Aaron Copland, who was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1900, began composing before he began formal piano lessons at the age of 13. He studied theory, composition, and piano instead of going to college, and he immersed himself in performance experiences by attending ballets, operas, and concerts.
He began studying conducting and composition at the American Conservatory in France in 1921. He went on to study with Ricardo Vies and Nadia Boulanger in Paris, with the latter conducting his Organ Symphony in 1924.
When he returned to the United States, Copland combined American folk music influences with other elements to create his own idiom. Copland had an incredibly productive period from the mid-thirties to the 1940s. Between 1939 and 1948, he composed seven film scores, an opera (The Second Hurricane), three ballets (Billy the Kid, Rodeo, and Appalachian Spring), and his famous orchestral works “Quiet City,” “Fanfare for the Common Man,” “Music for Movies,” and “Lincoln Portrait,” the last three of which were all written in 1942.
His focus seemed to shift to voice in the 1950s. During this decade, he completed his second opera, The Tender Land, as well as the song cycle 12 Poems of Emily Dickinson, Old American Songs arrangements, and Canticle of Freedom. He also experimented with Arnold Schoenberg’s serial methods during this time, and gave the Norton Lectures at Harvard in 1951–1952. What to Listen for in Music, his book, was also revised.
Copland received six Academy Award nominations. For his work on Of Mice and Men and Our Town, he was nominated for two Best Music awards in 1940 and 1941 — Original Score and Scoring. For The North Star, he was nominated for Best Music: Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture in 1944. In 1950, he won an Academy Award for The Heiress for Best Music: Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.
In addition, Copland was the first composer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1986, the National Endowment for the Arts presented him with the American National Medal of Arts.
After the mid-1970s, Copland stopped composing but continued to conduct, most often leading his own works. He died in North Tarrytown, New York, in 1990.