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Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Aaron Copland
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Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Aaron Copland
AARON COPLAND
Awarded by
President Lyndon B. Johnson
September 14, 1964
Masterful composer and gifted teacher, his music echoes our American experience and speaks expressively to an international audience.
"One starts, after all, with themes or rhythms or harmonies that occur to you."
Aaron Copland has been hailed as the finest composer the United States has produced. Before his appearance in the 1920s, American classical music was regarded as provincial at best, but Copland "would lead American music out of the wilderness," as his student Leonard Bernstein later wrote. Copland did so not by imitating European styles but by successfully bringing a modern and distinctly American sound into classical music. Early works like Music for the Theater (1925) and Piano Concerto (1926) were influenced by jazz rhythms, and El Salon Mexico (1937) used Latin themes. His best-known and most-beloved works were the three ballets he based on American folk material: Billy the Kid (1938), Rodeo (1942), and Appalachian Spring (1944). The last has been hailed as his greatest work and won him the Pulitzer Prize in composition. Copland also wrote a series of film scores, including Of Mice and Men (1939), Our Town (1940), The Heiress (1948), and The Red Pony (1948), as well as various abstract works influenced by the composers Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg. President Lyndon Johnson awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. He died in 1990.
On composition
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Medal History
