The premiere, on September 23, 1962, "sent shock waves through the world of music," according to Alexander J. Morin, with a reaction by the initial audience, according to Taruskin, of near-silence and incomprehension. Copland noted that the general impression "was that the premiere was not a congenial circumstance," with the music not considered important as the sound of the new concert hall. His effort to present something not bland or traditional for such an occasion and distinguished audience "was not appreciated at the time." Also, Taruskin states, Copland had become an emblem of success in the eyes of the American public. The fact he had written a twelve-tone composition for such an occasion seemed a repudiation of the audience he had won through years of hard effort.
Public 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." Copland himself remembers, "The acidulous harmonies of my score ... upset a good many people, especially those who were expecting another
Appalachian Spring." Jacqueline Kennedy was left unable to say anything other than "Oh, Mr. Copland" when taken backstage during intermission to meet with the composer. When Copland later asked Verna Fine, wife of American composer
Irving Fine, what this meant, Fine answered, "Oh, Aaron, it's obvious. She hated your piece!" 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." A minority of apparently more discerning listeners felt that
Connotations was the right music for its time and place. Composer
Arthur Berger states, "I think [Copland] wrote exactly the piece he wanted to write because he wanted to make a statement about the new Philharmonic Hall in New York—it wasn't going to be a temple of easy listening, as it were, but a place for serious music-making."
Minna Lederman Daniel, a music writer and editor of
Modern Music magazine, told Copland, "I think
Connotations was the right place for the people and the occasion—indeed the only one properly related to them. It sounds a good deal like certain aspects of the building—big, spacious, clear, long-lined, and it sounds very like you ... To those familiar with your music, the characteristic, identifying moods are perfectly apparent. The special Copland eloquence is there."
Critics A few critics were positive. 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." John Molleson write for the
New York Herald Tribune that while the new piece was "a difficult work and like most music difficult to understand at one hearing ... this piece has flesh where others have only skin, and there was a good deal of arresting lyricism." Others, however, dismissed
Connotations: Everett Helm thought it "unnecessarily strident," Harriet Johnson "too long for its content" and Richard Franko Johnson "completely without charm."
Telecast The concert was telecast live by
the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) to an audience of 26 million viewers. As part of its program, NBC asked Copland to talk to the television audience about
Connotations. While the cameras alternated between shots of the composer and the manuscript score, Copland said, "It seems to me that there are two things you can do when listening to any new work. The most important thing is to lend yourself—or to put it another way—try to be as sensitive as you can to the overall feeling the new piece gives off. The second way is to listen with some awareness of the general shape of the new piece, realizing that a composer works with his musical materials just as an architect works with his building materials in order to construct an edifice that makes sense." He then discussed the work briefly but in some detail. To Copland's surprise, his lecture was taken as an apologia, not an explanation, by the majority of the television audience. Moreover, vehement letters poured into NBC after the broadcast from across the United States. One read, "If last night is any criterion of what can be expected in Lincoln Center, it should be called 'Center of Jungle Culture.'" Another read, "Dear Mr. Copland, Shame Shame Shame!"
European tour and first recording 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. Despite the composer's claim in
Copland Since 1943 that "The European premiere was more successful than the New York reception," reviews about
Connotations remained mainly negative; comments abounded about "mere din" and "dodecaphonic deserts." When the London audience gave the work a lengthy ovation, Bernstein responded that he would conduct another Copland work as an encore. When cries of "Oh, oh" ensued, he added, "But this will be in a different style." He then conducted "Hoe-Down" from the ballet
Rodeo. A release of the New York performance by
Columbia Records fared no better. Robert Marsh found the music "dreary" and "dull." Irving Kolodin called it "rather relentlessly grim." 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." Bernstein rerecorded
Connotations with the New York Philharmonic for Columbia in 1973. This recording was released with Copland's
Inscape and Carter's
Concerto for Orchestra.
Other factors in initial failure The composer admitted that
Connotations possessed "a rather severe and somewhat intellectual tone." However, while he did not expect it to be an immediate success, he had still hoped that the music's intensity and drama might lend it some appeal. While Copland maintained that "It bothers me not at all to realize that my range as a composer includes both accessible and problematic works," composer and musicologist
Peter Dickinson notes "a tone of defensiveness" in this remark. Nevertheless,
Connotations' abrasiveness to many listeners might not have been the only factor in its initial failure.
Bernstein The negative initial reaction to
Connotations has also been claimed to have been due to Bernstein's conducting. Bernstein was especially antipathetic toward works that were atonal or rhythmically disjunctive and "could not overcome a deep-seated antipathy, an almost gut reaction" against them. Of the contemporary composers with whom he could relate, he had been "generous and enthusiastic" in his support of Copland. His frequent programming of Copland's works during his tenure with the New York Philharmonic might, Adams suggests, have been partly in reaction against works of the twelve-tone school. 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. Pollack claims Bernstein might have found
Connotations "boring" and kept it on the program solely out of duty to his old friend. Despite Bernstein's own musical antipathies, Adams claims the conductor generally remained open-minded and curious enough "to try something at least once." Among the world premieres of "difficult" works he led were
Olivier Messiaen's
Turangalîla-Symphonie in Boston in 1949 and Carter's
Concerto for Orchestra in New York in 1970; and despite his apparent lack of identification with Carter's music, he described the composer in 1975 as "a brilliant mind and a supremely intelligent musician." 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. He would also commission a subsequent orchestral work from Copland, which became
Inscape, and conduct
Connotations again in an all-Copland concert with the New York Philharmonic in 1989. Even with this advocacy and the chance to familiarize himself at length,
Connotations apparently remained a work that Bernstein did not conduct well. 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."
Acoustical problems with Philharmonic Hall Copland acknowledged that the acoustics at the premiere were "shrill." While Philharmonic Hall was being renovated in 1976 in an attempt to improve its sound,
Harold C. Schonberg wrote, "For all we know,
Connotations is a masterpiece. But one thing is certain—it did not make many friends for Lincoln Center in 1962." While admitting the work was "written in Copland's austere, objective, abstract style," he suggested that bad acoustics might have also played a part in the work's failure at the premiere. The orchestra that night had been augmented by a large chorus to perform the first movement of
Gustav Mahler's
Eighth Symphony, which pushed the orchestra forward, "out of its normal playing position ... The sound was bad, bad. The bass response was sorely deficient, the hall was plagued with echoes, the musicians on stage reported that they could not hear each other very well (just great for ensemble) and in general Philharmonic Hall sounded like a cheap hi-fi set with the bass speakers out of the circuit.
Composer efforts Copland conducted
Connotations in 1966, 1967 and 1968 around the United States. This included an engagement at the Musica Viva series in
San Francisco and concerts with the
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the
National Symphony Orchestra in
Washington D.C. and the
Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. "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. Then I asked the brass section to illustrate the opening chords, and the strings how they sounded. Before they knew it, the audience was sympathetic. My purpose was not to sell the work but to demonstrate it."
Boulez revival A decade after Bernstein premiered the work, Pierre Boulez, who had succeeded Bernstein as music director of the New York Philharmonic in 1971, conducted
Connotations with the orchestra for the ten-year anniversary of Philharmonic Hall (subsequently renamed Avery Fisher Hall; later David Geffen Hall). According to Copland, ten years had allowed enough time to change audience perceptions for the better. In his review for
The New York Times Harold C. Schonberg wrote that this time, the audience "did not rise in revolt" as it had in 1962. He added, "The composer's cause was helped by, if memory serves, a better performance than had been given in 1962. Mr. Boulez revels in this kind of music, and he brought drama to it as well as a synthesizing quality." ==Analysis==