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Summary: A wonderful book on a wonderful composer
Review: For me, a young American composer, this book was inspirational! It had a perfect balance between Copland's personal life and his music. My only minor complaint is its organization. I have recommended this book to many friends both, musician and layman; and I recommend it to you!
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Summary: A stunning achievement of scholarship and literature.
Review: Howard Pollack has synthesized an enormous amount of material into an engrossing survey of Copland's life and work. The book reads as at once a personal and critical account of America's greatest composer. Pollack's is (and will be for years to come) the definitive study of Aaron Copland.
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Summary: The finest book on Aaron Copland written thus far.
Review: Howard Pollack has, quite simply, written the finest account of Aaron Copland' life and music thus far. I have all of the other biographies - including the excellent autobiography by Copland and Vivien Perlis. As worthwhile as these earlier publications are, it is Howard Pollack who has given all Copland devotees the quintessential story of the life and the music of America's greatest composer. I can think of no better place to start exploring Copland's genius than with this book as an introduction to the music, without which the world would be a poorer place and the 20th century would be missing a unique body of sound. It is inconceivable, to me at any rate, to imagine a world without Copland's music. No one else comes close to creating his sound world. Thank you Mr Pollack for making it so clear to all of your readers that Aaron Copland is not only America's greatest composer but is, historically, and without question, one of most important composers the world has ever produced.
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Summary: the finest biography written on the life of a composer !
Review: I have just finished reading Howard Pollack's biography of Aaron Copland.This monumental work provides the diffinitive account of the life and works of America's greatest composer.This is a "must read" for classical music lovers or anyone interested in American culture in the 20th century.
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Summary: the finest biography written on the life of a composer !
Review: Up until now, the scholarly information about Aaron Copland has been curiously skewed. The 2-volume book about his life and work by Vivian Perlis relied primarily on an oral history conducted with the composer. Unfortunately, Copland was very reticent to discuss his personal life. Accounts by "friends" and colleagues like Virgil Thomson seemed to have an ax to grind, usually on Copland's neck. So the need for a book that could place the composer's work in the context of his personal life and the larger milieu he lived in was greatly needed. Howard Pollack's new biography has all the goods, from Copland's boyfriends to his collaborations with Martha Graham and Agnes DeMille. It's hard to say, however, who deserves a swift kick in the pants for the book's structure: the author or his editors at Henry Holt. Pollack structures the book like an anthology of articles. While this might ostensibly makes it easier to find specific topics, and use the biography as a reference book, it also means that you are constantly jumping back and forth in time as you try to read the book, which becomes increasingly annoying as one goes along. About halfway through, I stopped trying to read it in sequence and started jumping around from topic to topic. This structural problem also creates other dilemmas. For example, one might assume that since there is a chapter devoted to Copland's personal relationships that one would find all of his significant others there. Not so: to read about his on-and-off relationship with Leonard Bernstein, you must consult the chapter on Copland's relationship to younger composers. Moreover, what is lost in this structure is the unity of the composer's life. By segmenting and sectionalizing various aspects of his life and work into sepearate chapters, we lose the ongoing flow that might encourage readers to connect the "warming" up of Copland's harmonic style to both his involvement in a fairly steady relationship and his engagement with a larger socially-motivated group of artists. Pollack puts the work in one chapter, the boyfriend in another, his colleagues in a third. Copland once quipped that he had a "split personality" (doubtless related to being a closeted homosexual); Pollack shouldn't have split his life up in assembling this biography. All the info is here, but the reader will have to put it together, since the author hasn't.
Rating: 
Summary: Great information, lousy structure
Review: Up until now, the scholarly information about Aaron Copland has been curiously skewed. The 2-volume book about his life and work by Vivian Perlis relied primarily on an oral history conducted with the composer. Unfortunately, Copland was very reticent to discuss his personal life. Accounts by "friends" and colleagues like Virgil Thomson seemed to have an ax to grind, usually on Copland's neck. So the need for a book that could place the composer's work in the context of his personal life and the larger milieu he lived in was greatly needed. Howard Pollack's new biography has all the goods, from Copland's boyfriends to his collaborations with Martha Graham and Agnes DeMille. It's hard to say, however, who deserves a swift kick in the pants for the book's structure: the author or his editors at Henry Holt. Pollack structures the book like an anthology of articles. While this might ostensibly makes it easier to find specific topics, and use the biography as a reference book, it also means that you are constantly jumping back and forth in time as you try to read the book, which becomes increasingly annoying as one goes along. About halfway through, I stopped trying to read it in sequence and started jumping around from topic to topic. This structural problem also creates other dilemmas. For example, one might assume that since there is a chapter devoted to Copland's personal relationships that one would find all of his significant others there. Not so: to read about his on-and-off relationship with Leonard Bernstein, you must consult the chapter on Copland's relationship to younger composers. Moreover, what is lost in this structure is the unity of the composer's life. By segmenting and sectionalizing various aspects of his life and work into sepearate chapters, we lose the ongoing flow that might encourage readers to connect the "warming" up of Copland's harmonic style to both his involvement in a fairly steady relationship and his engagement with a larger socially-motivated group of artists. Pollack puts the work in one chapter, the boyfriend in another, his colleagues in a third. Copland once quipped that he had a "split personality" (doubtless related to being a closeted homosexual); Pollack shouldn't have split his life up in assembling this biography. All the info is here, but the reader will have to put it together, since the author hasn't.
