Introducing
Your new presentation assistant.
Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.
Trending searches
Starring
Bernstein was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim.
According to The New York Times, he was "One of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history."
He was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, as the son of Jewish parents, Jennie and Samuel Joseph Bernstein, who were hair-dressing supplies wholesalers . Despite his surname he was not related to film composer Elmer Bernstein, but the two men were friends, and even shared a certain physical similarity. Within the world of professional music, they were distinguished from each other by the use of the nicknames Bernstein West (Elmer) and Bernstein East (Leonard).
As a child he was very close to his younger sister Shirley, and would often play entire operas or Beethoven symphonies with her at the piano. He had a variety of piano teachers in his youth including Helen Coates who later became his secretary.
In his younger years, Bernstein attended the Garrison Grammar School and Boston Latin School.
After completing his studies at Harvard in 1939, he enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
1918
Bday, August 25
1935
Boston Latin School
1940
Attends C.I.M.
[Curtis Instatute of Music]
1951
He married the Chilean actress Felicia Cohn, Montealegre on
September 10
1957
Wrote West Side Story the musical
1990
October 14
Death Day :(
He compose many pieces including........
Piano
Musical
Choral
Chamber
Film
Orchestral
Ballets
Copland was born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 14, 1900.
At the age of sixteen he went to Manhattan to study with Rubin Goldmark, a private music instructor who taught Copland the basics of composition. During these early years he merged himself in contemporary classical music by attending performances at the New York Symphony and Brooklyn Academy of Music. He found, however, that like many other young musicians, he was fasinated by classical music. So, at the age of twenty, he left New York for the Summer School of Music for American Students at Fountainebleau, France.
The piece, “Symphony for Organ and Orchestra” (1925) was Copland’s entry into the life of professional American music. He followed this with “Music for the Theater” (1925) and “Piano Concerto” (1926), both of which relied heavily on the jazz idioms of the time. For Copland, jazz was the first American major musical movement. From jazz he hoped to draw the inspiration for a new type of symphonic music, one that could differentiate from the music of Europe.
It was in 1935 with “El Salón México” that Copland began his most productive and popular years. The piece presented a new sound that had its roots in Mexican folk music. Copland believed that through this music, he could find his way to a more popular symphonic music.
Throughout the ’50s, Copland slowed his work as a composer, and began to try his hand at conducting. He began to tour with his own work as well as the works of other great American musicians. By the early ’70s, Copland had, with few exceptions, completely stopped writing original music. Most of his time was spent conducting and reworking older compositions. In 1983 Copland conducted his last symphony. His generous work as a teacher at Tanglewood, Harvard, and the New School for Social Research gained him a following of devoted musicians.
On December 2, 1990, Aaron Copland died in North Tarrytown, New York. Oh darn! :(
Harvard
TTh
(cc) image by nuonsolarteam on Flickr
He was the child of Jewish immagrants from Luthania. He first learned to play the piano from his older sister.
Among his most popular compositions for film are those for “Of Mice and Men” (1939), “Our Town ” (1940), and “The Heiress” (1949), which won him an Academy Award for best score. He composed scores for a number of ballets, including two of the most popular of the time: “Agnes DeMille’s Rodeo” (1942) and Martha Graham’s “Appalachian Spring” (1944), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize.