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The Selected Correspondence of Aaron Copland.

Article Excerpt
The Selected Correspondence of Aaron Copland. Edited by Elizabeth B. Crist and Wayne Shirley. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. [xv, 269 p. ISBN 0-300-11121-5. $45.] Indexes, bibliographical notes, photographs.

The life of Aaron Copland (1900-1990), one of the leading musical figures of his era, has been and continues to be well documented through publications and recordings. Many of these works quote from and use his letters, but until now, a volume of his correspondence did not exist. The current work under review is the first published book dedicated to the letters of Copland. Drawing from the archives of the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, Yale University, Columbia University, and others, the editors pieced together the life of Copland through his correspondence, representing an exceptional letter writer who often reveals much about his life not found in his other writings. Editorial choices and the selection process are defined in the preface:

The letters in this collection have been selected for their readability, their interest, and the light they cast on Copland's thoughts about his career. There has been some attempt to represent the general flow of his life from the 1920s through the 1970s, but we have preferred to let the richer periods of the correspondence (especially the early 1920s and early 1940s) take up more space rather than to...

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