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Good morning, This announcement is being sent to a number of lists. Please accept our apologies for any duplicate postings. November 14, 2000, marks the one hundredth birthday of the American musical icon Aaron Copland. The new online Aaron Copland Collection (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/achtml/) created by the National Digital Library Program in conjunction with the Library’s Music Division, forms part of the Library of Congress’s homage to this distinguished American. Copland devoted his life as a composer to creating, fostering, developing, and establishing a distinctive "American" music. He became known as the "Dean of American Music," a sobriquet with which he was uncomfortable. His name is synonymous with his compositions Appalachian Spring–which won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize in Music–and Fanfare for the Common Man. The Aaron Copland Collection Web site includes approximately one thousand items selected from Copland's correspondence, writings, photographs, and complete sets of music sketches. These sketches provide an overview of Copland’s compositional process; he used them in composing thirty-one works spanning the years 1924 to 1967 and covering every medium in which he composed: orchestral, ballet, opera, film, chamber, solo-piano, and vocal music. The eight hundred items of correspondence in the online collection include Copland’s letters to his parents and other family members in the 1920s and ‘30s, to his Parisian teacher Nadia Boulanger, to the conductor Serge Koussevitzky, and to other notable figures in twentieth-century music such as Nicolas Slonimsky, Roger Sessions, Carlos Chávez, Walter Piston, Leonard Bernstein, and Benjamin Britten. As an advocate and supporter of American music and American composers, Copland frequently wrote articles, presented lectures, and delivered speeches, and eighty-six of these are presented online as previously unpublished drafts. They reveal the creative process through which he wrote about his own music, other composers and their music, and other people who played important roles in his musical life. More than a hundred photographs are also represented in the online collection, many created by Copland’s friend Victor Kraft, a professional photographer. They include portraits of Aaron Copland at various ages and places, with family members, with other composers, and with other people associated with his career as a composer and conductor, as well as images from his worldwide travels. The Aaron Copland Collection Web site also includes the following Special Presentations: a time line of important events in Copland’s life, an essay on Copland’s music by Library staff member and noted American music scholar Wayne Shirley, and several previously published articles on Copland’s life and work. In the future, the site will also include the revised finding aid for the complete Aaron Copland Collection. Copland extensively documented the many facets of his life in music. The archival Aaron Copland Collection, housed in the Library’s Music Division, consists of approximately four hundred thousand items, dating from 1910 to 1990 with a few nineteenth-century photographs, and includes his music manuscripts, printed music, personal and business correspondence, diaries and writings, photographic materials, awards, honorary degrees, programs, and other biographical materials. It is the primary resource for research on Aaron Copland and a major resource for the study of musical life in twentieth-century America generally, particularly from the 1920s to the 1960s. Please direct any questions to ndlpcoll@loc.gov =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-= All postings to LM_NET are protected under copyright law. To quit LM_NET (or set-reset NOMAIL or DIGEST), send email to: listserv@listserv.syr.edu In the message write EITHER: 1) SIGNOFF LM_NET 2) SET LM_NET NOMAIL or 3) SET LM_NET DIGEST 4) SET LM_NET MAIL * Please allow for confirmation from Listserv. For LM_NET Help see: http://ericir.syr.edu/lm_net/ Archives: http://askeric.org/Virtual/Listserv_Archives/LM_NET.html See also EL-Announce for announcements from library media vendors: http://www.mindspring.com/~el-announce/ =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=