OT: Charles Ives

[Leo K]

I remember discovering Ives during my senior year in High School. I had checked out a Leonard Bernstein record that featured four different lectures on composers, Ives being the last one I believe. I'll never forget the sound of his Fourth of July (from his Holiday's Symphony) blaring from my turntable in the middle of the night as I lay in bed, eyes wide open. Thus began an obsession that last lasted for years (and is still with me, forever and into the next life!).

I love his music, but more and more I've come to love his ideas even more than the actual sounds he produced (I can get into more detail on this later).

I hope you all won't mind if I post some essays/documentaries on some of his works.  I've been putting alot of various thoughts/research together on another forum for people new to Ives and it's been pretty fun. 

For alot of you here, much of this stuff may be old hat and etc.  So I hope this isn't a bother.   Feel free to interupt at any time with recommendations and other discussion.

[Leo K]

In the 'postface' to his 1922 song collection 114 Songs, Ives wrote:

...[A]n interest in any art-activity from poetry to baseball is better, broadly speaking, if it is held as a part of life, or of a life, than if it sets itself up as a whole--a condition verging, perhaps, toward a monopoly or, possibly, a kind of atrophy of the other important values, and hence resting unfavorably upon itself. ... If a fiddler or poet does nothing all day long but enjoy the luxury and drudgery of fiddling or dreaming, with or without meals, does he or does he not, for this reason, have anything valuable to express?--or is whatever he thinks he has to express less valuable than he thinks?

This is a question that which each man must answer for himself. It depends, to a great extent, on what a man nails up on his dashboard as "valuable." Does not the sinking back into the soft state of mind (or possibly non-state of mind) that may accept "art for art's sake" tend to shrink rather than toughen up the hitting muscles--and incidentally those of the umpire or the grandstand, if there be one? To quote from a book that is not read, "Is not beauty in music too often confused with something which lets the ears lie back in an easy-chair?" Many sounds that we are used to do not bother us, and for that reason are we not inclined to call them beautiful? ... Possibly the fondness for personal expression--the kind in which self-indulgence dresses up and miscalls itself freedom--may throw out a skin-deep arrangement, which is readily accepted at first as beautiful--formulae that weaken rather than toughen the musical-muscles. If a composer's conception of his art, its functions and its ideals, even if sincere, coincides to such an extent with these groove-colored permutations of tried-out progressions in expediency so that he can arrange them over and over again to his delight--has he or has he not been drugged with an overdose of habit-forming sounds? And as a result, do not the muscles of his clientele become flabbier and flabbier until they give way altogether and find refuge only in exciting platitudes--even the sensual outbursts of an emasculated rubber-stamp, a 'Zaza,' a 'Salome' or some other money-getting costume of effeminate manhood?

114 Songs was Ives's second privately printed publication (about a year after the Concord Sonata) in order to "clean house" as Ives put it.  He felt as if each song was like an article of clothing...pants, underwear, shirt and etc...hanging on a clothes line for all his "nieghbors" to see, which Ives felt was a good way for any "vain" man (to be humbled).

The quote above illustrates Ives hatred for "sissie-fied" art.  He couldn't stand mannered music, or music written to please or promote fantasy (for this reason he hated Mozart and Wagner, to name a few).  Ives went over the top at times in his rants against the "sissies" of the Europeanized tradition of musical America in the early 20th century, such as Toscannini and etc. He also had a fear about becoming soft, effeminine and weak...'un-man-ley' in his music.  I think biographer Jan Swafford speculated this fear stems from Charlie's childhood, when it was more acceptable for a boy to play baseball rather than piano.  When asked what instrument he played, Ives would often reply, "shortstop!"

Composer Eliot Carter claimed Ives purposely added more and more dissonance onto his youthful works as he got older,in order to be more 'modern' and spite the establishment.  Whatever Ives actually did, there is no doubt that he was often angry, but I feel this 'anger' fueled his creativity in a good way (Beethoven comes to mind).  In the end, Ives's strong sense of the mystery of existance, and his transcendental freedom between the physical and spiritual conditions of nature is what is heard most in his music.   

