var now = new Date();
var day = now.getDate();

if (day==1)
{document.write('Around the world, many celebrations were held throughout Copland\'s 80th birthday year. When a friend commented to Copland "I bet you\'ll be glad when this is over!" he replied, "Young man, you underestimate my capacity for adulation."');
}

if (day==2)
{document.write('Spike Lee uses "Hoe Down" from Copland\'s <i>Rodeo</i> and Copland\'s <i>Lincoln Portrait</i> as background music for young African-Americans playing basketball in his movie <i>He Got Game</i>.  Lee accounts for this decision stating, "When I listen to Aaron Copland\'s music, I hear America, and basketball is America."');
}

if (day==3)
{document.write('In burlesque and jazz, Copland found a means of creating the "succes de scandale,"or controversy that he admired in radical composer Leo Ornstein\'s work and the Ballet Suedois.');
}

if (day==4)
{document.write('Copland\'s attraction to the modernist agenda-headed by individuals like "futurist" Leo Ornstein and "iconoclastic bomb thrower" Alfred Steiglitz served as a point of pride, "I consciously hoped to forward the cause of contemporary American music by my activities and writings. If I was a leader in contemporary music, I was a follower of the modern movement in the other arts."');
}

if (day==5)
{document.write('During the 1920s, Copland was a frequent dinner guest at critic Paul Rosenfeld\'s intellectual soirees. Among the other guests were Alfred Steiglitz, Georgia O\' Keeffe, Waldo Frank, e.e. cummings, Darius Milhaud, and Leo Ornstein.');
}

if (day==6)
{document.write('In June of 1921, Copland traveled to Paris aboard the <i>France</i>.  During the voyage he encountered the father of Dada, Marcel Duchamp.  In a letter home, he notes," I was terribly impressed by his independence of mind."');
}

if (day==7)
{document.write('During his stay in Paris during 1921-24, Copland encountered many modernist writers, painters, musicians and intellectuals, including the poet Ezra Pound, the painter Charles Demuth, and experimental composer Darius Milhaud.');
}

if (day==8)
{document.write('After performing his own music for a school concert, Copland wrote home to his parents, "Sad to say, it made quite a hit... if a thing is popular it can\'t be good."  However, the Depression era made Copland more conscious of the merits of accessible, distinctly American music.  As a result, Copland tapped into folk themes, American tradition, and cinema.');
}

if (day==9)
{document.write('Although he was inspired by general movements such as the Harlem Renaissance and Parisian modernism, Copland\'s music was directly influenced by a great many individual artists, writers and musicians including Ezra Pound, e.e. cummings, Carlos Chavez, and Alexander Calder.');
}

if (day==10)
{document.write('As a response to Carlos Chavez\'s Mexican folk tunes, Copland launched a musical exposition of his own cultural heritage in <i>Vitebsk</i>. During this time, he viewed Chagall\'s paintings and was particularly drawn to the <i>Green Violinist</i>.');
}

if (day==11)
{document.write('Beginning with <i>Vitebsk</i> and culminating in <i>Appalachian Spring</i> and <i>Fanfare for the Common Man</i>, Copland was inspired by folk culture. In fact, artists the world over also sampled folk art (i.e. painters Marsden Hartley and Thomas Hart Benton, photographer Elie Nadelman).');
}

if (day==12)
{document.write('Copland described how he used jazz "cubistically" in order to create new, exciting compositions encapsulating the raw experimentation in Cubists\' visual compositions.  Incidentally, cubist painters often made music their subjects.');
}

if (day==13)
{document.write('As a teenager, Copland was interested in progressive ideas.  In the Brooklyn Public Library, he read books by Sigmund Freud and Havelock Ellis. In music he discovered Ravel, Debussy, Scriabin and Satie.');
}

if (day==14)
{document.write('Compared to most musical geniuses, Copland was a "late-bloomer," delaying his compositional debut until the age of nine.  At eleven, he began taking piano lessons with his older sister Laurine. But, after a short time, Laurine modestly admitted, "You know more now than I learned in eight years...I can\'t teach you anything else."');
}

if (day==15)
{document.write('As a teenager, Copland admired "futurist" composer Leo Ornstein.  Ornstein\'s <i>Pygmy Suite op.9</i> (1914) echoed Picasso and Matisse\'s earlier fascination with African sculpture.  Ornstein\'s search for primal nature paralleled artists such as Max Weber, Marsden Hartley, and Man Ray\'s sampling of "simplistic" African-American and Native American themes.');
}

if (day==16)
{document.write('Copland\'s distinctive profile commanded the interest of many visual artists including photographers Carl Van Vechten and Ralph Steiner and artists/caricaturists Freuh, Hirschfeld and Fruhauf.');
}

if (day==17)
{document.write('In 1939, facing the milestone of middle age, Copland scripted a memoir, candidly opening it with, <i>I was born on a street in Brooklyn ... It had none of the garish color of the ghetto, none of the charm of an old New England thoroughfare, or even the rawness of a pioneer street.  It was simply drab.</i>');
}

if (day==18)
{document.write('Following his jazz-infused <i>Music for the Theatre</i>, Copland received mixed reviews.  This fusion of vernacular jazz and symphonic forms earned Copland the desired "succes de scandal."  Music critics denounced his "shocking lack of taste," dubbing him the "ogre with the terrible <i>Concerto 61</i>."');
}

if (day==19)
{document.write('Copland, like many other artists and intellectuals, found his social conscience awakened by the Depression era in the 1930s and turned toward leftist politics. Declining to join the American Communist Party, he participated in alternative music organizations and literary enterprises endorsed by it.');
}

if (day==20)
{document.write('During the anti-Communist hysteria in 1953, Copland was subpoenaed to testify at the McCarthy hearings.');
}

if (day==21)
{document.write('In 1938, Copland composed <i>Billy the Kid</i>, marking an abrupt shift to plainer, simpler themes in his music.');
}

if (day==22)
{document.write('In 1939, Copland wrote his first film score to <i>The City</i>, followed by <i>Of Mice and Men</i>.');
}

if (day==23)
{document.write('In 1945, Copland wins the Pulitzer Prize in music and the New York Film Critics award for the folk-inspired ballet, <i>Appalachian Spring</i>.');
}

if (day==24)
{document.write('In 1950, Copland won the Academy Award for Best Original Musical Score for <i>The Heiress</i>.');
}

if (day==25)
{document.write('In 1942, Aaron Copland composed <i>Lincoln Portrait</i>, a tribute to a mild-mannered, yet monumental President.');
}

if (day==26)
{document.write('Aaron Copland was born on November 14, 1900 in Brooklyn to Sarah Mittenthal and Harris Copland.');
}

if (day==27)
{document.write('Aaron Copland was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America\'s highest civilian honor in 1964.');
}

if (day==28)
{document.write('Aaron Copland dies on December 2, 1990 in North Tarrytown, NY.');
}

if (day==29)
{document.write('<i>Appalachian Spring</i> was a ballet composed by Copland that concerned the housewarming party of a young pioneer couple in the mountains of Pennsylvania');
}

if (day==30)
{document.write('<i>Appalachian Spring</i> was a ballet composed by Copland that concerned the housewarming party of a young pioneer couple in the mountains of Pennsylvania');
}

if (day==31)
{document.write('Copland\'s distinctive profile commanded the interest of many visual artists including photographers Carl Van Vechten and Ralph Steiner and artists/caricaturists Freuh, Hirschfeld and Fruhauf.');
}