had traced a similarity in those pieces to his Piano Variations of 1930, he claimed in his 1967 "conversation" with Edward T. Cone that the Variations were "the start of my interest in serial writing ... Although it doesn't use all twelve tones, it does use seven of them in what I hope is a consistently logical way." Prior to that interview, few had related Copland's early work to that of the founder of twelve-tone composition, Arnold Schoenberg. By the time he wrote Connotations, Copland had come to the view that serial composition was "like looking at a picture from a different point of view" and used it "with the hope that it would freshen and enrich my [compositional] technique." Part of that changed viewpoint, Copland said, "was that I began to hear chords that I wouldn't have heard otherwise. Heretofore, I had been thinking tonally, but this was a new way of moving tones about." Serialism also allowed Copland a synthesis of serial and non-serial practices that had long concerned Copland and he had previously felt impossible to attain. One challenge Copland said he faced while he composed Connotations was "to construct an overall line that had continuity, dramatic force and an inherent unity." He stated that he had faced a similar challenge in his Orchestral Variations (his orchestration of the Piano Variations). He added that while dodecaphonic techniques supplied "the building blocks" for Connotations, it was up to him to supply "the edifice" that these blocks would eventually form. Critic Paul Henry Lang, among others, lamented Copland's "yield to the conformism of 12-tone music." As serial and serial-inspired music was considered more academically viable than music utilizing common practice tonality (especially in Europe), some contemporary critics felt that Copland was trying to retain his place at the apex of the American classical music scene by conforming to "academic standards." Taruskin suggests that it might have appeared to these critics that Copland "had sacrificed his hard-won, well-nigh unique public appeal for what seemed ... an 'alienated' modernist stance." As the composer had been one of the first American composers to import the style from Europe—in the mid twenties—these critics may have overlooked the possibility that his "populist period" may have represented the more jarring deviation in his compositional style. It had also been some time since a Copland piece had been appreciated widely by audiences. His opera The Tender