Description
A pioneering figure in twentieth-century American music, Aaron Copland first rooted his work in jazz during the 1920s to showcase its divergence from European traditions. By the thirties, he used the flourishing mass media of radio and movies to create a large music-loving audience with film scores for Of Mice and Men and The Heiress, for which he won an Academy Award in 1949. Copland also composed scores for such ballets as Eugene Loring’s Billy the Kid and Martha Graham's Appalachian Spring, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for the latter. His symphonic compositions include A Lincoln Portrait and Fanfare for the Common Man.Rhoda Sherbell [b. 1938]; purchased NPG 1994
Physical Object
Bronze
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
