Aaron Copland's America - Gail Levin|Judith Tick

Perhaps best known for "Appalachian Spring" and "Fanfare for the Common Man", Aaron Copland is widely recognized for helping to create a distinctive American presence in world music. What is less well known is that throughout his long career as a composer, Copland came to know some of the most remarkable artists of the 20th century - among them painters Charles Demuth, Thomas Hart Benton, Georgia O'Keeffe, Diego Rivera, Charles Sheeler and Stuart Davis; photographers Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand; composers Virgil Thomson and Darius Milhaud; choreographers Martha Graham and Agnes de Mille; and writers Hart Crane, e.e. cummings and Gertrude Stein. This volume, in conjunction with an exhibition at the Heckscher Museum in Huntington, Long Island, documents some of these little-known friendships and the direct exchange of ideas they engendered, and examines aesthetic parallels between Copland's music and the work of visual artists who were contemporaries.;At the same time, it looks at how Copland's fascination with folk and popular culture, native and so-called primitive arts, jazz, cinema, and the search for an American national art gave form to his work, which represents not only his personal talent but powerful concerns that shaped the times.