Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man

No less an authority than Leonard Bernstein pronounced him “the best we’ve got,” and Bernstein was hardly alone in his praise of Aaron Copland. Many would recognize those among his compositions that have become a part of standard concert repertory, but few are familiar with the full, rich life this son of Eastern European Jewish immigrants led. In Aaron The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man , 20th-century music scholar Howard Pollack traces the composer’s life and career from the streets of Brooklyn to his studies in Paris, his involvement with Harold Clurman’s Group Theatre, his work in Hollywood in the ’30s and ’40s, his adoption of the twelve-tone method of composition, and his struggle with debilitating disease in his final years.