Aaron Copland

A storm of Modernism swept through the art worlds of the West in the early decades of the twentieth century, uprooting centuries of tradition. The epicenter of this storm was Paris, France. For an incandescent moment from 1905 to 1930, Paris was the magnetic center for radical innovation and experiment, and the Mecca for creative talents who would change the course of art throughout the Western world.

Copland himself is the key explicator of his own extraordinary musical career, from piano lessons in Brooklyn and study with Nadia Boulanger, a fling as a wild-eyed modernist, and finally to his preeminence in the American musical world. The program features a wealth of Copland music, including ballet sequences with Agnes de Mille dancing in Rodeo and Martha Graham in Appalachian Spring, scenes of Copland conducting, and interviews with Leonard Bernstein and Ned Rorem, who said of Copland, "He invented out of whole cloth what it means to be American." Written by Vivian Perlis and produced by Ruth Leon.

A look at the activities of the Tanglewood Music Center, America's renowned summer Academy for talented musicians, singers, composers and conductors.

Dramatizations and actual archival film footage and photographs combine to relate the life of American composer Charles Ives and to document the musical background which influenced his work. Composers Aaron Copland and Elliott Carter reminisce about Ives and discuss his music.

German-Brazilian production on the life of Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos.

This concert film made in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles in 1976 captures a memorable performance conducted by the doyen of American composers, Aaron Copland. It includes some of his greatest and most attractive music, from the patriotic flourish of Fanfare for the Common Man and the spirited orchestral fantasy El Salón México, to the colloquial warmth of his suite from the opera The Tender Land. Of particular importance is the collaboration with the great Benny Goodman in the masterwork he commissioned and premiered, the Clarinet Concerto.

This video depicts Tanglewood in its very early years. It contains very rare footage of Serge Koussevitzky and Aaron Copland.

A romantic pair leaves their flat for a desultory burlesque show and two workmen take advantage of the empty house to pilfer a wallet.