There are many Americas. Nowadays, they barely speak to each other, but during the most perilous years of the last century, one young composer went in search of a sound that melded many of its strains into something singular and new. He was a man of the left, though of no political party, gay, but neither closeted nor out,

Jewish but agnostic, unless you count music as a religion. This Independence Day, or near enough,

we revisit Sarah Fischko's 2017 piece on the story of Aaron Copeland.

The Aaron Copeland story is filled with ironies.

For one thing, Copeland reached the height of his artistry and fame during the most desperate

times in 20th century America, the era of the Great Depression and the years of World War II.

And for another, he first thought about creating music that sounded uniquely American

only after he had left America, Brooklyn, to be exact, for Europe in 1921.

He recalled later he had read about an American music school

being formed that very year, post-World War I, outside Paris.

The instant I read about it, I thought, oh gee, I don't know, a soul in France,

this would be a way of going and at least having some friends around and getting a start.

So off he went.

Once there, Copeland began to search for a compositional style.

In his own way, says Judith Tick, who co-wrote Aaron Copeland's America.

He graduated high school and did not go to college.

Instead, he became an apprentice.

His mentor in Paris was the famed Nadia Boulanger,

who would go on to train everyone from Quincy Jones to Philip Glass.

He absolutely adored the milieu that Nadia Boulanger created around her,

which was premised on the notion that a composer had to find his own voice.

And for a while, looking for his own voice, he lived the Paris life. That lost generation life we know a little bit about from Hemingway, Fitzgerald,

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