title: Raising Hope

text: Actress Olesya Rulin was originally cast as Sabrina, the love interest for Jimmy, and Kate Micucci was added to the cast as Jimmy's cousin. The pilot was filmed in December 2009. In March 2010, Fox decided to recast two roles from the pilot. Shannon Woodward replaced Rulin as Sabrina. Also recast was the role of Jimmy's cousin, changing from Micucci to male actor Skyler Stone as Mike. With this, Micucci's role changed from Jimmy's cousin to become Shelley, Sabrina's cousin.


title: Raising Hope

text: Fox green-lit the pilot to series with an order in mid-May 2010 for a fall premiere in its 2010–11 television schedule.


title: Raising Hope

text: On January 10, 2011, Fox renewed "Raising Hope" for a second season. On April 9, 2012, "Raising Hope" was renewed for a third season. On March 4, 2013, "Raising Hope" was renewed for a fourth season. On March 10, 2014, Fox announced the cancellation of the show after four seasons.


title: Raising Hope

text: "Raising Hope" has received positive reviews from critics. The show's first season received an average score of 75 out of 100 on Metacritic, meaning it received "generally favorable reviews."


title: Raising Hope

text: Tom Gilatto of "People Weekly" called the show the best new sitcom of the season, favorably comparing it to "Malcolm in the Middle". Mary McNamara of the "Los Angeles Times" was lukewarm towards the show, stating that ""Raising Hope" is funny, sweet, occasionally provocative, and occasionally over-the-top in a regrettable way." James Poniewozik of "Time Magazine" was upbeat, stating that "Neff is amiably charming, Dillahunt and Plimpton give their characters a realism that belies the pilot's often-contemptuous jokes, and maybe 20% of the first episode shows a sweet-heartedness that rises above the easy white-trash humor." While not all of the reviews were positive, they were mostly positive by the end of the first season. Much of the show's praise went to the performances of Martha Plimpton and Garret Dillahunt.


title: Raising Hope

text: The second season of "Raising Hope" premiered on September 20, 2011, on Fox, moving to 9:30 pm from its original 8:00 pm time slot, due to the acquisition of "New Girl". The second season received similar positive reviews to the first, with Matt Roush of "TV Guide" calling it "A treat for anyone who loves a good call-back to classic sitcoms."


title: Raising Hope

text: In the United Kingdom, Sky1 picked up the broadcast rights and added the show to its 2010–2011 UK & Ireland autumn schedule, beginning in November 2010.


title: Raising Hope

text: In the Czech Republic, the series broadcasts on HBO. This show premiered on February 1, 2011. The Czech title is "Vychovávat Hope".


title: Raising Hope

text: In Canada, the first season aired on the Global Television Network at the same time as Fox in the United States. In 2011, City bought rights from the Global Television Network, and began broadcasting the show. On the morning show that City airs, Breakfast Television, they announced on May 29, 2011, that the series will start airing at 8:00 pm on Tuesdays instead of 9:30 pm on Tuesdays due to other Fox series "Glee" moving to Thursdays at 9:00pm. This started on September 18, 2012.


title: Raising Hope

text: In Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia series was broadcast on Fox Adria. In January, 2018 RTL 2 picked up series for Croatia.


title: Bob Menendez

text: Robert Menendez (; born January 1, 1954) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from New Jersey, a seat he has held since 2006. A member of the Democratic Party, he was first appointed to the U.S. Senate by Governor Jon Corzine, and chaired the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from 2013 to 2015, and again since 2021.


title: Bob Menendez

text: In 1974, at the age of 20, Menendez was elected to the Union City School District's Board of Education. He received degrees from Saint Peter's University and Rutgers Law School. In 1986, he was elected mayor of Union City. In 1988, while continuing to serve as mayor, he was elected to represent the state's 33rd district in the New Jersey General Assembly and, within three years, moved to the New Jersey Senate, upon winning the March 1991 special election for the 33rd Senate district. The next year, Menendez won a seat in the House of Representatives and represented New Jersey's 13th congressional district for six two-year terms, from 1993 to 2006. In January 2006, he was appointed to fill the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Jon Corzine (who had been elected governor of New Jersey), and was elected to a full six-year term in November; he was reelected in 2012 and 2018.


title: Bob Menendez

text: In 2015, Menendez was indicted on federal corruption charges; the jury was unable to reach a verdict and charges were dropped in 2018. The United States Senate Select Committee on Ethics "severely admonished" him.


title: Bob Menendez

text: Menendez was born on January 1, 1954, in New York City to Cuban immigrants who had left Cuba a few months earlier, in 1953. His father, Mario Menéndez, was a carpenter, and his mother, Evangelina, was a seamstress. The family subsequently moved to New Jersey, where he grew up in an apartment in Union City. He attended Union Hill High School, where his speech teacher, Gail Harper, helped him develop as a public speaker. Menendez has said, "My mother and Miss Harper made me understand the power of education, what it means to put a premium on learning and working hard." While at Union Hill, Menendez became the student body president. He went on to become the first in his family to go to college, attending Saint Peter's College in Jersey City, where he became a member of the Lambda Theta Phi fraternity. He graduated with a B.A. in political science, and earned his Juris Doctor degree from Rutgers Law School in 1979 at the Newark campus. Menendez was admitted to the New Jersey Bar in 1980 and became a lawyer in private practice.


title: Bob Menendez

text: At the start of his career, Menendez was an aide to Union City Mayor William V. Musto. In 1974, he was elected to the Union City Board of Education, the youngest candidate to ever win election to the board. In 1982, he unsuccessfully challenged Musto for mayor. On May 13, 1986, he defeated Musto for mayor. Menendez's Alliance Civic Association ticket, which included future mayor Bruce Walter, won 57% of the vote, beating the reform slate Transformation '86 and the incumbent Union City Together ticket. Musto had been found guilty of corruption, and Menendez had testified against him, but Musto retained some popularity. The Together party, which included his wife, Commissioner Rhyta Musto, represented the remnants of Musto's political machine. Menendez served as mayor until 1992 and in November 1987 was elected to represent the state's 33rd district in General Assembly. He continued to hold both offices until March 1991, when he moved from the Assembly to the New Jersey Senate upon winning the special election called following the death of Christopher Jackman.


title: Bob Menendez

text: In 1992, incumbent Democratic U.S. Congressman Frank Guarini, of New Jersey's 14th congressional district, retired after redistricting. The district had been renumbered as the 13th district, and reconfigured as a Latino-majority district. Menendez decided to run in the primary—the real contest in this heavily Democratic district—and defeated Robert Haney Jr., 68%–32%. He defeated New Jersey Superior Court Judge Fred J. Theemling Jr. in the general election with 64% of the vote. After that, he was reelected every two years with at least 71% of the vote until he was appointed to the U.S. Senate in January 2006.


title: Bob Menendez

text: Menendez, who is described as very close to Republicans on foreign policy, voted for the failed Kosovo Resolution, authorizing the use of military force against Yugoslavia in the Kosovo War. He was an early advocate of preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear capabilities, sponsoring the Iran Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act of 1998, which passed the House but failed to pass the Senate.


title: Bob Menendez

text: Menendez voted for Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, authorizing the President to use military force in Afghanistan in response to the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks. In 2002, Menendez voted against the Iraq Resolution to authorize the invasion of Iraq.


title: Bob Menendez

text: Menendez voted against the United Nations Reform Act of 2005, cutting U.S. funding to the U.N. by 50% over three years, and sponsored the Tsunami Orphans and Unaccompanied Children Act of 2005 to provide assistance to victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.


title: Bob Menendez

text: In the 105th Congress, Menendez voted for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, repealing provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 that limited investment banks from acquiring insurance companies or other commercial banks, and voted for the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. After the 2001 Enron scandal, Menendez voted with 333 other House members for the Sarbanes–Oxley Act.


title: Bob Menendez

text: Although he had sometimes been portrayed as the political boss of Hudson County, he strongly dislikes this appellation, particularly because, according to an anonymous close source quoted in the December 11, 2005 "Union City Reporter", "there is no boss of Hudson County". According to a 2005 "New York Times" op-ed, "Since entering politics as a corruption-fighting mayor of Union City, N.J., Mr. Menendez has become a proponent of business as usual. He has long been an entrenched de facto leader of the Hudson County Democratic machine."


title: Bob Menendez

text: In September 2006, just a few weeks before the 2006 senate elections, the office of the US District Attorney, Chris Christie, began investigating the rental deal with NHCAC, subpoenaing records from them. Some Democrats criticized the investigation, particularly the timing of the investigation and news leaks, as politically motivated.


title: Bob Menendez

text: In January 2006, Governor Jon Corzine appointed Menendez to fill the remaining year in Corzine's Senate term from which Corzine resigned upon being elected governor of New Jersey the previous month. While several other people had been mentioned, Menendez was the early favorite among pundits for Governor-elect Corzine's choice. Corzine's decision to appoint Menendez got the support of several Latino groups, including the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. Menendez was the sixth Latino to serve in the United States Senate.


title: Bob Menendez

text: In 2015, Menendez was ranked #1 on "The Hudson Reporter's" annual Power List of the "Fifty Most Powerful Political Figures in Hudson County".


title: Bob Menendez

text: When incumbent U.S. Senator Bill Bradley decided to retire in August 1995, Menendez made known his intention to run in the 1996 election for the seat, but eventually dropped out of the race and endorsed Robert Torricelli, the Democrat representing New Jersey's 9th congressional district. Similarly, in 1999, when the state's other U.S. Senator, Frank Lautenberg, announced his planned retirement, Menendez again decided not to run, with the Democratic nomination for the 2000 race going to Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine, who won the general election.


title: Bob Menendez

text: In the midterm elections held on November 7, near the end of his one-year appointment, Menendez ran to retain his Senate seat. He defeated Republican Thomas Kean Jr., incumbent minority whip in the New Jersey Senate and son of former state governor Thomas Kean, with 53% of the vote to Kean's 45%.


