He was the kid from Brooklyn who captured the vastness of the American scene in his music.
He was the composer of some of our most iconic patriotic compositions, yet was blacklisted as un-American in the pamphlet Red Channels, and was grilled by Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn.
He could write complex modern works, but chose instead to simplify and simplify again, in order to remain accessible to the average listener.
We'll look at music of Aaron Copland this week, and we'll include a couple of the best-known works of this 20th-century Dean of American Composers.