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Summary: Great approach and thorough biography
Review: When Pollack wrote this book, Copland desperately needed a biographer, and for a initial comprehensive effort, Pollack's book more than fills the bill.
The book is a hefty 550 pages, not counting notes and index, but its unorthodox organization--the chapters are chronological, alternating, for example, a history of a few works with an analysis of some aspect of Copland's life--keeps the story moving. In fact, this organizational gambit is about the only thing that makes a life so sprawling as Copland's manageable. By grouping together everything having to do with, say, Copland and European composers, in one chapter, he makes it much easier for the reader to sink his teeth into the subject and to refer back to a topic later on.
This book is almost a hagiography--Pollack clearly adores Copland and, if anything, views him as underappreciated. In particular, Pollack seeks to revive Copland's reputation as a "serious" composer, right up there in the 20th-century American canon with Ives. Along with such staples as "Appalachian Spring" and "Fanfare for the Common Man," Pollack wants us to recognize the achievements of his later, twelve-tone works. Further, he attempts (somewhat convincingly) to show the relationship between his "popular" works and the less-accessible ones, whereas Copland's works have often been seen as belonging to different "periods."
I wouldn't be surprised if someone supersedes this biography in another 15 or 20 years, but for now, Pollack's book is a great introduction to the man and his work. Not only that, but it places Copland's ascension from struggling artist to eminent public figure in such a way to inspire young artists in all fields. A great read.
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Summary: Variations on Copland
Review: While occasionally indulging in tendentious "theory," University of Houston professor of music Howard Pollack's ambitious, uneven book is redeemed by the author's encyclopedic knowledge, informed affection for Copland's (1900-1990) person and music, and the biographer's ability, more often than not, to write technically sophisticated musical analyses without obscuring the music. Given the identity politics dominating the new musicology, for all its flaws, Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man, is a good and valuable book. It contains information from previously unavailable letters and interviews with the late composer's friends and relations. But why does a tenured, respected professor writing for a trade house adopt the method of cobbling on end chapters dealing with tendentious, identity-political theory that can only detract from the work? And yet, at present, this may be as good as can be hoped for: Some theory as encore, to satisfy the commissars. The alternative is, increasingly, all tin-eared theory, and no music.
Rating:
Summary: Variations on Copland
Review: While occasionally indulging in tendentious "theory," University of Houston professor of music Howard Pollack's ambitious, uneven book is redeemed by the author's encyclopedic knowledge, informed affection for Copland's (1900-1990) person and music, and the biographer's ability, more often than not, to write technically sophisticated musical analyses without obscuring the music. Given the identity politics dominating the new musicology, for all its flaws, Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man, is a good and valuable book. It contains information from previously unavailable letters and interviews with the late composer's friends and relations. But why does a tenured, respected professor writing for a trade house adopt the method of cobbling on end chapters dealing with tendentious, identity-political theory that can only detract from the work? And yet, at present, this may be as good as can be hoped for: Some theory as encore, to satisfy the commissars. The alternative is, increasingly, all tin-eared theory, and no music.
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Summary: Modish in parts, but still an essential guide to Copland
Review: Whilst Esquire as early as 1948 called Copland "America's No. 1 Composer", secondary Copland literature (which, given Copland's habitat and distinction, one automatically credits with a forest-wrecking amplitude) proves surprisingly scarce. The first words of Pollack's own book are, in part: "For many years I took Copland for granted ... he remained a shadowy figure at some distance from the central concerns of myself, my classmates and my teachers". Amazingly, between 1955 and the present volume not a single comprehensive study of Copland's life, by an outsider (as distinct from Copland's own explications of his aesthetic), appeared. "Essential" biographies of someone or other emerge, if we are to believe the book trade's spin-doctors, at least once every week; the account under review actually deserves this adjective. Its author (Professor of Music at the University of Houston) shows his love for Copland's oeuvre on every page, which helps; here is no glorified doctoral thesis where the authorial jargon struggles to drown out the authorial yawns. Yes, as other reviewers have complained, modish identity politics get too indulgent a treatment; yes, as they have also complained, Pollack makes too small an effort to integrate his insights into a coherent structure. But we're not likely to encounter a better guide to the subject.
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