title: Bob Menendez

text: Menendez was endorsed by several newspapers including "The New York Times", "The Philadelphia Inquirer", "The Star-Ledger", and "The Record".


title: Bob Menendez

text: Menendez ran for reelection to a second full term and defeated Republican Joe Kyrillos on November 6, with 58% of the vote to Kyrillos's 39%.


title: Bob Menendez

text: Menendez ran for reelection to a third full term and defeated Republican Bob Hugin on November 6, with 54% of the vote to Hugin's 42%.


title: Bob Menendez

text: As of July 2019, Menendez serves on the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs; the United States Senate Committee on Finance; and the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.


title: Bob Menendez

text: On January 6, 2021, Menendez was participating in the certification of the 2021 United States Electoral College vote count when Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. He was evacuated to an undisclosed location, with other senators, after rioters breached the Capitol. He called the attack "anarchy" and "a sad day for our democracy." After the Capitol was secure and Congress reconvened, Menendez voted to certify the election. Menendez blamed Trump and Republicans who supported Trump's baseless claims of voter fraud for inciting the attack. He also called for an investigation into white supremacy in the military.


title: Bob Menendez

text: Menendez is an "aggressive advocate" of immigration reform, calling it the "civil rights issue of our time". He has introduced multiple pieces of legislation in attempts to overhaul what he calls our "failed immigration system." Menendez introduced the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2011, but it died in the Senate Judiciary Committee. In 2009, he introduced the Orphans, Widows, and Widowers Protection Act, granting a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented widowers and orphans of deceased U.S. citizens.


title: Bob Menendez

text: Menendez is a strong supporter of the DREAM Act, saying, "Children should not be punished for the actions of their parents. These kids have grown up as Americans, worked hard in school and now they want to serve our country in the military or pursue a college education. This is the only home many of them have known and they should be encouraged to pursue the American dream." He voted for the DREAM Act in 2007 and was a cosponsor along with 31 other senators in the Act's failed passage in 2010.


title: Bob Menendez

text: Menendez voted against denying legal status to illegal immigrants convicted of domestic violence, crimes against children and crimes relating to the illegal purchase or sale of firearms, but voted to establish a six-month to 20-year ban for undocumented immigrants seeking citizenship who had been convicted for the same crimes along with obstruction of justice, human trafficking and the participation of criminal gang activity.


title: Bob Menendez

text: Menendez supported the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 and Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, voting for both bills. He voted against Senate Amendment 1151, declaring English the national language of the Federal government of the United States. He voted to continue federal funding for declared "sanctuary cities."


title: Bob Menendez

text: He voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006, building 700 miles (1,100 km) of physical barriers and expanding surveillance at the Mexico–U.S. border, and supported Senate Amendment 4775, which would have appropriated $1.8 billion for the construction of of triple-layered fencing, and of vehicle barriers along parts of the Southwest.


title: Bob Menendez

text: On January 28, 2013, Menendez was a member of a bipartisan group of eight senators that announced principles for comprehensive immigration reform (CIR). In 2014 the National Council of La Raza (America's largest Latino advocacy organization) recognized Menendez for his work in supporting immigration reform as a member of the "Gang of Eight."


title: Bob Menendez

text: In June 2019, Menendez and 18 other Democratic senators sent USDA Inspector General Phyllis K. Fong a letter requesting that she investigate USDA instances of retaliation and political decision-making and asserted that not conducting an investigation would mean these "actions could be perceived as a part of this administration's broader pattern of not only discounting the value of federal employees, but suppressing, undermining, discounting, and wholesale ignoring scientific data produced by their own qualified scientists."


title: Bob Menendez

text: In April 2018, Menendez was one of five Democratic senators to sign a letter to FEMA administrator Brock Long calling on FEMA to enter an agreement with the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development that would "stand up the Disaster Housing Assistance Program and address the medium- and longer-term housing needs" of evacuees of Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. The senators asserted that "FEMA's refusal to use the tools at its disposal, including DHAP, to help these survivors is puzzling – and profoundly troubling" and that hundreds of hurricane survivors were susceptible to being left homeless in the event that FEMA and HUD continued to not work together.


title: Bob Menendez

text: Menendez introduced legislation that would give incentives for the conversion of vehicles to run on natural gas; the bill did not make it out of committee in its first incarnation, and failed to receive 60 votes required to pass in 2012.


title: Bob Menendez

text: In February 2019, in response to reports of the EPA intending to decide against setting drinking water limits for perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) as part of an upcoming national strategy to manage the aforementioned class of chemicals, Menendez was one of 20 senators to sign a letter to Acting EPA Administrator Andrew R. Wheeler calling on the agency "to develop enforceable federal drinking water standards for PFOA and PFOS, as well as institute immediate actions to protect the public from contamination from additional per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)."


title: Bob Menendez

text: In June 2019, Menendez was one of 44 senators to introduce the International Climate Accountability Act, legislation that would prevent President Trump from using funds in an attempt to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and directing the Trump administration to instead develop a strategic plan for the United States that would allow it to meet its commitment under the Paris Agreement.


title: Bob Menendez

text: Menendez sponsored the Student Non-Discrimination Act, expanding Title IX of the Education Amendments Act to LGBT students, and the Safe Schools Improvement Act of 2011, which would also amend the Higher Education Act of 1965. He voted for the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act in 2009, saying, "When someone is harassed, assaulted or killed simply because of the type of person they are, it's a crime against an entire community and our nation's values." In 2012, Menendez received a 94% rating from the Human Rights Campaign.


title: Bob Menendez

text: During a press conference about the Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Act, Menendez claimed that New Jersey was facing a $10.5 billion shortfall in its 2012 fiscal budget that would lead to cuts in state spending on education. Politifact rated this statement "false" because the 2012 budget was in fact balanced and increased funding for education.


title: Bob Menendez

text: Menendez voted for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) as a congressman in 1996; on December 18, 2011, he came out in support of, and co-sponsored, the Respect for Marriage Act, which would repeal DOMA. Menendez also voted for the U.S. military's Don't ask, don't tell as a congressman, and co-sponsored the DADT repeal act in 2010.


title: Bob Menendez

text: In 1999, Menendez voted against a proposed amendment that would have banned adoption in Washington D.C. by same-sex couples and other persons not related by blood or marriage. The amendment failed with 213 votes in favor and 215 votes against.


title: Bob Menendez

text: Of gay rights, Menendez has said, "Two people who want to be committed to each other should be able to enter into marriage, and they should receive the benefits that flow from that commitment."


title: Bob Menendez

text: Menendez has an "F" rating from the National Rifle Association and a "F−" rating from the Gun Owners of America due to his support of gun law reform. Specifically, he supports universal background checks and a ban on assault weapons.


title: Bob Menendez

text: In January 2019, Menendez was one of 40 senators to introduce the Background Check Expansion Act, a bill that would require background checks for either the sale or transfer of all firearms including all unlicensed sellers. Exceptions to the bill's background check requirement included transfers between members of law enforcement, loaning firearms for either hunting or sporting events on a temporary basis, providing firearms as gifts to members of one's immediate family, firearms transferred as part of an inheritance, or giving a firearm to another person temporarily for immediate self-defense.


title: Bob Menendez

text: In June 2019, Menendez was one of four senators to cosponsor the Help Empower Americans to Respond (HEAR) Act, legislation that would ban suppressors being imported, sold, made, sent elsewhere or possessed and grant a silencer buyback program as well as include certain exceptions for current and former law enforcement personnel and others. The bill was intended to respond to the Virginia Beach shooting, where the perpetrator used a .45-caliber handgun with multiple extended magazines and a suppressor.


title: Bob Menendez

text: In December 2018, Menendez was one of 42 senators to sign a letter to Trump administration officials Alex Azar, Seema Verma, and Steve Mnuchin arguing that the administration was improperly using Section 1332 of the Affordable Care Act to authorize states to "increase health care costs for millions of consumers while weakening protections for individuals with pre-existing conditions." The senators requested the administration withdraw the policy and "re-engage with stakeholders, states, and Congress."


title: Bob Menendez

text: In January 2019, during the 2018–19 United States federal government shutdown, Menendez was one of 34 senators to sign a letter to Commissioner of Food and Drugs Scott Gottlieb recognizing the efforts of the FDA to address the effect of the government shutdown on the public health and employees while remaining alarmed "that the continued shutdown will result in increasingly harmful effects on the agency's employees and the safety and security of the nation's food and medical products."


title: Bob Menendez

text: Menendez holds that the success of America's foreign policy is "inextricably linked to the health of her domestic democracy", stating in the January 19, 2021, confirmation hearings of Secretary-designate Antony Blinken that public servants and senators have a "duty to stand up for democracy, for the constitution, and for the rule of law." He identified chief concerns as "rebuilding alliances, restoring American leadership in international institutions, and addressing complex global challenges like climate change, migration, pandemics like COVID-19." He identifies the "core American values" as "democracy, human rights, and the rule of law", upon which foreign policy should be recentered.


title: Bob Menendez

text: In February 2006, Menendez cosponsored legislation with Senator Hillary Clinton to make it illegal for foreign governments to buy U.S. port operations. The legislation was a direct response to Dubai Ports World's efforts to purchase Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O) of the United Kingdom, which operates six major U.S. ports. Menendez said, "Our ports are the front lines of the war on terrorism. They are both vulnerable targets for attack and venues for smuggling and human trafficking. We wouldn't turn the Border Patrol or the Customs Service over to a foreign government, and we can't afford to turn our ports over to one either."


title: Bob Menendez

text: On April 25, 2008, a former undercover FBI agent revealed in the book "Ruse: Undercover with FBI Counterintelligence" that Cuban diplomats approached freelance blogger and journalist Robert Eringer to investigate Menendez. It was suggested that the Cuban government was determined to generate derogatory information about him and Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Díaz-Balart because of their anti-Castro lobbying efforts.


