{"id":250,"date":"2020-03-02T21:15:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-03T03:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/?p=250"},"modified":"2020-03-02T21:15:00","modified_gmt":"2020-03-03T03:15:00","slug":"an-american-in-paris-aaron-copland-and-national-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/2020\/03\/02\/an-american-in-paris-aaron-copland-and-national-identity\/","title":{"rendered":"An American in Paris: Aaron Copland and National Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Copland in Paris in the early 1920s.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Aaron Copland was one of many creatives who flocked to Paris in the 1920s, where he encountered several forces that shaped his career as a composer. While spending the summer of 1921 at the Fontainebleau school for American composition students outside of Paris, Copland met by chance his future mentor and lifelong friend Nadia Boulanger.1<\/sup><\/a> Boulanger was lecturing on harmony at Fontainebleau, a subject Copland considered below him, “old stuff.”2<\/sup><\/a> But Copland eventually attended a class, and was so taken with Boulanger that he decided to study with her in Paris the next fall.3<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

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Nadia Boulanger in 1925.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Thus began a wonderful partnership. Copland came to admire and respect Boulanger greatly, referring to her as an “intellectual Amazon” and his study with her as “the decisive musical experience of my life.”4<\/sup><\/a>5<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Despite the formative influence Copland credits to Boulanger and his time in France, he remains branded a quintessentially “American” composer. Copland claims that distance from his home country increased the salience of his identity as an American, but scholars speculate that perhaps he was also influenced by\u00a0 French conceptions and expectations of “Americanness” in the wake of the First World War.6<\/sup><\/a>7<\/sup><\/a>Boulanger may have supported some of Copland’s self-identification with “Americanness” by encouraging his interest in more “modern,” “jazz-inspired” elements such as polyrhythms and polytonality.8<\/sup><\/a> In an interview, Boulanger said she believed her international students had a “certain characteristic,” and that she encouraged them to feel at home in Europe, but not to “lose [their] quality.”9<\/sup><\/a> These statements suggest Boulanger might see composers as influenced strongly but not exclusively by nationality, an idea similar to the interplay between “national consciousness and individual consciousness” we saw argued by Ravel and Milhaud.<\/p>\n

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Copland and Milhaud at Tanglewood, 1949.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Copland undoubtedly found influence and inspiration in French music during his time abroad, as he cites his fascination with the music of\u00a0Les Six, <\/em>particularly Darius Milhaud, and Igor Stravinsky’s use of rhythm and his turn to neoclassicism. However, most accounts of Copland’s time in Paris characterize him as a sponge, and lack explicit reference to what sort of reciprocal effect Copland might have had on French music or French composers. It all boils down to power: Copland was a young composer, still trying to define himself, coming initially as an outsider to a place where his culture was considered inferior.10<\/sup><\/a> Regardless, what Copland learned about national identity from Boulanger during his time in France helped him develop his identity as an “American” composer throughout his life.<\/p>\n

Sources<\/p>\n

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1 <\/a>Aaron Copland and Vivien Perlis, Copland: 1900 through 1942<\/em> (New York: St. Martin\u2019s, 1984), 48.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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2<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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3<\/a> Ibid, 50.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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4<\/a> Aaron Copland to his brother Ralph Copland, 19 January 1922, in Selected Correspondence of Aaron Copland<\/em>, ed. Crist and Shirley, 25.<\/p>\n

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5<\/a> Copland and Perlis,\u00a0Copland<\/em>, 62.<\/p>\n

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6\u00a0<\/a>Ibid, 95.<\/p>\n

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7\u00a0<\/a>Fauser, A. \u201cAaron Copland, Nadia Boulanger, and the Making of an \u2018American\u2019 Composer.\u201d\u00a0The Musical Quarterly<\/i>\u00a089, no. 4 (2007): 524\u201354. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/musqtl\/gdm005.<\/p>\n

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8\u00a0<\/a>Copland and Perlis,\u00a0Copland,\u00a0<\/em>67.<\/p>\n

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9\u00a0<\/a>Ibid, 69.<\/p>\n

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10\u00a0<\/a>Fauser, A. \u201cAaron Copland, Nadia Boulanger, and the Making of an \u2018American\u2019 Composer.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aaron Copland was one of many creatives who flocked to Paris in the 1920s, where he encountered several forces that shaped his career as a composer. While spending the summer of 1921 at the Fontainebleau school for American composition students outside of Paris, Copland met by chance his future mentor and lifelong friend Nadia Boulanger.1 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3594,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,29,27,28],"class_list":["post-250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aaron-copland","tag-fontainebleau","tag-nadia-boulanger","tag-national-identity"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3594"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":329,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions\/329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/performinghistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}