<P> 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 . </P> <P> 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 . </P> <P> 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FBI list of 151 artists thought to have Communist associations and found himself blacklisted, with A Lincoln Portrait withdrawn from the 1953 inaugural concert for President Eisenhower .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 . </P> <P> 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 . </P>

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