title: Bob Menendez

text: In October 2009, Menendez sent a strongly worded letter of protest to Cyprus President Dimitris Christofias, castigating him for his praise of Cuba's totalitarian system. Christofias, the leader of AKEL, Cyprus's communist party, from 1988 to 2009 and president from 2008 to 2013, had paid a state visit to Cuba in September 2009 for the opening of Cyprus's new embassy and, in his speech, made a number of anti-American embargo references, and spoke of the "common struggle of Cyprus and Cuba". In his letter to Christofias, Menendez wrote, "you cannot claim human rights violations by Turkey in your country and then ignore such violations in Cuba. Second, you cannot call for property rights for Greek Cypriots and then deny them on Cuba. Finally, you cannot take issue with the militarization of northern Cyprus and then ignore the state security apparatus that oppresses the Cuban people."


title: Bob Menendez

text: In December 2010, Menendez voted for the ratification of New Start, a nuclear arms reduction treaty between the U.S. and the Russian Federation obliging both countries to have no more than 1,550 strategic warheads or 700 launchers deployed during the next seven years along with providing a continuation of on-site inspections that halted when START I expired the previous year. It was the first arms treaty with Russia in eight years.


title: Bob Menendez

text: On August 18, 2015, Menendez announced his opposition to the nuclear deal with Iran, saying, "President Obama continues to erroneously say that this agreement permanently stops Iran from having a nuclear bomb, Let's be clear: What the agreement does is to recommit Iran not to pursue a nuclear bomb, a promise they have already violated in the past."


title: Bob Menendez

text: In March 2017, Menendez co-sponsored the Israel Anti-Boycott Act (S.270), which made it a federal crime, punishable by a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment, for Americans to encourage or participate in boycotts against Israel and Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories if protesting actions by the Israeli government.


title: Bob Menendez

text: In 2018, Menendez urged Vice President Mike Pence to enter talks with Ecuador about withdrawing its asylum for Julian Assange. His letter, signed by nine other senators, alleged that it was Assange's goal to "undermine democratic processes globally". In March 2018, Menendez voted against Bernie Sanders's and Chris Murphy's resolution that would end U.S. support for the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen. But Menendez criticized Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen, saying, "The Saudi Coalition bears significant responsibility for the magnitude of human suffering and scale of destruction in Yemen. Seventy-five percent of the population is in need of humanitarian assistance and more than 8 million are on the brink of famine." Noting concerns with the language after voting for Bob Corker's resolution naming the Saudi crown prince "responsible" for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, he said, "regardless of all of my other concerns about language is the central essence of what the chairman is going to do. I think it's incredibly important for the Senate to speak on that issue and hopefully speak with one voice."


title: Bob Menendez

text: Menendez condemned the genocide of the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar and called for a stronger response to the crisis.


title: Bob Menendez

text: Menendez raised the issue of Xinjiang reeducation camps and called China's treatment of Uyghur Muslim minority "beyond abhorrent", adding, "The President needs to have a clear and consistent approach to China, and not turn a blind eye as a million Muslims are unjustly imprisoned and forced into labor camps by an autocratic regime."


title: Bob Menendez

text: In January 2019, Menendez opposed Trump's planned withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria and Afghanistan as a threat to U.S. national security.


title: Bob Menendez

text: In April 2019, Menendez was one of 34 senators to sign a letter to Trump encouraging him "to listen to members of your own Administration and reverse a decision that will damage our national security and aggravate conditions inside Central America", asserting that Trump had "consistently expressed a flawed understanding of U.S. foreign assistance" since becoming president and that he was "personally undermining efforts to promote U.S. national security and economic prosperity" by preventing the use of Fiscal Year 2018 national security funding. The senators argued that foreign assistance to Central American countries created less migration to the U.S. by helping to improve conditions in those countries.


title: Bob Menendez

text: In June 2019, Menendez called for the immediate release of Ukrainian journalist Stanislav Aseyev, who was being held in custody by militants from the so-called Donetsk People's Republic.


title: Bob Menendez

text: In October 2019, Menendez stated his opposition to the Turkish invasion of the Kurdish areas in Syria.


title: Bob Menendez

text: Menendez called for the Trump administration to immediately suspend U.S. military aid to Azerbaijan, sent through Pentagon's "building partner assistance program." According to critics, the aid could be used in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia. In September 2020, Menendez tweeted: "I strongly condemn Azerbaijan's attack on Nagorno Karabakh, yet another act of aggression supported by Turkey." He co-signed a letter stating: "We have been very critical of U.S. security assistance to Azerbaijan given the country's human rights record and aggression in the region. Earlier this year, at Senator Menendez's request, the Government Accountability Office agreed to conduct a review of security assistance to the country to ensure that it aligns with U.S. interests; this violence indicates that it does not."


title: Bob Menendez

text: In September 2022, during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Menendez criticized the Biden administration for hesitating to impose sanctions on the governments of Sudan and Ethiopia, where many atrocities and war crimes were committed in the Tigray War.


title: Bob Menendez

text: Menendez became chair of the Foreign Relations Committee after John Kerry's confirmation as Secretary of State in January 2013. His "Syria force resolution" was praised by President Obama and others. Menendez has supported taking a "hard line" on Iran.


title: Bob Menendez

text: On June 12, 2007, Menendez endorsed Hillary Clinton for president and was given the position of National Campaign Co-Chair. He made numerous media appearances in support of her campaign.


title: Bob Menendez

text: In 2009, Menendez succeeded Senator Chuck Schumer of New York as chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Menendez's tenure, which followed two straight election cycles of dramatic Democratic gains, was marked by a more troubled Democratic outlook. Critics of Menendez pointed out the surprising Democratic loss in the 2010 Massachusetts Senate special election that followed the death of Ted Kennedy; Menendez's lower-key, more cautious management style; and problems caused by retirements in Indiana and elsewhere. Others, such as Schumer, defended Menendez's performance, citing the negative political climate.


title: Bob Menendez

text: A group of New Jersey citizens launched an effort to recall Menendez in early 2010. Although Article 1, Paragraph 2(b) of the New Jersey Constitution expressly authorizes such a recall, state officials fought the effort in court. On March 16, 2010, a State Appeals court ruled that the recall petition could proceed. Menendez said he was surprised that a group claiming to be true to the Constitution was trying, in his words, "to undermine it". He appealed the ruling. Legal experts have debated the constitutionality of a state recall of a federal officeholder. On November 18, 2010, the New Jersey Supreme Court found that the New Jersey provision violated the U.S. Constitution.


title: Bob Menendez

text: In 2010, "The Wall Street Journal" reported that Menendez had written to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, asking him to approve an acquisition that would rescue from the prospect of receivership a New Jersey bank, First Bank Americano, operated by Menendez donors. It was discovered that "eight of 15 directors, including the bank's chairman and vice-chairman, have been contributors to Menendez or his political action committee." Former federal bank regulator William K. Black called the letter "grotesquely inappropriate" and said that "the letter crossed an unofficial line by asking regulators to approve an application instead of simply asking that it be given consideration." An aide to Menendez said that his decision to write the letter was not influenced by political contributions. A highly critical Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation report found that the institution had engaged in unsafe or unsound banking practices, including operating without adequate supervision by its board of directors, an excessive level of delinquent or bad loans, inadequate earnings and insufficient coverage of its assets.


title: Bob Menendez

text: On January 5, 2012, Menendez blocked Judge Patty Shwartz, an Obama administration nominee to a federal judgeship, drawing speculation that the block was placed because of Shwartz's relationship with the head of the public corruption unit for New Jersey's federal prosecutor, who had investigated Menendez during his 2006 campaign. Menendez denied personal motivation for the block. He has long contended that the corruption investigation was politically motivated. The investigation was closed in late 2011 with no charges filed.


title: Bob Menendez

text: On December 12, 2012, it was reported that Menendez's office had an unpaid intern volunteering who had let his visitor visa expire and was a registered sex offender. The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement had been aware of the man as early as October 2012 but according to the Associated Press, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) instructed their agents not to arrest the man until after Election Day. Menendez denied knowing about the allegation of the directive to delay the arrest and only recently learned of the arrest. According to two federal officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case, the intern was arrested in front of his New Jersey home on December 6, 2012.


title: Bob Menendez

text: In May 2014, Menendez received an award for Political Courage at a gala organized by the American Friends of Likud, where he reaffirmed the strong alliance between the U.S. and Israel and said, "several thousands of years of history lead to an undeniable conclusion: the reestablishment of the State of Israel in modern times is a political reality with roots going back to the time of Abraham and Sarah and historical texts and artifacts". He rejected movements to boycott Israel.


title: Bob Menendez

text: In February 2015, "The Intercept" published an investigative work by Ali Gharib and Eli Clifton, assisted in part by the work of independent researcher Joanne Stocker, indicating that Menendez received at least two donations from the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) before September 2012, when it was listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Menendez became an outspoken advocate of the MEK after it was delisted, taking more than $25,000 between 2013 and 2015.


title: Bob Menendez

text: Menendez spearheaded a nonbinding resolution in July 2018 "warning President Trump not to let the Russian government question diplomats and other officials". The resolution states the United States "should refuse to make available any current or former diplomat, civil servant, political appointee, law enforcement official or member of the Armed Forces of the United States for questioning by the government of Vladimir Putin". It passed 98–0.


title: Bob Menendez

text: In April 2019, Menendez was one of 41 senators to sign a bipartisan letter to the housing subcommittee praising the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development's Section 4 Capacity Building program as authorizing "HUD to partner with national nonprofit community development organizations to provide education, training, and financial support to local community development corporations (CDCs) across the country" and expressing disappointment that Trump's budget "has slated this program for elimination after decades of successful economic and community development." The senators wrote of their hope that the subcommittee would support continued funding for Section 4 in Fiscal Year 2020.


