DeLapp, Jennifer "Aaron Copland's America: A Cultural Perspective (review)"
Notes - Volume 58, Number 2, December 2001, pp. 365-367
Music Library Association

Excerpt

This handsome, glossy volume was published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name at the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, New York, curated by Gail Levin (4 November 2000 to 21 January 2001). It consists of two parts. The first, "Aaron Copland's America: A Cultural Perspective," contains high-quality reproductions of the exhibition's paintings, drawings, photographs, prints, and sculptures, including more than fifty in full color, accompanied by Levin's substantial scholarly essay. Part 2, by Judith Tick, is entitled "The Music of Aaron Copland." The volume concludes with endnotes and a helpful index of names and titles.

Levin's essay is arguably the first substantial interdisciplinary study of Copland by a scholar outside musicology, and it sets a high standard. An expert on twentieth-century and American art, Levin has published most recently on the Ballets suédois ("The Ballets suédois and American Culture," in Paris Modern: The Swedish Ballet, 1920-1925, ed. Nancy Van Norman Baer [San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1996], 118-27) and the artist Edward Hopper (including Edward Hopper: A Catalogue Raisonné, 4 vols. [New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, W. W. Norton, 1995]). Music scholars are fortunate to have an art historian with Levin's scholarly rigor bringing her knowledge to bear upon Copland. She draws from the popular press of the day, recent specialized histories, and biographies of individual artists, gallery owners, choreographers, writers, critics,...