valued friendships and thrived in social settings. Like many of his contemporaries, he guarded his privacy, especially in regard to his homosexuality, but was one of the few composers of his stature to live his life without pretense, often appearing in public with his male lovers. Copland is one the most recognized 20th-century composers of classical music in the US. His honors, fellowships and awards include the Prix de Paris, the Congressional Gold Medal, The Kennedy Center Honors, The Pulitzer Prize, Grammy, Emmy and Oscar nominations and awards, Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships, the Medal of Arts and the Medal of Freedom. He died of respiratory failure in 1990.