title: Bob Menendez

text: Menendez has pushed for a full tax deduction for state and local taxes (SALT). Most of the benefits of such a policy would benefit the richest taxpayers.


title: Bob Menendez

text: In November 2012, the conservative political news and opinion website "Daily Caller" published allegations that Menendez had contact with underage prostitutes in the Dominican Republic. The allegations were promoted by Republican Party operatives, who arranged for ABC News and the "Daily Caller" to interview two women who accused Menendez of patronizing prostitutes. ABC News and other news organizations such as "The New York Times" and the "New York Post" declined to publish the allegations, viewing them as unsubstantiated and lacking credibility. One accuser stated that she had been paid to falsely implicate Menendez and had never met him. The "Daily Caller" said this woman was not interviewed for its story. Menendez's office called the allegations "manufactured" by a "right-wing blog" as a politically motivated smear. On March 18, 2013, Dominican police announced that three women had said they had been paid $300–$425 each to lie about having had sex with Menendez.


title: Bob Menendez

text: On August 27, 2006, two Republican state lawmakers filed an ethics complaint against Menendez, alleging he broke conflict-of-interest rules when he rented property out to a nonprofit agency that receives federal funds. Menendez helped the organization win designation as a Federally Qualified Health Center in 1998. That designation allowed the agency to receive additional federal grants. Menendez allies noted that the organization in question, the North Hudson Community Action Corp., which provides social services and health care to the poor and was founded in 1960, had received federal funding for years before Menendez was in Congress, and receives its funding based on mathematical formulas. Menendez maintains that he rented the property out below market-value because "he was supportive of its work". The total rent collected over nine years was over $300,000.


title: Bob Menendez

text: In 2013, reports surfaced that a federal grand jury in Miami was investigating Menendez's role in advocating for the business interests of Florida ophthalmologist Salomon Melgen, a close friend and major donor. On April 1, 2015, the United States Department of Justice indicted Menendez and Melgen in "United States v. Menendez" (3d Cir. 2016). The charges against Menendez included bribery, fraud, and making false statements. According to the indictment, Menendez asked top State Department officials to pressure the Dominican Republic's government into enforcing a port-security contract that would benefit Melgen's company while at the same time Melgen was promising to give $60,000 to Menendez's campaign. Prosecutors also charged that Menendez acted as Melgen's "personal senator", helping obtain visas for several of Melgen's girlfriends. In return, Menendez was accused of accepting a range of perks from Melgen, including trips on Melgen's private jet, three nights at a five-star Paris hotel, a round of golf at a private club in West Palm Beach and access to an exclusive Dominican resort—some of which Menendez allegedly failed to report on financial disclosure forms. Melgen also donated a substantial amount of money to Menendez's political campaigns, and prosecutors claim that $750,000 of those contributions were tied to personal benefits Menendez accepted.


title: Bob Menendez

text: After his indictment, Menendez voluntarily stepped down as ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee. His trial began on September 6, 2017, before Judge William H. Walls of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. On November 16, 2017, Walls declared a mistrial due to the jury's continuing inability to reach a verdict on any of the charges. On January 31, 2018, the Justice Department announced it was dropping all charges against Menendez. The case was strongly shaped by "McDonnell v. United States", the 2016 Supreme Court decision to dismiss the corruption conviction of former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, which narrowed the legal definition of public corruption and made it harder for prosecutors to prove that a political official engaged in bribery.


title: Bob Menendez

text: In April 2018, the United States Senate Select Committee on Ethics "severely admonished" Menendez in a letter, writing:


title: Bob Menendez

text: West New York, New Jersey, which borders Menendez's childhood hometown of Union City to the north, renamed Public School No. 3 in his honor; it is now known as Robert Menendez Elementary School. The renaming ceremony was held on December 4, 2013. In 2021, he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Honour by President of Greece Katerina Sakellaropoulou, for "his contribution to the deepening of Greek-US relations and the promotion of peace and cooperation in the wider region." He also received the Grand Cross of the Order of Makarios III from President of Cyprus Nicos Anastasiades for "his contribution to promoting human rights, the rule of law, and democracy."


title: Bob Menendez

text: In 1976, Menendez married Jane Jacobsen, a teacher for the Union City Board of Education and Union City Public Schools. They had two children: Alicia Menendez, an MSNBC television commentator/host, and Rob Menendez, who worked as the Commissioner of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and was elected to Congress in the 8th congressional district in 2022 as a Democrat. Menendez and Jane divorced in 2005. In October 2019, Menendez got engaged to Nadine Arslanian, a businesswoman from Bergen County. They married in October 2020.


title: Bob Menendez

text: In 2014, Menendez relocated from Union City to Paramus. In 2018, Menendez moved from Paramus to Harrison.


title: Bob Menendez

text: Write-in and minor candidate notes: In 1992, Donald K. Stoveken as an America First Populist received 682 votes. In 2000, Alina Lydia Fonteboa received 233 votes and Kari Sachs received 168 votes. In 2002, a candidate listed only as "Independent (The American Party)" received 34 votes; also, Herbert Shaw's full party name was "Politicians are Crooks – Politicos son Corruptos" (shortened for display purposes above).


title: Slovak language

text: Slovak () , is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group, written in Latin script. It is part of the Indo-European language family, and is one of the Slavic languages, which are part of the larger Balto-Slavic branch. Spoken by approximately 5 million people as a native language, primarily ethnic Slovaks, it serves as the official language of Slovakia and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union.


title: Slovak language

text: Slovak is closely related to Czech, to the point of mutual intelligibility to a very high degree, as well as Polish. Like other Slavic languages, Slovak is a fusional language with a complex system of morphology and relatively flexible word order. Its vocabulary has been extensively influenced by Latin and German and other Slavic languages.


title: Slovak language

text: The Czech–Slovak group developed within West Slavic in the high medieval period, and the standardization of Czech and Slovak within the Czech–Slovak dialect continuum emerged in the early modern period. In the later mid-19th century, the modern Slovak alphabet and written standard became codified by Ľudovít Štúr and reformed by Martin Hattala. The Moravian dialects spoken in the western part of the country along the border with the Czech Republic are also sometimes classified as Slovak, although some of their western variants are closer to Czech; they nonetheless form the bridge dialects between the two languages.


title: Slovak language

text: Slovak speakers are also found in the Slovak diaspora in the United States, the Czech Republic, Argentina, Serbia, Ireland, Romania, Poland, Canada, Hungary, Germany, Croatia, Israel, the United Kingdom, Australia, Austria, Ukraine, Norway, and other countries to a lesser extent.


title: Slovak language

text: The phoneme /æ/ is marginal and often merges with /e/; the two are normally only distinguished in higher registers.


title: Slovak language

text: Vowel length is phonemic in Slovak and both short and long vowels have the same quality. In addition, Slovak employs a "rhythmic law" which forbids two long vowels from following one another. In such cases the second vowel is shortened. For example, adding the locative plural ending to the root creates , not .


title: Slovak language

text: Slovak has final devoicing; when a voiced consonant () is at the end of a word before a pause, it is devoiced to its voiceless counterpart (, respectively). For example, is pronounced and is pronounced .


title: Slovak language

text: Consonant clusters containing both voiced and voiceless elements are entirely voiced if the last consonant is a voiced one, or voiceless if the last consonant is voiceless. For example, is pronounced and is pronounced . This rule applies also over the word boundary. For example, (to come home) and (more strawberries). The voiced counterpart of "" is , and the unvoiced counterpart of "" is .


title: Slovak language

text: Slovak uses the Latin script with small modifications that include the four diacritics (ˇ, ´, ¨, ˆ) placed above certain letters ()


title: Slovak language

text: The primary principle of Slovak spelling is the phonemic principle. The secondary principle is the morphological principle: forms derived from the same stem are written in the same way even if they are pronounced differently. An example of this principle is the assimilation rule (see below). The tertiary principle is the etymological principle, which can be seen in the use of "i" after certain consonants and of "y" after other consonants, although both "i" and "y" are usually pronounced the same way.


title: Slovak language

text: Finally, the rarely applied grammatical principle is present when, for example, the basic singular form and plural form of masculine adjectives are written differently with no difference in pronunciation (e.g. = nice – singular versus = nice – plural). Such spellings are most often remnants of differences in pronunciation that were present in Proto-Slavic (in Polish, where the vowel merger didn't occur, and are pronounced differently).


title: Slovak language

text: Most loanwords from foreign languages are respelt using Slovak principles either immediately or later. For example, "weekend" is spelled , "software" – , "gay" – (both not exclusively), and "quality" is spelled . Personal and geographical names from other languages using Latin alphabets keep their original spelling unless a fully Slovak form of the name exists (e.g. for "London").


title: Slovak language

text: Slovak features some heterophonic homographs (words with identical spelling but different pronunciation and meaning), the most common examples being (beautiful) versus (beautifully).


title: Slovak language

text: Word order in Slovak is relatively free, since strong inflection enables the identification of grammatical roles (subject, object, predicate, etc.) regardless of word placement. This relatively free word order allows the use of word order to convey topic and emphasis.


title: Slovak language

text: The unmarked order is subject–verb–object. Variation in word order is generally possible, but word order is not completely free.


title: Slovak language

text: In the above example, the noun phrase cannot be split up, so that the following combinations are not possible:


title: Slovak language

text: Slovak, like every major Slavic language other than Bulgarian and Macedonian, does not have articles. The demonstrative pronoun (fem: , neuter: ) may be used in front of the noun in situations where definiteness must be made explicit.


title: Slovak language

text: Slovak nouns are inflected for case and number. There are six cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, locative, and instrumental. The vocative is purely optional and most of the time unmarked. There are two numbers: singular and plural. Nouns have inherent gender. There are three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. Adjectives and pronouns must agree with nouns in case, number, and gender.


