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Sender: American Memory Fellows <AMFELLOWS@SUN8.LOC.GOV>
Poster: Frances Jacobson Harris <francey@UX1.CSO.UIUC.EDU>
Subject: Re: Aaron Copland Collection now in American Memory
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Oops, the correct URL is http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/achtml/achome.html.
cheers! Frances
At 10:37 AM 11/15/00 -0500, you wrote:
>This announcement is being sent to a number of lists. Please accept our
>apologies for any duplicate postings.
>
>November 14, 2000, marks the one hundredth birthday of the American
>musical icon Aaron Copland. The new online Aaron Copland Collection
><http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/achtml/> created by the National Digital
>Library Program in conjunction with the Library=92s Music Division, forms
>part of the Library of Congress=92s homage to this distinguished American.
>
>Copland devoted his life as a composer to creating, fostering,
>developing, and establishing a distinctive "American" music. He became
>known as the "Dean of American Music," a sobriquet with which he was
>uncomfortable. His name is synonymous with his compositions
>Appalachian Spring=ADwhich won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize in Music=ADand
>Fanfare for the Common Man.
>
>The Aaron Copland Collection Web site includes approximately one
>thousand items selected from Copland's correspondence, writings,
>photographs, and complete sets of music sketches. These sketches
>provide an overview of Copland=92s compositional process; he used
>them in composing thirty-one works spanning the years 1924 to 1967
>and covering every medium in which he composed: orchestral, ballet,
>opera, film, chamber, solo-piano, and vocal music.
>
>The eight hundred items of correspondence in the online collection
>include Copland=92s letters to his parents and other family members
>in the 1920s and =9130s, to his Parisian teacher Nadia Boulanger, to
>the conductor Serge Koussevitzky, and to other notable figures in
>twentieth-century music such as Nicolas Slonimsky, Roger Sessions,
>Carlos Ch=E1vez, Walter Piston, Leonard Bernstein, and Benjamin
>Britten. As an advocate and supporter of American music and
>American composers, Copland frequently wrote articles, presented
>lectures, and delivered speeches, and eighty-six of these are presented
>online as previously unpublished drafts. They reveal the creative
>process through which he wrote about his own music, other composers
>and their music, and other people who played important roles in his
>musical life. More than a hundred photographs are also represented
>in the online collection, many created by Copland=92s friend Victor Kraft,
>a professional photographer. They include portraits of Aaron Copland
>at various ages and places, with family members, with other composers,
>and with other people associated with his career as a composer and
>conductor, as well as images from his worldwide travels.
>
>The Aaron Copland Collection Web site also includes the following
>Special Presentations: a time line of important events in Copland=92s
>life, an essay on Copland=92s music by Library staff member and noted
>American music scholar Wayne Shirley, and several previously
>published articles on Copland=92s life and work. In the future, the
>site will also include the revised finding aid for the complete
>Aaron Copland Collection.
>
>Copland extensively documented the many facets of his life in music.
>The archival Aaron Copland Collection, housed in the Library=92s Music
>Division, consists of approximately four hundred thousand items,
>dating from 1910 to 1990 with a few nineteenth-century photographs,
>and includes his music manuscripts, printed music, personal and
>business correspondence, diaries and writings, photographic materials,
>awards, honorary degrees, programs, and other biographical materials.
>It is the primary resource for research on Aaron Copland and a major
>resource for the study of musical life in twentieth-century America
>generally, particularly from the 1920s to the 1960s.
>
>Please direct any questions to ndlpcoll@loc.gov .
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