Connotations (Copland)
Commissioned by Leonard Bernstein in 1962 to commemorate the opening of Philharmonic Hall (now David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts) in New York City, United States, this piece marks a departure from Copland's populist period, which began with El Salón México in 1936 and includes the works he is most famous for such as Appalachian Spring, Lincoln Portrait and Rodeo.
It was also Copland's first dodecaphonic work for orchestra, a style he had disparaged until he heard the music of French composer Pierre Boulez and adapted the method for himself in his Piano Quartet of 1950.
More recent performances, led by conductors Pierre Boulez, Edo de Waart and Sixten Ehrling, have been acknowledged to show the music in a more positive light.
Others, which include critics Michael Andrews and Peter Davis, have seen Connotations as proof of Copland's continued growth and inventiveness as a composer while not downplaying the work's melodic and harmonic harshness and potential difficulty overall for listeners.
Aaron Copland wrote Connotations to fulfill a commission from Leonard Bernstein for the opening concert of the New York Philharmonic's new home in the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
Among the guest list of 2600 for the first concert and the white-tie gala which would follow it were John D. Rockefeller III (chairman of Lincoln Center), Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Governor and Mrs. Nelson Rockefeller, United Nations Secretary General U Thant and prominent figures in the arts that included of Metropolitan Opera General Manager Rudolf Bing, violinist Isaac Stern and actress Merle Oberon.
[4][5] Noted composers would also attend included Samuel Barber, Henry Cowell, Roy Harris, Walter Piston, Richard Rodgers, William Schuman and Roger Sessions.
[13] When he considered the form the work would take, Copland wrote that he "concluded that the classical masters would undoubtedly provide the festive and dedicatory tone appropriate to such an occasion."
"[30] As for details, Pollack elaborates in his biography of the composer about the similarity of Connotations to the Ode in its overall length, single-movement form, solemn tone and "hard-edged" orchestration.
[20] The melodic lines' wide leaps and arpeggios are not far removed from those in the Short Symphony, written 30 years earlier, and the prevalence of the interval of the minor ninth hearkens back to his Orchestral Variations, as does his use of alternating fast and slow sections.
[19][32] The premiere, on September 23, 1962, "sent shock waves through the world of music," according to Alexander J. Morin,[33] with a reaction by the initial audience, according to Taruskin, of near-silence and incomprehension.
[34] The overall impression, as critic Alex Ross writes in his book The Rest is Noise, was that "Copland was no longer in an ingratiating mood; some sudden rage welled up in him, some urge to confront the gala Lincoln Center audience with an old whiff of revolutionary mystique.
"[36] In Variety, Robert J. Landry called Connotations "an assault on [the audience's] nervous systems" and added, "Seldom has this reviewer heard such outspoken comment in the lobbies after such dull response.
It is strictly accurate to declare that an audience paying $100 a seat and in mood for self-congratulation and schmaltz hated Copland's reminder of the ugly realities of industrialization, inflation and cold war—which his music seems to be talking about.
Louis Biancolli wrote in The New York Telegram that the work was "a turning point in [Copland's] career, a powerful score in 12-tone style that has liberated new stores of creative energy.
"[39] Bernstein conducted Connotations again during the first week of regular Philharmonic concerts in 1963 and included it among the pieces the orchestra played on its European tour that February.
[38] Despite the composer's claim in Copland Since 1943 that "The European premiere was more successful than the New York reception,"[38] reviews about Connotations remained mainly negative; comments abounded about "mere din" and "dodecaphonic deserts.
"[2] Everett Helm, who had been able to hear the work live before he sampled the recording, wrote, "Connotations for Orchestra sounded rather strident on September 23; on the disc it becomes ear-piercing.
[43] Now he was confronted with what American composer John Adams terms a "stridently dissonant, piss-n-vinegar" work "written in an idiom so alien to his own sensibilities," the first performance of which he would not only conduct but would also be televised to a national audience.
"[43][46] Bernstein conducted Connotations again during the first week of regular Philharmonic concerts in 1963 and included it among the pieces the orchestra played on its European tour in February 1963.
Critic Peter Davis, in his review of the 1989 performance, writes that while Connotations remained "admittedly not a very lovable piece," in Bernstein's hands it "sounded more fulsome than portentous.
"I spoke to the audiences," Copland writes, "with humorous accounts of the work's adverse effect on droves of letter writers, who had heard the original performance, in person or on TV.
[8] Serial or twelve-tone music, Copland stated, carried "a built-in tenseness ... a certain drama ... a sense of strain or tension" inherent in its extended use of chromaticism.
"[51] To composer John Adams, Copland's embrace of serial technique was not really such a stretch "because ever since the 1920s, he'd already a piss-'n-vinegar penchant for sour intervals, like he did in the Piano Variations.
[60][61] Copland was aware that dodecaphonism did not hold as high a place as it had previously and writes, "By the sixties, serialism had been around for over fifty years; young composers were not so fascinated with it anymore.
Staged by the American Ballet Theatre on January 6, 1976, the title role was danced by Mikhail Barishnikov, Ophelia by Gelsie Kirkland, Gertrude by Marcia Haydée and Claudius by Erik Bruhn.
[40][66] Despite its initial reception, Connotations was listed in 1979 by Billboard magazine among Copland works that continued to be programmed by orchestras, with subsequent performances by Pierre Boulez, Edo de Waart and Sixten Ehrling received positively.
"[33] Adams calls its style "very simplistic ... strident" and "generally unpleasant sounding" and adds that "the rigor [of twelve-tone composition] seemed more to cramp [Copland's] natural spontaneity than to aid it.
[68] On a more positive note, Davis wrote after a performance of the work under Ehrling by The Juilliard Orchestra that while Connotations remains a "spiky" composition, Copland "adopts Schoenberg's serial procedures to produce a sequence of typically pungent and exhilarating Coplandesque sonorities.
[2] Michael Andrews wrote of Copland's "mammoth, anxious and angry vision" and Barlett Naylor of "a majesty hidden in this dark piece" after both had heard de Waart's performance.
