Copland's Music Creation And Style

Aaron Copland (1900-1990), one of the most influential American music composers of the 20^th century, contributed greatly to the creation of American professional music and the promotion of the American ethnical music. His music is full of the energy of life. It preserved the ethnical style and showed 20^th century's modern music composing techniques. He perfectly combined the composing knowledge and techniques he learned from the Europe with the music materials of all ethnical groups of the United States. He explored and practised constantly; and he created personalised musical language of himself. He is the outstanding representative of American music and even of the world in the 20^th century, and an esteemed and praiseful musician.This article would try to analyse Aaron Copland' music creation and its style in five aspects:Chapter 1: A general description of Aaron Copland's composing characteristics. Describe and briefly summarise his composing characteristics according to his five composing career periods from early composing exercises, to "French Jazz", abstract music, practical music-drama music, and then modern music.Chapter 2: Characteristics of Aaron Copland's rhythm techniques. Focus on Jazz rhythm and analyse how Copland applied it in his compositions.Chapter 3: Characteristics of Aaron Copland's melody techniques. Analyse form two sides, namely his personal characteristics and the characteristics of the whole age. Due to the lack of materials, here only analyse his most characterised melodies.Chapter 4: Characteristics of Aaron Copland's harmony techniques. Analyse by comparing with his contemporary harmony techniques, and try to understand Copland's harmony creation and arrangement by introducing Schenker's theories.Chapter 5: Characteristics of Aaron Copland's orchestration. Analyse Copland's natural and flexible style of orchestration by focusing on his four typical compositions.Chapter 6: Rationale of Aaron Copland's technical characteristics. Analyse the accidental and inevitable reasons for his technical characteristics in background of the time and his personalities.