Copland, Aaron - Billy the Kid & Rodeo - Litton, Andrew

Colorado Symphony Orchestra / Andrew Litton

Aaron Copland was among the first Americans to study composition in Paris under the legendary pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. Nadia Boulanger mentored many of the country's finest composers. Upon returning home in 1924, Copland was determined to use Boulanger's training and inspiration to find a unique style for American concert music that would be free from the heavy Germanic traditions that had weighed it down for over a century. He first turned to the obvious indigenous music—jazz—in his late 1920s works, such as Piano Concerto and Theater Music, but he soon realized that this particular source of inspiration would quickly dry up for a classical composer. After a brief but fruitful foray into a more abstract style (Piano Variations, Short Symphony) Copland set off in a new direction, which he expressed in his work The New Music in the early 1930s: "I began to feel a growing dissatisfaction with the relationship between the music-loving public and the living composer. It seemed that we composers were in danger of working in a vacuum." In addition, a whole new music audience had grown up around radio and record players. It made no sense to ignore them and continue writing as if they did not exist. I felt it was worth trying to see if I could say what I had to say as simply as possible.