title: Slovak language

text: The numerals 0–10 have unique forms, with numerals 1–4 requiring specific gendered representations. Numerals 11–19 are formed by adding to the end of each numeral. The suffix is used to create numerals 20, 30 and 40; for numerals 50, 60, 70, 80 and 90, is used. Compound numerals (21, 1054) are combinations of these words formed in the same order as their mathematical symbol is written (e.g. 21 = , literally "twenty-one").


title: Slovak language

text: Some higher numbers: (200) , (300) , (900) , (1,000) , (1,100) , (2,000) , (100,000) , (200,000) , (1,000,000) , (1,000,000,000) .


title: Slovak language

text: Counted nouns have two forms. The most common form is the plural genitive (e.g. = five houses or = one hundred two women), while the plural form of the noun when counting the amounts of 2–4, etc., is usually the nominative form without counting (e.g. = two houses or = two women) but gender rules do apply in many cases.


title: Slovak language

text: Verbs have three major conjugations. Three persons and two numbers (singular and plural) are distinguished. Several conjugation paradigms exist as follows:


title: Slovak language

text: Adverbs are formed by replacing the adjectival ending with the ending - or - / -. Sometimes both - and - are possible. Examples include the following:


title: Slovak language

text: The comparative of adverbs is formed by replacing the adjectival ending with a comparative/superlative ending - or -, whence the superlative is formed with the prefix "naj-." Examples include the following:


title: Slovak language

text: Each preposition is associated with one or more grammatical cases. The noun governed by a preposition must appear in the case required by the preposition in the given context (e.g. from friends = ). is the genitive case of . It must appear in this case because the preposition (= from) always calls for its objects to be in the genitive.


title: Slovak language

text: Slovak is a descendant of Proto-Slavic, itself a descendant of Proto-Indo-European. It is closely related to the other West Slavic languages, primarily to Czech and Polish. Czech also influenced the language in its later development. The highest number of borrowings in the old Slovak vocabulary come from Latin, German, Czech, Hungarian, Polish and Greek (in that order). Recently, it is also influenced by English.


title: Slovak language

text: Although most dialects of Czech and Slovak are mutually intelligible (see Comparison of Slovak and Czech), eastern Slovak dialects are less intelligible to speakers of Czech and closer to Polish, Ukrainian, Rusyn and Belarusian and contact between speakers of Czech and speakers of the eastern dialects is limited.


title: Slovak language

text: Since the dissolution of Czechoslovakia it has been permitted to use Czech in TV broadcasting and during court proceedings (Administration Procedure Act 99/1963 Zb.). From 1999 to August 2009, the Minority Language Act 184/1999 Z.z., in its section (§) 6, contained the variously interpreted unclear provision saying that "When applying this act, it holds that the use of the Czech language fulfills the requirement of fundamental intelligibility with the state language"; the state language is Slovak and the Minority Language Act basically refers to municipalities with more than 20% ethnic minority population (no such Czech municipalities are found in Slovakia). Since 1 September 2009 (due to an amendment to the State Language Act 270/1995 Z.z.) a language "fundamentally intelligible with the state language" (i.e. the Czech language) may be used in contact with state offices and bodies by its native speakers, and documents written in it and issued by bodies in the Czech Republic are officially accepted. Regardless of its official status, Czech is used commonly both in Slovak mass media and in daily communication by Czech natives as an equal language.


title: Slovak language

text: Czech and Slovak have a long history of interaction and mutual influence well before the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918, a state which existed until 1993. Literary Slovak shares significant orthographic features with Czech, as well as technical and professional terminology dating from the Czechoslovak period, but phonetic, grammatical, and vocabulary differences do exist.


title: Slovak language

text: Slavic language varieties are relatively closely related, and have had a large degree of mutual influence, due to the complicated ethnopolitical history of their historic ranges. This is reflected in the many features Slovak shares with neighboring language varieties. Standard Slovak shares high degrees of mutual intelligibility with many Slavic varieties. Despite this closeness to other Slavic varieties, significant variation exists among Slovak dialects. In particular, eastern varieties differ significantly from the standard language, which is based on central and western varieties.


title: Slovak language

text: Eastern Slovak dialects have the greatest degree of mutual intelligibility with Polish of all the Slovak dialects, followed by Rusyn, but both Eastern Slovak and Rusyn lack familiar technical terminology and upper register expressions. Polish and Sorbian also differ quite considerably from Czech and Slovak in upper registers, but non-technical and lower register speech is readily intelligible. Some mutual intelligibility occurs with spoken Rusyn, Ukrainian, and even Russian (in this order), although their orthographies are based on the Cyrillic script.


title: Slovak language

text: Hungarians and Slovaks have had a language interaction ever since the settlement of Hungarians in the Carpathian area. Hungarians also adopted many words from various Slavic languages related to agriculture and administration, and a number of Hungarian loanwords are found in Slovak. Some examples are as follows:


title: Slovak language

text: The fourth group of dialects is often not considered a separate group, but a subgroup of Central and Western Slovak dialects (see e.g. Štolc, 1968), but it is currently undergoing changes due to contact with surrounding languages (Serbo-Croatian, Romanian, and Hungarian) and long-time geographical separation from Slovakia (see the studies in "Zborník Spolku vojvodinských slovakistov", e.g. Dudok, 1993).


title: Slovak language

text: The dialect groups differ mostly in phonology, vocabulary, and tonal inflection. Syntactic differences are minor. Central Slovak forms the basis of the present-day standard language. Not all dialects are fully mutually intelligible. It may be difficult for an inhabitant of the western Slovakia to understand a dialect from eastern Slovakia and the other way around.


title: Slovak language

text: The dialects are fragmented geographically, separated by numerous mountain ranges. The first three groups already existed in the 10th century. All of them are spoken by the Slovaks outside Slovakia, and central and western dialects form the basis of the lowland dialects (see above).


title: Slovak language

text: The western dialects contain features common with the Moravian dialects in the Czech Republic, the southern central dialects contain a few features common with South Slavic languages, and the eastern dialects a few features common with Polish and the East Slavonic languages (cf. Štolc, 1994). Lowland dialects share some words and areal features with the languages surrounding them (Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian, and Romanian).


title: Slovak language

text: Standard Slovak () is defined by an Act of Parliament on the State Language of the Slovak Republic (language law). According to this law, Ministry of Culture approves and publishes the codified form of Slovak based on the judgment of specialised Slovak linguistic institutes and specialists in the area of the state language. This is traditionally Ľudovit Štúr Institute of Linguistics, which is part of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. In practice, Ministry of Culture publishes a document that specifies authoritative reference books for standard Slovak usage, which is called " (codification handbook). Current regulation was published on 15 March 2021. There are four such publications:


title: Aaron Copland

text: Aaron Copland (, ; November 14, 1900December 2, 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later a conductor of his own and other American music. Copland was referred to by his peers and critics as "the Dean of American Composers". The open, slowly changing harmonies in much of his music are typical of what many people consider to be the sound of American music, evoking the vast American landscape and pioneer spirit. He is best known for the works he wrote in the 1930s and 1940s in a deliberately accessible style often referred to as "populist" and which the composer labeled his "vernacular" style. Works in this vein include the ballets "Appalachian Spring", "Billy the Kid" and "Rodeo", his "Fanfare for the Common Man" and Third Symphony. In addition to his ballets and orchestral works, he produced music in many other genres, including chamber music, vocal works, opera and film scores.


title: Aaron Copland

text: After some initial studies with composer Rubin Goldmark, Copland traveled to Paris, where he first studied with Isidor Philipp and Paul Vidal, then with noted pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. He studied three years with Boulanger, whose eclectic approach to music inspired his own broad taste. Determined upon his return to the U.S. to make his way as a full-time composer, Copland gave lecture-recitals, wrote works on commission and did some teaching and writing. However, he found that composing orchestral music in the modernist style, which he had adopted while studying abroad, was a financially contradictory approach, particularly in light of the Great Depression. He shifted in the mid-1930s to a more accessible musical style which mirrored the German idea of ("music for use"), music that could serve utilitarian and artistic purposes. During the Depression years, he traveled extensively to Europe, Africa, and Mexico, formed an important friendship with Mexican composer Carlos Chávez and began composing his signature works.


title: Aaron Copland

text: During the late 1940s, Copland became aware that Stravinsky and other fellow composers had begun to study Arnold Schoenberg's use of twelve-tone (serial) techniques. After he had been exposed to the works of French composer Pierre Boulez, he incorporated serial techniques into his "Piano Quartet" (1950), "Piano Fantasy" (1957), "Connotations" for orchestra (1961) and "Inscape" for orchestra (1967). Unlike Schoenberg, Copland used his tone rows in much the same fashion as his tonal material—as sources for melodies and harmonies, rather than as complete statements in their own right, except for crucial events from a structural point of view. From the 1960s onward, Copland's activities turned more from composing to conducting. He became a frequent guest conductor of orchestras in the U.S. and the UK and made a series of recordings of his music, primarily for Columbia Records.


title: Aaron Copland

text: Aaron Copland was born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 14, 1900. He was the youngest of five children in a Conservative Jewish family of Lithuanian origins. While emigrating from Russia to the United States, Copland's father, Harris Morris Copland (1864–1945), lived and worked in Scotland for two to three years to pay for his boat fare to the United States. It was there that Copland's father may have Anglicized his surname "Kaplan" to "Copland," though Copland himself believed for many years that the change had been due to an Ellis Island immigration official when his father entered the country. Copland was, however, unaware until late in his life that the family name had been Kaplan, and his parents never told him this. Throughout his childhood, Copland and his family lived above his parents' Brooklyn shop, H. M. Copland's, at 628 Washington Avenue (which Aaron would later describe as "a kind of neighborhood Macy's"), on the corner of Dean Street and Washington Avenue, and most of the children helped out in the store. His father was a staunch Democrat. The family members were active in Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes, where Aaron celebrated his bar mitzvah. Not especially athletic, the sensitive young man became an avid reader and often read Horatio Alger stories on his front steps.


