Aaron Copland — composer ("americana") with roots in the Russian Empire
Aaron Copland was born in Brooklyn on 14 November 1900, the youngest of five children of Harris Morris Copland and Sarah Mittenthal. Both his parents were Jews from Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire; published sources do not record their towns.
His father was born Harris Morris Kaplan, around 1860. Leaving Lithuania as a young man, he lived and worked in Scotland for two or three years to pay his passage to America, and it was probably there that Kaplan became Copland; Aaron believed for years that an immigration official had changed it, and learned only late in life that the family name had been Kaplan. His mother's family had left Lithuania in the 1870s and lived in Illinois and Texas before moving to New York. Harris Copland ran a department store on Washington Avenue in Brooklyn, and the family lived above it. His father had no interest in music; his mother sang and played the piano, and his sister Laurine gave him his first lessons.
After studying harmony with Rubin Goldmark, he went to France in 1921 and became a pupil of Nadia Boulanger. Serge Koussevitzky conducted his Symphony for Organ and Orchestra in Boston in 1925 and the premiere of his Piano Concerto in 1927, and in 1940 invited him to teach at the first summer session of the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood, where he taught until 1965. In 1928 he completed his first important chamber work, Vitebsk.
In the late 1930s and 1940s he wrote the works by which he is best known: El Salón México, the ballets Billy the Kid, Rodeo (1942) and Appalachian Spring (1944), A Lincoln Portrait and Fanfare for the Common Man (both 1942), and the Third Symphony. Appalachian Spring, written for Martha Graham, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1945. In 1947 Benny Goodman commissioned his Clarinet Concerto, and in 1950 his score for The Heiress won an Academy Award. In 1953 he was called to testify before Senator Joseph McCarthy's subcommittee, and several of his engagements were cancelled.
He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964, Kennedy Center Honors in 1979, and the Congressional Gold Medal and National Medal of Arts in 1986. He died in North Tarrytown, New York, on 2 December 1990, aged ninety, and his ashes were scattered at Tanglewood.
"His father, Harris Morris Kaplan, left Lithuania as a young man, worked in Scotland for two to three years, where the name became Copland, and went on to New York; his mother's family left Lithuania in the 1870s for Illinois and Texas before settling in New York."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Lithuania, then in the Russian Empire (both parents; towns not documented)
Both his parents were Jews born in Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire. His father, Harris Morris Kaplan, worked in Scotland on the way to America and there became Copland; Aaron learned of the original name only late in life.
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Lithuania, then in the Russian Empire (both parents; towns not documented). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.