Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland with Conductor and Friend, Leonard Bernstein, Bernardsville, New Jersey, August 1945.
The Leonard Bernstein Collection, ca. 1920-1989

American composer Aaron Copland was born on November 14, 1900, in Brooklyn, New York. The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, at age 15 Copland decided to become a composer.

In 1942, Copland began working with Martha Graham on Appalachian Spring, a ballet that eventually won the 1944 Pulitzer Prize in music. The Library of Congress's Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation commissioned the work from Graham and Copland. Between July 1942 and July 1943, Graham sent three scripts to Copland. On receiving the third script, Copland wrote the music we know as Appalachian Spring.

Appalachian Spring, holograph score, 1943-44.
Imagination Section of the
American Treasures of the Library of Congress

Hearing the music, Graham revised the action yet again:

I have been working on your music. It is so beautiful and so wonderfully made. I have become obsessed by it. But I have also been doing a little cursing, too, as you probably did earlier over that not-so-good script. But what you did from that has made me change in many places. Naturally that will not do anything to the music, it is simply that the music made me change. It is so knit and of a completeness that it takes you into very strong hands and leads you into its own world. And there I am.

In the end, no script accompanied what Copland called "Ballet for Martha" and Graham retitled, Appalachian Spring. A splendid collaboration between American masters of music and dance, the ballet premiered at the Library of Congress's Coolidge Auditorium in 1944.

Martha Graham and Bertram Ross, June 27, 1961.
Creative Americans: Portraits by Van Vechten, 1932-1964

The Library of Congress continues to support the performing arts through its Concert Series, while maintaining vast performing arts collections available through the Performing Arts Reading Room. These collections are detailed in Music, Theater, Dance: An Illustrated Guide. In addition, the Library's American Folklife Center sponsors concerts and produces print publications and published recordings from its collections.

Explore American Memory collections related to the performing arts:

• Preview the Leonard Bernstein Collection, ca. 1920-1989. One of the 20th century's most important musical and cultural figures, this preview makes available a selection of Bernstein photographs as well as the complete Finding Aid.
• Browse productions of Macbeth, Power, and The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus in The New Deal Stage, 1935-1939.
• Find play scripts, motion pictures, and sound recordings related to vaudeville in American Variety Stage, 1870-1920.
• Creative Americans: Portraits by Van Vechten, 1932-1964 holds 1,395 images of performing artists. Locate portraits of performing artists by browsing the Occupational Index or searching on the name of a favorite performer.
• William P. Gottlieb: Photographs from the Golden Age of Jazz holds over sixteen hundred photographs of celebrated jazz artists, and documents the jazz scene from 1938 to 1948. Search on the names of favorite performers to view photographs like Gottleib's famous portrait of Billie Holiday. Hear what Gottlieb had to say about this photograph and others by visiting the special presentation In His Own Words: Photos and Commentary By William Gottlieb.
• Use the Library's Music, Theater and Dance Resources on the Internet reference to find performing arts information on the World Wide Web.

The Library Company

On November 14, 1732 the Library Company of Philadelphia signed a contract with its first librarian. Founded by Benjamin Franklin and friends in November 1731, the library enrolled members for a fee of 40 shillings but had to wait for its books to arrive from England before beginning full operation.

Franklin Opening First Subscription Library, painting by Charles Mill, photograph between 1900 and 1912.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920

Many subscription libraries—founded to benefit academies, colleges, and other groups—were established from the 17th through the 19th centuries. The Library Company of Philadelphia grew out of the needs of the Leather Apron Club, also known as the "Junto," of which Franklin was a member. In addition to exchanging business information, these merchants discussed politics and natural philosophy, contributing to their requirements for books. Volumes were purchased with the annual contributions of shareholders, building a more comprehensive library than any individual could afford.

Directors of the Library Company made their holdings available to the first Continental Congress when it convened in Philadelphia in September 1774. Their offer is recorded in The Journals of the Continental Congress:

[An] Extract from minutes of the directors of the Library Company of Philadelphia, dated August 31 st .,—directed to the President, was read, as follows:

Upon motion, ordered,
That the Librarian furnish the gentlemen, who are to meet in Congress, with the use of such Books as they may have occasion for, during their sitting, taking a receipt for them.
By order of the Directors,

(Signed) William Attmore, Sec'y.

Ordered, That the thanks of the Congress be returned to the Directors of the Library Company of Philadelphia, for their obliging order.

Tuesday, September 6, 1774, Journals of the Continental Congress.
A Century of Lawmaking, 1774-1875

After independence, the third session of the new Federal Congress convened in Philadelphia in January 1791, and the Library Company directors again tendered use of their facility. In essence, the Library Company served as the de facto Library of Congress until 1800 when the fledgling legislature moved to its permanent Washington, D.C. location and the Library of Congress was founded.

Many other subscription libraries developed in the United States. These include:

• the Boston Athenaeum in Massachusetts (1807);
• Willoughby Township Library in Ohio (1827);
• Onarga Community Library in Illinois (1858);
• Aberdeen Free Library Association in the Dakota Territory (1884);
• the Pensacola Library Association in Florida (1885);
• and the Grand Junction library in Colorado (1897).

  
  Boston Athenaeum, 1906.
  Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920

The advent of free public libraries, supported in a large part by Andrew Carnegie, diminished the subscription library's importance. Today, subscription libraries, with their rich holdings of rare books, prints, and photographs, are enormously valuable to students of United States history and culture.

Learn more:

• A Century of Lawmaking For a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875 provides access to material that covers the Continental Congress, the Constitutional Convention, and the First and Second Federal Congresses. Search on Library Company of Philadelphia to find references spanning the period from 1774 to 1791. Further instructions on using the collection and navigating the texts are available online.
• Search the Today in History Archive on the term Library of Congress to learn more about the Library of Congress. Isaiah Thomas (1749-1831), publisher and founder of the American Antiquarian Society, is featured in the Today in History page Enoch Brooks' Curious Book.
• Wouldn't Benjamin Franklin be amazed by and enjoy the Web site of the Library Company of Philadelphia?