The following articles were originally published in the Schwann record catalog in Schwann-1 Record and Tape Guide. November, 1975: To honor Aaron Copland on his seventy-fifth birthday the following pieces have been contributed for this issue by some of his closest friends. We are most grateful to them for their instant and enthusiastic cooperation in offering tribute and personal birthday greetings to Aaron Copland, a great American composer. It is with great pleasure that we add our own warmest good wishes on this happy occasion. -- William Schwann
A 75th Birthday Tribute
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Tribute to Aaron Copland Does the celebration of an anniversary impose on us the burdensome weight of accumulated years, or is it every year a kind of rebirth? As times elapses, new aims, new means are found, unspoiled by evolution. Aaron Copland gives a vivid example of this duality.
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My Friend Aaron Aaron Copland is quite simply a great man. I do not refer to his eminence as a composer; I speak of the person. It is his simplicity which is the essential mark of greatness.
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A Wise and Trusted Friend Aaron Copland was the first American composer I met on arrival to Boston from Paris in the fall of 1929, and I recall Serge Koussevitzky's words of introduction: "This is Aaron Copland--remember the name: You will hear a great deal of him and of his music. . . ." And, indeed, I have. Memorable are the early years of strong opposition to Copland's music...
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Birthday Tribute Celebrating Aaron Copland's birthday has for me become virtually an avocational pursuit. At the time Aaron was sixty I was president of the Juilliard School and had the satisfaction of organizing a grand festival of his works. For his seventieth there was a special program at Lincoln Center organized by his publishers, who for both birthdays gave splendid parties after the performances. It was...
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Aaron and Moses I have known Aaron Copland for half of his lifetime, and loved him all those years. I have known his music for even longer than that, and have loved it with equal constancy. But critics and colleagues have been writing about the man-and-his-music for even longer, for half a century, in depth and out of it. And so, at this seventy-fifth milestone, I find...