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I Met Aaron Copland
I met Aaron Copland, America's greatest composer and the author of Appalachian Spring, purely by chance one day in 1963. It was backstage at the Royal Festival Hall in London. I was thinking of being a concert pianist, or perhaps a composer, or perhaps both. Lucky enough to be the son of a traveling philosopher, I found myself in London.
Every afternoon and every night I would go to a different concert, sometimes two or three in a day. Concerts, in those days, cost about $2 to sit in the highest balcony. Wigmore Hall and The Royal Festival Hall were my favorite haunts. The Festival Hall had only recently been opened, and was shiny and new.
Piano Is Easy
I Loved To Crash The Backstage
It was my habit, as a brash teenager who knew no better, to crash the backstage area and blend with the after-concert well-wishers. I met many famous musicians of the day, including pianist Rudolf Serkin, Antal Dorati and many, many others.
I waited in line with all the other nobodies and shook hands and basked in the reflected radiance of so much classical music expertise. My idol was composer Aaron Copland because of his Appalachian Spring. As a budding American composer one could have no higher example of quality and brilliance than the great Aaron Copland.
Getting Backstage
One day I managed to get tickets for a gala concert at the Festival Hall. On the bill was Copland, who conducted the Appalachian Spring Suite. The backstage world of maestro and divas, and concierges shooing me away, fascinated me more than the music.
I gained entrance to that world only because I was so insignificant as a raw youth. No one took any notice of me. But this evening was apparently very important, for there were film crews and security and velvet ropes cordoning off the backstage area.
The Backstage Entrance
A huge crowd swelled at the backstage entrance. I dodged the melee and managed to skirt around it, arriving at the door. There a burly English guard stood, barring anyone who didn't seem to belong. I looked nice, with a coat and tie, and so I suddenly piped up, without thinking at all what I was going to say. "I'm with the family," I ventured, and like magic the guard smiled and removed the restraining velvet barrier and I was in!
I walked down a deserted hallway. There seemed to be a hubbub, and turning a corner found a crowd outside a dressing room door. Having no idea what was appropriate, I pushed my way to the door. It suddenly opened, revealing a smiling gentleman.
I Meet My Idol
I could see into another room, and there was Copland himself. He was in a sweaty white dress shirt and sat smiling on a desk. His inner circle and photographers and a film crew surrounded him. Copland had just finished conducting, and was sweating profusely.
Suddenly Copland looked at me and smiled. He gestured towards me and said, "Kid! Come in!" I was flabbergasted, as was the crowd and the film crew. But the cameras kept on rolling as the door shut behind me and I was conducted to the inner sanctum of America's greatest composer.
Copland acted like I was one of the family, and hugged me. I couldn't believe it. The inner circle laughed as if at some in-joke. But it was all good-natured and too delicious to understand. It was all happening so quickly. Suddenly Copland says to a photographer, "Jerry, you gotta get one of me and the kid!"
A news photographer jumps to the foreground, and takes a flash snap of Copland with his sweaty arm around me, grinning like I'd just won the Prix de Rome.
I Am Swept Away By The Crowd
I managed to mumble that I admired him and wanted to be a composer. But all of a sudden a tide of crew and glitterati and well-wishers pulled me from the great man. The next thing I knew I was back out in the hall. My impression was of a kind man who sparkled with a radiant personality. I spent all of ninety seconds with him.
REFERENCES
Music History
What Killed the Golden Age of the Piano
Carl Tausig Cooks His Cat
George Sand Killed Chopin
Why Brahms Must Have Been Fat
Artur Rubinstein Was A Vampire
Igor Stravinsky Loses His Cool
Vladimir Horowitz Goes To The Racetrack
Beethoven Was No Beauty
The World’s Largest Blue Danube Waltz
Was Mozart Murdered?
Beethoven’s Rage Over A Lost Penny
Franz Schubert, The First Bohemian
Chopin’s Singing Piano Tone
Stravinsky’s Good Luck
Tchaikovsky’s Greatest Fan
Hector Berlioz and the Orchestral Train Wreck
Piano Lessons with Papa Bach
Piano Lessons with Frederic Chopin
The Great Piano Craze of 1910
The American Piano Wars
Why Hugo Wolf Went Insane
Rachmaninoff and the Evolution of Pop Songs
Musical Feuds
Piano In The Past Was Better
The Master’s Hands
Einstein’s Piano
Einstein’s Violin Improvisations In Gypsy Style
A History of Piano and Numbers
Ryan Seacrest’s Piano Concerto #2
