Copland on the Serial Road: An Analysis of Connotations

Abstract

WHILE IT CAN NOT be denied that postwar revival of interest in serial organization served as no more than a springboard to European avant-garde, it may well be argued that most impressive products of that revival are to be found in work of an older generation, fully formed in its musical ways before universality of Schoenberg's legacy was yet suspected.1 There is no place here for talk of conversions, since dominating impression created by serial works concerned is of composers' reaffirmation of their most characteristic ideals. Dallapiccola's has been most systematic and leisurely embracing of serial potentialities, Stravinsky's most notorious; both men have revealed still deeper implications of method for their own style with each successive score. When Copland's Piano Quartet (1950) and Piano Fantasy (1955-57), essays in a tentative serialism which I have discussed elsewhere,2 were followed in 1960 by Nonet, a work on which serialism has left no more than faint traces, it was possible, if to some listeners disappointing, to conclude that composer had settled down to that nodding acquaintance with dodecatonic ways of thinking that has sufficed for such a composer as Martin. Yet, Copland's other activities in recent years should have hinted how fundamental has become his involvement in serial attitude to musical material: his orchestration of 1930 Piano Variations points up remarkable parallels between these gaunt early-Copland procedures and method of construction from segments of a tone row. At much same time, Copland revised 1929 Symphonic Ode, a work which strove to achieve palpable unity across a single arch embracing sharply contrasted moods. The same ideal lay behind Piano Fantasy, a quarter of a century later; but row could now play a vital role in unifying process. And now, with Connotations, we can see these varied strands of Copland's thought drawn together in a work which, while assimilating experience of three earlier scores, at same time takes his exploration of serial consequences further than ever before. In program notes written for concert performances of Connotations, composer pointed to primary meaning of new work as summed up in three four-voiced chords heard at outset (Ex. 1); from this charting of area of exploration, the subsequent treatment seeks out other implications-connotations that come in a flash or connotations that composer himself may only gradually uncover. This presentation of basic set in harmonic conflations means, clearly enough, that there may be drawn from it innumerable melodic lines (by permutations within three segments) which will still refer to a single source