title: Aaron Copland

text: Copland's father had no musical interest. His mother, Sarah Mittenthal Copland (1865–1942), sang, played the piano, and arranged for music lessons for her children. Copland had four older siblings: two older brothers, Ralph Copland (1888–1952) and Leon Copland (c. 1891–?) and two older sisters, Laurine Copland (c. 1892–?) and Josephine Copland (c. 1894–?). Of his siblings, his oldest brother Ralph was the most advanced musically; he was proficient on the violin. His sister Laurine had the strongest connection with Aaron; she gave him his first piano lessons, promoted his musical education, and supported him in his musical career. A student at the Metropolitan Opera School and a frequent opera-goer, Laurine also brought home libretti for Aaron to study. Copland attended Boys High School and in the summer went to various camps. Most of his early exposure to music was at Jewish weddings and ceremonies, and occasional family musicales.


title: Aaron Copland

text: Copland began writing songs at the age of eight and a half. His earliest notated music, about seven bars he wrote when age 11, was for an opera scenario he created and called "Zenatello". From 1913 to 1917 he took piano lessons with Leopold Wolfsohn, who taught him the standard classical fare. Copland's first public music performance was at a Wanamaker's recital. By the age of 15, after attending a concert by Polish composer-pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Copland decided to become a composer. At age 16, Copland heard his first symphony at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. After attempts to further his music study from a correspondence course, Copland took formal lessons in harmony, theory, and composition from Rubin Goldmark, a noted teacher and composer of American music (who had given George Gershwin three lessons). Goldmark, with whom Copland studied between 1917 and 1921, gave the young Copland a solid foundation, especially in the Germanic tradition. As Copland stated later: "This was a stroke of luck for me. I was spared the floundering that so many musicians have suffered through incompetent teaching." But Copland also commented that the maestro had "little sympathy for the advanced musical idioms of the day" and his "approved" composers ended with Richard Strauss.


title: Aaron Copland

text: Copland's graduation piece from his studies with Goldmark was a three-movement piano sonata in a Romantic style. But he had also composed more original and daring pieces which he did not share with his teacher. In addition to regularly attending the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Symphony, where he heard the standard classical repertory, Copland continued his musical development through an expanding circle of musical friends. After graduating from high school, Copland played in dance bands. Continuing his musical education, he received further piano lessons from Victor Wittgenstein, who found his student to be "quiet, shy, well-mannered, and gracious in accepting criticism." Copland's fascination with the Russian Revolution and its promise for freeing the lower classes drew a rebuke from his father and uncles. In spite of that, in his early adult life, Copland would develop friendships with people with socialist and communist leanings.


title: Aaron Copland

text: Copland's passion for the latest European music, plus glowing letters from his friend Aaron Schaffer, inspired him to go to Paris for further study. An article in "Musical America" about a summer school program for American musicians at the Fontainebleau School of Music, offered by the French government, encouraged Copland still further. His father wanted him to go to college, but his mother's vote in the family conference allowed him to give Paris a try. On arriving in France, he studied at Fontainebleau with pianist and pedagogue Isidor Philipp and composer Paul Vidal. When Copland found Vidal too much like Goldmark, he switched at the suggestion of a fellow student to Nadia Boulanger, then aged 34. He had initial reservations: "No one to my knowledge had ever before thought of studying with a woman." She interviewed him, and recalled later: "One could tell his talent immediately."


title: Aaron Copland

text: Boulanger had as many as 40 students at once and employed a formal regimen that Copland had to follow. Copland found her incisive mind much to his liking and found her ability to critique a composition impeccable. Boulanger "could always find the weak spot in a place you suspected was weak... She also could tell you "why" it was weak [italics Copland]." He wrote in a letter to his brother Ralph, "This intellectual Amazon is not only professor at the Conservatoire, is not only familiar with all music from Bach to Stravinsky, but is prepared for anything worse in the way of dissonance. But make no mistake ... A more charming womanly woman never lived." Copland later wrote that "it was wonderful for me to find a teacher with such openness of mind, while at the same time she held firm ideas of right and wrong in musical matters. The confidence she had in my talents and her belief in me were at the very least flattering and more -- they were crucial to my development at this time of my career." Though he had planned on only one year abroad, he studied with her for three years, finding that her eclectic approach inspired his own broad musical taste.


title: Aaron Copland

text: Along with his studies with Boulanger, Copland took classes in French language and history at the Sorbonne, attended plays, and frequented Shakespeare and Company, the English-language bookstore that was a gathering-place for expatriate American writers. Among this group in the heady cultural atmosphere of Paris in the 1920s were Paul Bowles, Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra Pound, as well as artists like Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, and Amedeo Modigliani. Also influential on the new music were the French intellectuals Marcel Proust, Paul Valéry, Jean-Paul Sartre, and André Gide; the latter cited by Copland as being his personal favorite and most read. Travels to Italy, Austria, and Germany rounded out Copland's musical education. During his stay in Paris, Copland began writing musical critiques, the first on Gabriel Fauré, which helped spread his fame and stature in the music community.


title: Aaron Copland

text: After a fruitful stay in Paris, Copland returned to America optimistic and enthusiastic about the future, determined to make his way as a full-time composer. He rented a studio apartment on New York City's Upper West Side in the Empire Hotel, close to Carnegie Hall and other musical venues and publishers. He remained in that area for the next 30 years, later moving to Westchester County, New York. Copland lived frugally and survived financially with help from two $2,500 Guggenheim Fellowships in 1925 and 1926 (each of the two ). Lecture-recitals, awards, appointments, and small commissions, plus some teaching, writing, and personal loans, kept him afloat in the subsequent years through World War II. Also important, especially during the Depression, were wealthy patrons who underwrote performances, helped pay for publication of works and promoted musical events and composers. Among those mentors was Serge Koussevitzky, the music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and known as a champion of "new music." Koussevitsky would prove to be very influential in Copland's life, and was perhaps the second most important figure in Copland's career after Boulanger. Beginning with the Symphony for Organ and Orchestra (1924), Koussevitzky would perform more of Copland's music than that of any the composer's contemporaries, at a time when other conductors were programming only a few of Copland's works.


title: Aaron Copland

text: Soon after his return to the United States, Copland was exposed to the artistic circle of photographer Alfred Stieglitz. While Copland did not care for Stieglitz's domineering attitude, he did admire his work and took to heart Stieglitz's conviction that American artists should reflect "the ideas of American Democracy." This ideal influenced not just the composer, but also a generation of artists and photographers, including Paul Strand, Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Walker Evans. Evans's photographs inspired portions of Copland's opera "The Tender Land".


title: Aaron Copland

text: In his quest to take up the slogan of the Stieglitz group, "Affirm America," Copland found only the music of Carl Ruggles and Charles Ives upon which to draw. Without what Copland called a "usable past" in American classical composers, he looked toward jazz and popular music, something he had already started to do while in Europe. In the 1920s, Gershwin, Bessie Smith, and Louis Armstrong were in the forefront of American popular music and jazz. By the end of the decade, Copland felt his music was going in a more abstract, less jazz-oriented direction. However, as large swing bands such as those of Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller became popular in the 1930s, Copland took a renewed interest in the genre.


title: Aaron Copland

text: Inspired by the example of Les Six in France, Copland sought out contemporaries such as Roger Sessions, Roy Harris, Virgil Thomson, and Walter Piston, and quickly established himself as a spokesperson for composers of his generation. He also helped found the Copland-Sessions Concerts to showcase these composers' chamber works to new audiences. Copland's relationship with these men, who became known as "commando unit," was one of both support and rivalry, and he played a key role in keeping them together until after World War II. He also was generous with his time, with nearly every American young composer he met during his life, later earning the title "Dean of American Music."


title: Aaron Copland

text: With the knowledge he had gained from his studies in Paris, Copland came into demand as a lecturer and writer on contemporary European classical music. From 1927 to 1930 and from 1935 to 1938, he taught classes at The New School for Social Research in New York City. Eventually, his New School lectures would appear in the form of two books —"What to Listen for in Music" (1937, revised 1957) and "Our New Music" (1940, revised 1968 and retitled "The New Music: 1900–1960"). During this period, Copland also wrote regularly for "The New York Times", "The Musical Quarterly" and a number of other journals. These articles would appear in 1969 as the book "Copland on Music". During his time at The New School, Copland was active as a presenter and curator, using The New School as a key location to present a wide range of composers and artists from the United States as well as across the globe.


title: Aaron Copland

text: Copland's compositions in the early 1920s reflected the modernist attitude that prevailed among intellectuals, that the arts need be accessible to only a cadre of the enlightened, and that the masses would come to appreciate their efforts over time. However, mounting troubles with the "Symphonic Ode" (1929) and "Short Symphony" (1933) caused Copland to rethink this approach. It was financially contradictory, particularly during the Depression. Avant-garde music had lost what cultural historian Morris Dickstein calls "its buoyant experimental edge" and the national mood toward it had changed. As biographer Howard Pollack points out,


title: Aaron Copland

text: Copland observed two trends among composers in the 1930s: first, a continuing attempt to "simplify their musical language" and, second, a desire to "make contact" with as wide an audience as possible. Since 1927, he had been in the process of simplifying, or at least paring down, his musical language, though in such a manner as to sometimes have the effect, paradoxically, of estranging audiences and performers. By 1933 ... he began to find ways to make his starkly personal language accessible to a surprisingly large number of people.


title: Aaron Copland

text: In many ways, this shift mirrored the German idea of ("music for use"), as composers sought to create music that could serve a utilitarian as well as artistic purpose. This approach encompassed two trends: first, music that students could easily learn, and second, music which would have wider appeal, such as incidental music for plays, movies, radio, etc. Toward this end, Copland provided musical advice and inspiration to The Group Theatre, a company which also attracted Stella Adler, Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg. Philosophically an outgrowth of Stieglitz and his ideals, the Group focused on socially relevant plays by the American authors. Through it and later his work in film, Copland met several major American playwrights, including Thornton Wilder, William Inge, Arthur Miller, and Edward Albee, and considered projects with all of them.


