based. "When spelled out horizontally," they supplied him "with various versions of a more lyrical discourse." This "skeletal frame of the row," he told Diamond and Chavez, was the "primary meaning" and as such denoted the area which would be explored in the course of the piece. "The subsequent treatment," he explained, "seeks out other implications—connotations that come in a flash or connotations that the composer himself may gradually uncover." From there, the listener was "free to discover his or her own connotative meanings, including perhaps some not suspected by the author. Resemblance to other Copland works Overall, both Pollack and the composer label Connotations as one of three works written in "the grand manner," as Copland wrote about his Third Symphony. The other two works in this category were the Symphonic Ode and the Third Symphony. Copland also calls those works transitional pieces, anomalies which stand between different compositional styles of his oeuvre. All three works proved, as musicologist William W. Austin notes and Pollack states about the symphony, "challenging to grasp." While music historian Judith Tick notes the work's "massive chordal assaults on the ear," she adds that while Copland 's stated intent was to evoke the dissonance of modern life, he also acknowledges "the darkness revealed in such early works from the 1920s as the Symphonic Ode and Piano Variations." 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. Butterworth points out that both works are structured as an arch composed of five sections. The first section, slow and chordal, gives way to a scherzo. The third section is slower, followed by another scherzo and a finale which restates passages taken from the opening. The rhythmic patterns in both pieces resemblance each other. This would have been no surprise, Butterworth writes, since Copland revised that score in 1955. Pollock states that another work that might have been fresh on the composer's mind was his Nonet for strings, composed in 1960, which also employs an arch form. 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. Reception The premiere,