4 DETROIT JEWISH CHRONICLE and the Legal Chronicle RISE OF A COMPOSER A Joyous Pesach to All! Friendship Plasterers t4 Building Supplies March 2 - Aaron Copland Interprets the Spirit of America A JOYOUS PESACH TO ALL By ROGER DORFMAN Editor's Note—American musicians are proudly celebrating the 40th anniversary of Aaron Copland, who in addition to being 15101 LaSALLE BLVD. one of thh world's foremost "moderns" has done so much as any other man to develop native American music, both UN. 2-0605 in personalities and in idiom. Whether in swing music or in the more classical forms, musical composition in this country has found an extraordinary champion and interpreter in this American Jew born in Brooklyn in 1902. Today he is one of the leaders of America who insist that democracy can be expressed through music as well as in politics—and the on.2, Passover Greetings! he feels, is an encouragement to the other. He and Irving Berlin are but two of the Americans distilling our musical spirit. The 40th birthday of a com- Negroes. 1 mention it because it poser is likely to warrant greater was there that I spent the first acclaim than a similar milestone 2U years of my life. Also, because in the life of a business or pro- it fills me with mild wonder each LUMBER - MILLWORK fessional man. Perhaps the ans- time I realize that a musician was wer is in the traditional axiom born on that street." that a man is born with music Because it was a musician who but trained to business. When Ser- was 10650 Cloverdale born and not made on that gei Koussevitzky raised his baton street, Aaron Copland is today recently to conduct the New York one of America's HO. 4141 great interpre- Philharmonic in a rendition of of her own musical history "Quiet City" by Aaron Copland, ters well as one of the most not- it was the 40th time that an or- as able contributors to her musical chestra had played the symphonic development. poem by this outstanding Ameri- With typical Jewish concern A Joyous Pesach to All! can-Jewish composer. their children should have In describing his birth in Brook- that equipment with which lyn in 1902, Copland has written: a to cultural go into the world, the Copland "I was born on a street in parents invested in the musical N. NALBANDIAN & CO. Brooklyn that can only be de- of each of their five scribed as drab. It had none of education children. Not because they ex- the garish color of the ghetto, Wholesale any return but because they none of the charm of an old New pected believed It was part of the re- Tobaccos and Confections England thoroughfare, or even the sponsibility of parenthood to en- rawness of a pioneer street. It large the horizon of children. At was simply drab. It probably re- 13, Aaron began learning piano. 9111 JOS. CAMPAU AVE. sembled most one of the outer To him it was as hackneyed a districts of lower middle-class task as to listen to his brother Trinity 24313 London, except that it was peo- scraping at the violin while his pled largely by Italians, Irish and sister did the piano accompani- ment. It made no difference wheth- er it was popular or classical music as far as the parents were concerned. The object was to be able to read notes and to play PASSOVER GREETINGS TO ALL with some degree of perfection. The musical education involved in taking the youngsters to hear con- certs or operas was considered extraneous. In fact, as far as Aaron was concerned, whatever he picked up was over the obser- vation of his people that the older children had taken up enough of the family resources without showing that they had any spe- cial musical gifts. Copland's first systematic train- ing in music, after two years by the routine piano lessons, began at 15 when. he was accepted by the composer, Rubin Goldmark. In learning harmony and com- 8701 GRINNELL AVE. position from Goldmark, Copland became familiar with Chopin and Beethoven and Wagner. By 1921 his special talents had been suffi- ciently revealed to warrant his departure for Paris, where he studied piano as well as composi- tion with Nadia Boulanger until 1924, when he returned to New York—already hailed as "tal- ented." The intuitive feeling for music is nowhere better evident than in the direction which Copland's musical interest took. Goldmark had no appreciation of such people as Debussy, Ravel and Scriabin, who were in those days being de- nounced as the masters of caco- phony. In fact, Goldmark told his pupil that the most horrible ex- amples of the corruption of musi- cal art were to be found in the harmonies of these men. But that seemed only to intensify Copland's belief that music to be appreciated by its contemporaries must reflect their spirit, their anxieties, their social and economic surroundings. It was in Paris that Copland first came to know Koussevitzky, who was then conducting at the Paris Opera. An experimenter, Koussevitzky could be depended SAM GRANADIER upon to offer the works of Pro- kofieff, Milhaud, Schoenberg and Stravinsky, among others. Copland was only 22 when he MY BEST WISHES TO THE ENTIRE returned to America after three years of the most intensive train- COMMUNITY FOR A JOYOUS PASS- ing in modern music that any American up to that time had OVER. MAY WE ALL AWAKE TO A received. He had composed a one- act ballet, a Passacaglia for piano CONSCIOUSNESS OF OUR LOYALTY and a Rondino for a string quar- tet, among others. One of his TO THIS COUNTRY, AND OUR compositions—"As It Fell Upon a Day," song for voice, flute and DUTY TO PRESERVE ITS DEMO- clarinet—was actually performed at a Paris concert in February CRATIC WAY OF LIFE. of 1924. His Passacaglia was played a few months after his return to New York at a lecture recital of the League of Corn- posers. Some years ago; in an autobi- ographical piece written for the Magazine of Art, Copland ex- amined that period of his early training and concluded: "Looking backward 15 years, I am rather amazed at my own 5th Floor—United Artists Bldg. CH. 4193 ignorance of musical conditions in America. I mean, of course, con- BRIGGS LUMBER CO. Thornton Tandem Co. S. A. 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