The sweeping sound of the American frontier was created by an unathletic, introverted kid from a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant family who grew up above his parents' Brooklyn department store. This episode traces Aaron Copland's path from first piano lessons with his sister Laurine and conservative training under Rubin Goldmark, to years in 1920s Paris studying with Nadia Boulanger, whose concept of the long line gave him a blueprint for pulling a listener from first note to last.

The episode follows his shift during the Great Depression from difficult modernist music toward Gebrauchsmusik, music for use, influenced by Alfred Stieglitz's circle and their call to affirm America. From El Salón México through Billy the Kid, Rodeo and Appalachian Spring, it explains how he fractured folk tunes with syncopation and wide-spaced polyharmonies to evok ...