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Aaron Copland was born in New York City on 14th November, 1900. He studied music under Rubin Goldmark in New York and Nadia Boulanger in France. He returned to the United States in 1924 where his quickly developed a reputation as an outstanding composer. This included Music for the Theater (1925), Piano Concerto (1926), Piano Variations (1930), Billy the Kid (1938), Rodeo (1942) and Appalachian Spring (1944).

Copland also wrote the music for several films including The City (1939), Of Mice and Men (1940), Our Town (1940), The Heiress (1949) and The Red Pony (1949).

After the Second World War the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) began to investigate people with left-wing views in the entertainment industry. In June, 1950, three former FBI agents and a right-wing television producer, Vincent Harnett, published Red Channels, a pamphlet listing the names of 151 writers, directors and performers who they claimed had been members of subversive organizations before the Second World War but had not so far been blacklisted. The names had been compiled from FBI files and a detailed analysis of the Daily Worker, a newspaper published by the American Communist Party.

A free copy of Red Channels was sent to those involved in employing people in the entertainment industry. All those people named in the pamphlet were blacklisted until they appeared in front of the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and convinced its members they had completely renounced their radical past.

Copland was one of those named and this ended his commissions from Hollywood and so he concentrated on other work such as an opera, The Tender Land (1954), Piano Fantasy (1957), Connotations (1962) and Inscape (1967). Aaron Copland, whose autobiography, Composer from Brooklyn, was published in 1984, died in North Tarrytown, on 2nd December, 1990.

 

 

 

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