Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson is a song cycle for medium voice, played in piano by the American composer Aaron Copland.
The sequence, with dedicatees, is: Copland himself acknowledged that many have heard the influence of Charles Ives, Gustav Mahler, and Gabriel Fauré in the songs.
[3] This is perhaps even more evident in the arrangement he composed for orchestral setting, which he began in 1958 and completed in 1970; Eight Poems of Emily Dickinson for small orchestra omits songs 3, 8, 9 and 10 from the original sequence.
[5] It was not especially well-received by critics, prompting Copland to note wryly to Leonard Bernstein "that I decided I must have written a better cycle than I had realized.
The premiere of the orchestration was given on 14 November 1970 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, with soloist Gwendolyn Killebrew and the Juilliard Orchestra conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas.