The dissertation consists of four recitals: one chamber music recital, two solo recitals, and one lecture recital. The repertoire of these programs was chosen with the intention of demonstrating the capability of the performer to deal with problems arising in works of varying types and of different historical periods. The lecture recital, Aaron Copland's Concerto for Clarinet, begins with biographical information, followed by a discussion of various other works of the composer and of important stylistic traits that are contained therein. After thus setting the Concerto in perspective to other major works, an investigation is made into various aspects of form and style which make the Concerto atypical in some respects to the composer t total body of works. Particular emphasis is given to rhythmic and melodic characteristics of the piece which are related to jazz and Latin-American popular music. The formal and stylistic analysis is followed by a discussion of problems involved in performing the Concerto with a piano reduction of the orchestral part, and the lecture concludes with a survey of interpretative problems posed by the work. At the conclusion of the lecture portion of the presentation, the Concerto was performed.

Aaron Copland was born of Russian-Jewish parents on November 14, 1900. Harris Kaplan, his father, had acquired the American equivalent of his name when an immigration official at the British port of entry wrote it on his papers, and from then on the family name was "Copland." Sarah Mittenthal and Harris Copland met at a family social gathering in New York and were married in 1885. They lived in the upper stories of his department store in Brooklyn which remained the family home until 1924 and was where Aaron, the youngest of five, was born.

This master´s thesis deals with the personality and works of the 20th century American composer Aaron Copland. In its first part it brings his biography together with a summary of his most important pieces. The second part of the thesis focuses on Copland?s Duo for Flute and Piano written in 1971. Besides the information about the historic context of the piece and its characteristic it contains an interpretative analysis and a parsing of the Duo?s recordings.

An examination of the influences on twentieth-century wind music would be incomplete without the consideration of composer, organist, pianist, conductor, teacher, and critic Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979). Students from the United States began studying with Boulanger between World War I and World War II, and continued to travel to study with her for over fifty years. The respect awarded this legendary French woman was gained as a result of her effectiveness as a teacher, her influence on the development of each student's unique compositional style, and her guidance of an emerging American musical style. The correlation between the teacher's lessons and the compositional output of her students must be explored. Boulanger did not compose specifically for winds, and she did not encourage her students to compose for the wind symphony. However, this document will outline the influence that this powerful pedagogue exerted over the creation of repertoire by her students by providing insight into the pedagogical style and philosophical foundations of Boulanger as reflected in the literature and by the writings, comments, and compositions of three successful students who composed literature for the wind symphony: Aaron Copland (1900-1990), Leslie Bassett (b. 1923), and Donald Grantham (b. 1947). Three significant works for winds will be considered including Copland's Emblems, Bassett's Lullaby for Kirsten, and Grantham's Variations on an American Cavalry Song.

Government investigations into the motion picture industry are well-documented, as is the widespread blacklisting that was concurrent. Not nearly so well documented are the many investigations of musicians and musical organizations which occurred during this same period. The degree to which various musicians and musical organizations were investigated varied considerably. Some warranted only passing mention, while others were rigorously questioned in formal Congressional hearings. Hanns Eisler was deported as a result of the House Committee on Un-American Activities' (HUAC) investigation into his background and activities in the United States. Leonard Bernstein, Marc Blitzstein, and Aaron Copland are but a few of the prominent composers investigated by the government for their involvement in leftist organizations. The Symphony of the Air was denied visas for a Near East tour after several orchestra members were implicated as Communists. Members of musicians' unions in New York and Los Angeles were called before HUAC hearings because of alleged infiltration by Communists into their ranks. The Metropolitan Music School of New York, led by its president-emeritus, the composer Wallingford Riegger, was the subject of a two day congressional hearing in New York City. There is no way to measure either quantitatively or qualitatively the effect of the period on the music but only the extent to which the activities affected the musicians themselves. The extraordinary paucity of published information about the treatment of the musicians during this period is put into even greater relief when compared to the thorough manner in which the other arts, notably literature and film, have been examined. This work attempts to fill this gap and shed light on a particularly dark chapter in the history of contemporary music.

Este trabalho consiste em investigar as tendências pandiatônicas na obra "Preamble for a Solemn Occasion" para órgão (1953) de Aaron Copland (1900-1990). A análise inclui a busca pelos conteúdos intervalares mais recorrentes, a interação entre a tonalidade harmônica e a tonalidade melódica, e os centros tonais. Os referenciais teóricos utilizados foram os livros Tonality, Atonality e Pantonality de Rudolph Reti (1958), que fundamenta o conceito de pantonalidade, e Analytic Approaches to Twentieth-Century Music de Joel Lester (1989), que elucida acerca da teoria dos conjuntos. / The purpose of this research is to investigate the pandiatonic tendencies of the "Preamble for a Solemn Occasion" for organ (1953) by Aaron Copland (1900-1990). The analysis inc1udes a search for the most recurrent interval collections, the interaction between the harmonic and melodic tonalities, and the tonal centers. The theoretical framework inc1udes the works by Rudolph Reti: Tonality, Atonality e Pantonality (1958) where pantonality is defined, and Analytic Approaches to Twentieth-Century Music by Joel Lester (1989) for set theory analysis.

Este trabalho consiste em investigar as tendências pandiatônicas na obra "Preamble for a Solemn Occasion" para órgão (1953) de Aaron Copland (1900-1990). A análise inclui a busca pelos conteúdos intervalares mais recorrentes, a interação entre a tonalidade harmônica e a tonalidade melódica, e os centros tonais. Os referenciais teóricos utilizados foram os livros Tonality, Atonality e Pantonality de Rudolph Reti (1958), que fundamenta o conceito de pantonalidade, e Analytic Approaches to Twentieth-Century Music de Joel Lester (1989), que elucida acerca da teoria dos conjuntos. / The purpose of this research is to investigate the pandiatonic tendencies of the "Preamble for a Solemn Occasion" for organ (1953) by Aaron Copland (1900-1990). The analysis inc1udes a search for the most recurrent interval collections, the interaction between the harmonic and melodic tonalities, and the tonal centers. The theoretical framework inc1udes the works by Rudolph Reti: Tonality, Atonality e Pantonality (1958) where pantonality is defined, and Analytic Approaches to Twentieth-Century Music by Joel Lester (1989) for set theory analysis.

Este trabalho consiste em investigar as tendências pandiatônicas na obra "Preamble for a Solemn Occasion" para órgão (1953) de Aaron Copland (1900-1990). A análise inclui a busca pelos conteúdos intervalares mais recorrentes, a interação entre a tonalidade harmônica e a tonalidade melódica, e os centros tonais. Os referenciais teóricos utilizados foram os livros Tonality, Atonality e Pantonality de Rudolph Reti (1958), que fundamenta o conceito de pantonalidade, e Analytic Approaches to Twentieth-Century Music de Joel Lester (1989), que elucida acerca da teoria dos conjuntos. / The purpose of this research is to investigate the pandiatonic tendencies of the "Preamble for a Solemn Occasion" for organ (1953) by Aaron Copland (1900-1990). The analysis inc1udes a search for the most recurrent interval collections, the interaction between the harmonic and melodic tonalities, and the tonal centers. The theoretical framework inc1udes the works by Rudolph Reti: Tonality, Atonality e Pantonality (1958) where pantonality is defined, and Analytic Approaches to Twentieth-Century Music by Joel Lester (1989) for set theory analysis.

In their shared goal of communicating left-wing principles to children through music, Marc Blitzstein's Worker's Kids of the World (1935), Aaron Copland's The Second Hurricane (1937), and Alex North's The Hither and Thither of Danny Dither (1941) exhibit a fundamental unity of purpose that binds them both to each other and to the extensive leftist pedagogical efforts of their time. By observing the parallel relationship among these three children's works and contemporary youth organizations, summer camps, and children's literature, their cultural objectives and stylistic idiosyncrasies emerge as expressions of a continuously evolving educational tradition. Whereas Worker's Kids comes out of the revolutionary Communist aesthetics of the Composers' Collective and the militant activism of The Young Pioneers, The Second Hurricane and Danny Dither reflect the increasingly accommodating educational efforts of the American Popular Front.