title: Aaron Copland

text: Around 1935 Copland began to compose musical pieces for young audiences, in accordance with the first goal of American Gebrauchsmusik. These works included piano pieces ("The Young Pioneers") and an opera ("The Second Hurricane"). During the Depression years, Copland traveled extensively to Europe, Africa, and Mexico. He formed an important friendship with Mexican composer Carlos Chávez and would return often to Mexico for working vacations conducting engagements. During his initial visit to Mexico, Copland began composing the first of his signature works, "El Salón México", which he completed in 1936. In it and in "The Second Hurricane" Copland began "experimenting," as he phrased it, with a simpler, more accessible style. This and other incidental commissions fulfilled the second goal of American Gebrauchsmusik, creating music of wide appeal.


title: Aaron Copland

text: Concurrent with "The Second Hurricane", Copland composed (for radio broadcast) "Prairie Journal" on a commission from the Columbia Broadcast System. This was one of his first pieces to convey the landscape of the American West. This emphasis on the frontier carried over to his ballet "Billy the Kid" (1938), which along with "El Salón México" became his first widespread public success. Copland's ballet music established him as an authentic composer of American music much as Stravinsky's ballet scores connected the composer with Russian music and came at an opportune time. He helped fill a vacuum for American choreographers to fill their dance repertory and tapped into an artistic groundswell, from the motion pictures of Busby Berkeley and Fred Astaire to the ballets of George Balanchine and Martha Graham, to both democratize and Americanize dance as an art form. In 1938, Copland helped form the American Composers Alliance to promote and publish American contemporary classical music. Copland was president of the organization from 1939 to 1945. In 1939, Copland completed his first two Hollywood film scores, for "Of Mice and Men" and "Our Town", and composed the radio score "John Henry," based on the folk ballad.


title: Aaron Copland

text: While these works and others like them that would follow were accepted by the listening public at large, detractors accused Copland of pandering to the masses. Music critic Paul Rosenfeld, for one, warned in 1939 that Copland was "standing in the fork in the highroad, the two branches of which lead respectively to popular and artistic success." Even some of the composer's friends, such as composer Arthur Berger, were confused about Copland's simpler style. One, composer David Diamond, went so far as to lecture Copland: "By having sold out to the mongrel commercialists half-way already, the danger is going to be wider for you, and I beg you dear Aaron, don't sell out [entirely] yet." Copland's response was that his writing as he did and in as many genres was his response to how the Depression had affected society, as well as to new media and the audiences made available by these new media. As he himself phrased it, "The composer who is frightened of losing his artistic integrity through contact with a mass audience is no longer aware of the meaning of the word art."


title: Aaron Copland

text: The 1940s were arguably Copland's most productive years, and some of his works from this period would cement his worldwide fame. His ballet scores for "Rodeo" (1942) and "Appalachian Spring" (1944) were huge successes. His pieces "Lincoln Portrait" and "Fanfare for the Common Man" became patriotic standards. Also important was the Third Symphony. Composed in a two-year period from 1944 to 1946, it became Copland's best-known symphony. The Clarinet Concerto (1948), scored for solo clarinet, strings, harp, and piano, was a commission piece for bandleader and clarinetist Benny Goodman and a complement to Copland's earlier jazz-influenced work, the Piano Concerto (1926). His "Four Piano Blues" is an introspective composition with a jazz influence. Copland finished the 1940s with two film scores, one for William Wyler's "The Heiress" and one for the film adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel "The Red Pony".


title: Aaron Copland

text: In 1949, Copland returned to Europe, where he found French composer Pierre Boulez dominating the group of post-war avant-garde composers there. He also met with proponents of twelve-tone technique, based on the works of Arnold Schoenberg, and found himself interested in adapting serial methods to his own musical voice.


title: Aaron Copland

text: In 1950, Copland received a U.S.-Italy Fulbright Commission scholarship to study in Rome, which he did the following year. Around this time, he also composed his Piano Quartet, adopting Schoenberg's twelve-tone method of composition, and "Old American Songs" (1950), the first set of which was premiered by Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten, the second by William Warfield. During the 1951–52 academic year, Copland gave a series of lectures under the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship at Harvard University. These lectures were published as the book "Music and Imagination".


title: Aaron Copland

text: Because of his leftist views, which had included his support of the Communist Party USA ticket during the 1936 presidential election and his strong support of Progressive Party candidate Henry A. Wallace during the 1948 presidential election, Copland was investigated by the FBI during the Red scare of the 1950s. He was included on an FBI list of 151 artists thought to have Communist associations and found himself blacklisted, with "A Lincoln Portrait" withdrawn from the 1953 inaugural concert for President Eisenhower. Called later that year to a private hearing at the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., Copland was questioned by Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn about his lecturing abroad and his affiliations with various organizations and events. In the process, McCarthy and Cohn neglected completely Copland's works, which made a virtue of American values. Outraged by the accusations, many members of the musical community held up Copland's music as a banner of his patriotism. The investigations ceased in 1955 and were closed in 1975.


title: Aaron Copland

text: The McCarthy probes did not seriously affect Copland's career and international artistic reputation, taxing of his time, energy, and emotional state as they might have been. Nevertheless, beginning in 1950, Copland—who had been appalled at Stalin's persecution of Shostakovich and other artists—began resigning from participation in leftist groups. Copland, Pollack states, "stayed particularly concerned about the role of the artist in society". He decried the lack of artistic freedom in the Soviet Union, and in his 1954 Norton lecture he asserted that loss of freedom under Soviet Communism deprived artists of "the immemorial right of the artist to be wrong." He began to vote Democratic, first for Stevenson and then for Kennedy.


title: Aaron Copland

text: Potentially more damaging for Copland was a sea-change in artistic tastes, away from the Populist mores that infused his work of the 1930s and 40s. Beginning in the 1940s, intellectuals assailed Popular Front culture, to which Copland's music was linked, and labeled it, in Dickstein's words, as "hopelessly middlebrow, a dumbing down of art into toothless entertainment." They often linked their disdain for Populist art with technology, new media and mass audiences—in other words, the areas of radio, television and motion pictures, for which Copland either had or soon would write music, as well as his popular ballets. While these attacks actually began at the end of the 1930s with the writings of Clement Greenberg and Dwight Macdonald for "Partisan Review", they were based in anti-Stalinist politics and would accelerate in the decades following World War II.


title: Aaron Copland

text: Despite any difficulties that his suspected Communist sympathies might have posed, Copland traveled extensively during the 1950s and early 1960s to observe the avant-garde styles of Europe, hear compositions by Soviet composers not well known in the West, and experience the new school of Polish music. While in Japan, he was taken with the work of Tōru Takemitsu and began a correspondence with him that would last over the next decade. Copland revised his text "The New Music" with comments on the styles that he encountered. He found much of what he heard dull and impersonal. Electronic music seemed to have "a depressing sameness of sound," while aleatoric music was for those "who enjoy teetering on the edge of chaos." As he summarized, "I've spent most of my life trying to get the right note in the right place. Just throwing it open to chance seems to go against my natural instincts."


title: Aaron Copland

text: In 1952, Copland received a commission from the League of Composers, funded by a grant from Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, to write an opera for television. While Copland was aware of the potential pitfalls of that genre, which included weak libretti and demanding production values, he had also been thinking about writing an opera since the 1940s. Among the subjects he had considered were Theodore Dreiser's "An American Tragedy" and Frank Norris's "McTeague" He finally settled on James Agee's "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men", which seemed appropriate for the more intimate setting of television and could also be used in the "college trade," with more schools mounting operas than they had before World War II. The resulting opera, "The Tender Land", was written in two acts but later expanded to three. As Copland feared, when the opera premiered in 1954 critics found the libretto to be weak. In spite of its flaws, the opera became one of the few American operas to enter the standard repertory.


title: Aaron Copland

text: In 1957, 1958, and 1976, Copland was the Music Director of the Ojai Music Festival, a classical and contemporary music festival in Ojai, California. For the occasion of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Centennial, Copland composed "Ceremonial Fanfare for Brass Ensemble" to accompany the exhibition "Masterpieces of Fifty Centuries." Leonard Bernstein, Piston, William Schuman, and Thomson also composed pieces for the Museum's Centennial exhibitions.


title: Aaron Copland

text: From the 1960s onward, Copland turned increasingly to conducting. Though not enamored with the prospect, he found himself without new ideas for composition, saying, "It was exactly as if someone had simply turned off a faucet." He became a frequent guest conductor in the United States and the United Kingdom and made a series of recordings of his music, primarily for Columbia Records. In 1960, RCA Victor released Copland's recordings with the Boston Symphony Orchestra of the orchestral suites from "Appalachian Spring" and "The Tender Land"; these recordings were later reissued on CD, as were most of Copland's Columbia recordings (by Sony).


title: Aaron Copland

text: From 1960 until his death, Copland resided at Cortlandt Manor, New York. Known as Rock Hill, his home was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2003 and further designated a National Historic Landmark in 2008. Copland's health deteriorated through the 1980s, and he died of Alzheimer's disease and respiratory failure on December 2, 1990, in North Tarrytown, New York (now Sleepy Hollow). Following his death, his ashes were scattered over the Tanglewood Music Center near Lenox, Massachusetts. Much of his large estate was bequeathed to the creation of the Aaron Copland Fund for Composers, which bestows over $600,000 per year to performing groups.


title: Aaron Copland

text: Copland never enrolled as a member of any political party. Nevertheless, he inherited a considerable interest in civic and world events from his father. His views were generally progressive and he had strong ties with numerous colleagues and friends in the Popular Front, including Odets. Early in his life, Copland developed, in Pollack's words, "a deep admiration for the works of Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser and Upton Sinclair, all socialists whose novels passionately excoriated capitalism's physical and emotional toll on the average man." Even after the McCarthy hearings, he remained a committed opponent of militarism and the Cold War, which he regarded as having been instigated by the United States. He condemned it as "almost worse for art than the real thing." Throw the artist "into a mood of suspicion, ill-will, and dread that typifies the cold war attitude and he'll create nothing".


