Un-sung American Hero ... ?

This is Aaron Copeland, the first world renowned American classical composer. Aaron Copland was born in Brooklyn, New York, of Lithuanian Jewish descent. Before emigrating to the United States, Copland's father had Anglicized his surname “Kaplan” to “Copland” while in Scotland. Throughout his childhood, Copland and his family lived above his parents' Brooklyn shop.

At the age of fifteen he had already taken an interest in music and aspired to be a composer, even though his parents never encouraged him or directly exposed him to it. His musical education included time with Leopold Wolfsohn, Rubin Goldmark (who also taught George Gershwin), and Nadia Boulanger at the Fontainebleau School of Music in Paris from 1921 to 1924.

He was awarded a Guggenheim in Fellowship in 1925 and again in 1926. Fanfare for the Common Man, perhaps Copland's most famous work, scored for brass and percussion, was written in 1942 at the request of the conductor Eugene Goossens, conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. It would later be used to open many Democratic National Conventions. The fanfare was also used as the main theme of the fourth movement of Copland's Third Symphony, where it first appears in a quiet, pastoral manner, then in the brassier form of the original. The same year Copland wrote A Lincoln Portrait which became popular with a wider audience, leading to a strengthening in his association with American music.

He was commissioned to write a ballet, Appalachian Spring, which he later arranged as a popular orchestral suite. The commission for Appalachian Spring came from Martha Graham, who had requested of Copland merely "music for an American ballet". Copland titled the piece "Music for Martha", having no idea of how she would use it on stage. Graham created a ballet she called Appalachian Spring (from a poem by Hart Crane), which was an instant success, and the music acquired the same name.

Copland was amused and delighted later in life when people would come up to him and say: "You were so right - it sounds exactly like spring in the Appalachians", as he had no particular program in mind while writing the music. In honor of Copland's vast influence on American music, on December 15, 1970 he was awarded the prestigious University of Pennsylvania Glee Club Award of Merit[6]. Beginning in 1964, this award "established to bring a declaration of appreciation to an individual each year that has made a significant contribution to the world of music and helped to create a climate in which our talents may find valid expression." (from Wikipedia).