Aaron Copland only wrote a handful of film scores so the release of any new film music from this legendary composer is just cause of celebration. And the new Naxos premiere recording of Copland’s complete scores for OF MICE AND MEN (1939) and OUR TOWN (1940) is, dare I say, a landmark event in film [...]

Propaganda and Peasants: Aaron Copland’s Score to THE NORTH STAR Published in Film Score Monthly Online February 2007 On June 22, 1941, Hitler invaded Russia, violating the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of 1939 and foisting the Soviet Union as an ally on an unprepared world at war. The Bolshevik revolution, the Moscow purge trials and executions of [...]

Year by year our cities grow more complex and less fit for living. The age of rebuilding is here. We must remould our old cities and build new communities better suited to our needs. So begins the 1939 documentary THE CITY. First shown at the 1939 World’s Fair, THE CITY was created by the American Institute of [...]

One of the great Oscar-winning performances and one of the great Oscar-winning scores, though few film score fans are familiar with it. THE HEIRESS stars Olivia de Havilland as mousy Catherine Sloper in turn-of-the-century Washington Square. She falls for money-grubbing, yet handsome, Montgomery Clift (and who wouldn’t!) against the wishes of her cruel, overbearing, and [...]

“You Have Cheated Me”: Aaron Copland’s Compromised Score to The Heiress Published in Film Score Monthly May/June 2005   Aaron Copland arrived in Hollywood in 1938, and in little more than a decade he’d had enough. With his scores to Of Mice and Men (1939) and Our Town (1940), he created a new musical language [...]