title: Aaron Copland

text: While Copland had various encounters with organized religious thought, which influenced some of his early compositions, he remained agnostic. He was close with Zionism during the Popular Front movement, when it was endorsed by the left. Pollack writes:


title: Aaron Copland

text: Like many contemporaries, Copland regarded Judaism alternately in terms of religion, culture, and race; but he showed relatively little involvement in any aspect of his Jewish heritage. At the same time, he had ties to Christianity, identifying with such profoundly Christian writers as Gerard Manley Hopkins and often spending Christmas Day at home with a special dinner with close friends. In general, his music seemed to evoke Protestant hymns as often as it did Jewish chant. Copland characteristically found connections among various religious traditions. But if Copland was discreet about his Jewish background, he never hid it, either.


title: Aaron Copland

text: Pollack states that Copland was gay and that the composer came to an early acceptance and understanding of his sexuality. Like many at that time, Copland guarded his privacy, especially in regard to his homosexuality. He provided few written details about his private life, and even after the Stonewall riots of 1969, showed no inclination to "come out." However, he was one of the few composers of his stature to live openly and travel with his intimates. They tended to be talented, younger men involved in the arts, and the age-gap between them and the composer widened as he grew older. Most became enduring friends after a few years and, in Pollack's words, "remained a primary source of companionship." Among Copland's love affairs were ones with photographer Victor Kraft, artist Alvin Ross, pianist Paul Moor, dancer Erik Johns, composer John Brodbin Kennedy, and painter Prentiss Taylor.


title: Aaron Copland

text: Victor Kraft became a constant in Copland's life, though their romance might have ended by 1944. Originally a violin prodigy when the composer met him in 1932, Kraft gave up music to pursue a career in photography, in part due to Copland's urging. Kraft would leave and re-enter Copland's life, often bringing much stress with him as his behavior became increasingly erratic, sometimes confrontational. Kraft fathered a child to whom Copland later provided financial security, through a bequest from his estate.


title: Aaron Copland

text: Vivian Perlis, who collaborated with Copland on his autobiography, writes: "Copland's method of composing was to write down fragments of musical ideas as they came to him. When he needed a piece, he would turn to these ideas (his 'gold nuggets')." if one or more of these nuggets looked promising, he would then write a piano sketch and eventually work on them at the keyboard. The piano, Perlis writes, "was so integral to his composing that it permeated his compositional style, not only in the frequent use in the instrument but in more subtle and complex ways". His habit of turning to the keyboard tended to embarrass Copland until he learned that Stravinsky also did so.


title: Aaron Copland

text: Copland would not consider the specific instrumentation for a piece until it was complete and notated. Nor, according to Pollack, did he generally work in linear fashion, from beginning to end of a composition. Instead, he tended to compose whole sections in no particular order and surmise their eventual sequence after all those parts were complete, much like assembling a collage. Copland himself admitted, "I don't compose. I assemble materials." Many times, he included material he had written years earlier. If the situation dictated, as it did with his film scores, Copland could work quickly. Otherwise, he tended to write slowly whenever possible. Even with this deliberation, Copland considered composition, in his words, "the product of the emotions", which included "self-expression" and "self-discovery".


title: Aaron Copland

text: While Copland's earliest musical inclinations as a teenager ran toward Chopin, Debussy, Verdi and the Russian composers, Copland's teacher and mentor Nadia Boulanger became his most important influence. Copland especially admired Boulanger's total grasp of all classical music, and he was encouraged to experiment and develop a "clarity of conception and elegance in proportion". Following her model, he studied all periods of classical music and all forms—from madrigals to symphonies. This breadth of vision led Copland to compose music for numerous settings—orchestra, opera, solo piano, small ensemble, art song, ballet, theater and film. Boulanger particularly emphasized "la grande ligne" (the long line), "a sense of forward motion ... the feeling for inevitability, for the creating of an entire piece that could be thought of as a functioning entity".


title: Aaron Copland

text: During his studies with Boulanger in Paris, Copland was excited to be so close to the new post-Impressionistic French music of Ravel, Roussel, and Satie, as well as Les Six, a group that included Milhaud, Poulenc, and Honegger. Webern, Berg, and Bartók also impressed him. Copland was "insatiable" in seeking out the newest European music, whether in concerts, score reading or heated debate. These "moderns" were discarding the old laws of composition and experimenting with new forms, harmonies and rhythms, and including the use of jazz and quarter-tone music. Milhaud was Copland's inspiration for some of his earlier "jazzy" works. He was also exposed to Schoenberg and admired his earlier atonal pieces, thinking Schoenberg's "Pierrot lunaire" above all others. Copland named Igor Stravinsky as his "hero" and his favorite 20th-century composer. Copland especially admired Stravinsky's "jagged and uncouth rhythmic effects", "bold use of dissonance", and "hard, dry, crackling sonority".


title: Aaron Copland

text: Another inspiration for much of Copland's music was jazz. Although familiar with jazz back in America—having listened to it and also played it in bands—he fully realized its potential while traveling in Austria: "The impression of jazz one receives in a foreign country is totally unlike the impression of such music heard in one's own country ... when I heard jazz played in Vienna, it was like hearing it for the first time." He also found that the distance from his native country helped him see the United States more clearly. Beginning in 1923, he employed "jazzy elements" in his classical music, but by the late 1930s, he moved on to Latin and American folk tunes in his more successful pieces. Although his early focus of jazz gave way to other influences, Copland continued to make use of jazz in more subtle ways in later works. Copland's work from the late 1940s onward included experimentation with Schoenberg's twelve-tone system, resulting in two major works, the Piano Quartet (1950) and the Piano Fantasy (1957).


title: Aaron Copland

text: Copland's compositions before leaving for Paris were mainly short works for piano and art songs, inspired by Liszt and Debussy. In them, he experimented with ambiguous beginnings and endings, rapid key changes, and the frequent use of tritones. His first published work, "The Cat and the Mouse" (1920), was a piece for piano solo based on the Jean de La Fontaine fable "The Old Cat and the Young Mouse". In "Three Moods" (1921), Copland's final movement is entitled "Jazzy", which he noted "is based on two jazz melodies and ought to make the old professors sit up and take notice".


title: Aaron Copland

text: The Symphony for Organ and Orchestra established Copland as a serious modern composer. Musicologist Gayle Murchison cites Copland's use melodic, harmonic and rhythmic elements endemic in jazz, which he would also use in his "Music for the Theater" and Piano Concerto to evoke an essentially "American" sound. he fuses these qualities with modernist elements such as octatonic and whole-tone scales, polyrhythmic ostinato figures, and dissonant counterpoint. Murchinson points out the influence of Igor Stravinsky in the work's nervous, driving rhythms and some of its harmonic language. Copland in hindsight found the work too "European" as he consciously sought a more consciously American idiom to evoke in his future work.


title: Aaron Copland

text: Visits to Europe in 1926 and 1927 brought him into contact with the most recent developments there, including Webern's Five Pieces for Orchestra, which greatly impressed him. In August 1927, while staying in Königstein, Copland wrote "Poet's Song", a setting of a text by E. E. Cummings and his first composition using Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. This was followed by the "Symphonic Ode" (1929) and the Piano Variations (1930), both of which rely on the exhaustive development of a single short motif. This procedure, which provided Copland with more formal flexibility and a greater emotional range than in his earlier music, is similar to Schoenberg's idea of "continuous variation" and, according to Copland's own admission, was influenced by the twelve-tone method, though neither work actually uses a twelve-tone row.


title: Aaron Copland

text: The other major work of Copland's first period is the "Short Symphony" (1933). In it, music critic and musicologist Michael Steinberg writes, the "jazz-influenced dislocations of meter that are so characteristic of Copland's music of the 1920s are more prevalent than ever". Compared to the "Symphonic Ode", the orchestration is much leaner and the composition itself more concentrated. In its combination and refinement of modernist and jazz elements, Steinberg calls the "Short Symphony" "a remarkable synthesis of the learned and the vernacular, and thus, in all its brevity [the work last just 15 minutes], a singularly 'complete' representation of its composer". However, Copland moved from this work toward more accessible works and folk sources.


title: Aaron Copland

text: Copland wrote "El Salón México" between 1932 and 1936, which met with a popular acclaim that contrasted the relative obscurity of most of his previous works. Inspiration for this work came from Copland's vivid recollection of visiting the "Salon Mexico" dancehall where he witnessed a more intimate view of Mexico's nightlife. Copland derived his melodic material for this piece freely from two collections of Mexican folk tunes, changing pitches and varying rhythms. The use of a folk tune with variations set in a symphonic context started a pattern he repeated in many of his most successful works right on through the 1940s. It also marked a shift in emphasis from a unified musical structure to the rhetorical effect the music might have on an audience and showed Copland refining a simplified, more accessible musical language.


title: Aaron Copland

text: "El Salón" prepared Copland to write the ballet score "Billy the Kid", which became, in Pollack's words, an "archetypical depiction of the legendary American West". Based on a Walter Noble Burns novel, with choreography by Eugene Loring, "Billy" was among the first to display an American music and dance vocabulary. Copland used six cowboy folk songs to provide period atmosphere and employed polyrhythm and polyharmony when not quoting these tunes literally to maintain the work's overall tone. In this way, Copland's music worked much in the same way as the murals of Thomas Hart Benton, in that it employed elements that could be grasped easily by a mass audience. The ballet premiered in New York in 1939, with Copland recalling: "I cannot remember another work of mine that was so unanimously received." Along with the ballet "Rodeo", "Billy the Kid" became, in the words of musicologist Elizabeth Crist, "the basis for Copland's reputation as a composer of Americana" and defines "an uncomplicated form of American nationalism".