By David Schiff [Atlantic Monthly]
On May 26, 1953, Aaron Copland testified before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Senator Joseph McCarthy. The committee seemed to have only a vague sense of Copland’s value as a witness (or as a musician), and probably called him simply because he had become a well-known public figure ó an unprecedented accomplishment for an American composer of concert music.