Copland: Since 1943 - Softcover

The concluding volume of what is in effect Copland's autobiography, with commentary by Perlis, who teaches at the Yale School of Music, and many Copland friends and admirers, brings the life of America's oldest living composer up to date. Beginning in mid-WW II with the excitement over Appalachian Spring , shortly followed by the Third Symphony, we see Copland in the postwar years gradually becoming less productive, turning to conducting, and finally moving into a dignified retirement replete with honors and celebrations. This is more a tribute than a revealing portrait, though the details of the composer's meticulously recorded life, and his thoughts about his music, will be invaluable to scholars. Perhaps there is not much to disclose: Copland, like his music, seems highly intelligent, well organized, full of vitality with a dash of melancholy--very much the artist as businessman, teacher, rather than as the anguished, solitary soul of popular fiction. He was the foremost world ambassador for American serious music when it very much needed one, and at least two generations of composers owe him a tremendous debt. Illustrated.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Like its predecessor ( Copland , LJ 7/84), this second volume of the well-known Copland-Perlis collaboration is essentially an autobiography interspersed with historical narrative and reminiscences by Copland's associates. Perlis, ever the diligent historian, provides copious documents and footnotes. To read of Copland's life and times--in his words and in those of his colleagues--is to arrive at the very heart of American music, and one is grateful to find there a genuinely compassionate spirit as well as a supremely talented composer. Scholars and lay readers alike will find this an indispensable source of Copland lore.
-Larry Lipkis, Univ. of California at Los Angeles
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.