Where does the classic “American” sound come from? Aaron Copland “was one of a group of composers who, starting in the 1930s, cultivated a new nationalist – or at least populist modernist – style. And most of them were gay, including Virgil Thomson, Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, David Diamond, Lou Harrison, Paul Bowles, Marc Blitzstein and Ned Rorem. By contrast, most of the pricklier modernists, including Charles Ives, Elliott Carter and Roger Sessions, were straight.”