ABSTRACT
If a living and working space could be a metaphor for someone’s professional career, then Aaron Copland’s home paralleled his lifelong musical concerns. In his workspace, his piano, desk, scores, letters, books, manuscripts, recordings, and a set of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians all coexisted. Throughout his personal and professional life Copland similarly was surrounded by a context of friends, students, colleagues, critics, teachers, listeners, readers, lovers, family, commentators, and musicians. He composed at the piano, but the desk from which he conducted other musical activities simultaneously encapsulated a profession and a friendship. Copland’s compositions-sometimes atonal, other times diatonic, but all communicative and sensitive to the musical purpose and materials of the composition-are analogous to the pictures on his walls. While a casual visitor perceived tension between the realistic and abstract paintings, the works were united in the context of gifts from friends. In much the same way, many commentators have categorized Copland’s compositions as either programmatic or abstract, failing to recognize the Americanism and individual
compositional style-an aesthetic that, like his home, was “cleanlined, uncluttered”2-that unified Copland’s works.