Here is my favorite song from 114 Songs:
 
General William Booth Enters Into Heaven(1914)

Text: Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931)

Booth led boldly with his big bass drum
(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)
The Saints smiled gravely and they said, "He's come,"
(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)

Walking lepers followed rank on rank,
Lurching bravos from the ditches dank
Drabs the alleyways and drug fiends pale
Minds still passion ridden, soul flowers frail:
Vermin eaten saints with moldy breath,
Unwashed legions with the ways of Death
(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)

Ev'ry slum had sent its half a score
The world round over. (Booth had groaned for more).
Ev'ry banner that the wide world flies
Bloomed with glory and transcendent dyes,
Big voiced lassies made their banjoes bang,
Tranced, fanatical they shrieked and sang;
"Are you? Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?"

Hallelulah! It was queer to see
Bull necked convicts with that land made free.
Loons with trumpets a blare, blare, blare,
On, on, upward thro' the golden air!
(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)

Jesus came from the court house door,
Stretched his hands above the passing poor.
Booth saw not, but led his queer ones
Round and round the mighty courthouse square.
Yet! in an instant all that blear review
Marched on spotless, clad in raiment new.

My benchmark performance of this work is not the solo piano version, but the chamber orchestra and choir version performed by The Gregg Smith Singers, Ithaca College Choir, The Texuas Boys Choir of Fort Worth & The Columbia Chamber Orchestra.  This orchestra version was not totally arranged by Ives, but he did supervise the arrangement. 

Conducted by Gregg Smith

From the Columbia LP Stereo MS 6921 (out of print LP...released in the 70's I believe).

[barry guerrero]

Great points! "General William Booth" is a great song, as is "Charlie Rutledge" - it's hilarious! The best symphony written by an American that I know of, is the Ives 4th. But I also love the ending of his second symphony, where Ives has the trumpets play "Columbia, Jem Of The Oceans" at a full fortissimo, then finishes everything with a huge, dissonant chord. The first time I head that, I just died laughing - and it still makes me laugh.

Barry

[Leo K]

Great points! "General William Booth" is a great song, as is "Charlie Rutledge" - it's hilarious! The best symphony written by an American that I know of, is the Ives 4th. But I also love the ending of his second symphony, where Ives has the trumpets play "Columbia, Jem Of The Oceans" at a full fortissimo, then finishes everything with a huge, dissonant chord. The first time I head that, I just died laughing - and it still makes me laugh.

Barry

I agree the Ives 4th is the best American Symphony. Regarding recordings of this work, I feel the Faberman, Stokowski and Ozawa accounts dig deeper into the work than MTT.  There is something about MTT's version that seems calculated somehow...I never really liked it that much, though the sound is good.  I haven't really heard the more recent recordings out there yet, such as the John Adams and etc.


I have a real affinity for the 2nd...it's problably my favorite Ives overall, next to the restrained and lyrical 3rd. 

Charlie is always good for a great laugh!  I've laughed out loud to many songs..."soooometimes Nature's nice aaaaand sweet, like a little dandy..sometimes it ain't!!!" and etc.

[barry guerrero]

Check out the first, original version of the second symphony on Naxos. It's different, and it's equally good. Also, while they're really expensive, the new Andrew Litton/Dallas Symphony recordings of the four symphonies on Hyperion (two discs) are really outstanding; with excellent sound quality too. Litton's 4th is particularly wonderful. It's coupled with the first symphony, and "Central Park In The Dark". The Dohnanyi/Cleveland recording of the fourth symphony is quite good also.

Barry

[Leo K]

Check out the first, original version of the second symphony on Naxos. It's different, and it's equally good. Also, while they're really expensive, the new Andrew Litton/Dallas Symphony recordings of the four symphonies on Hyperion (two discs) are really outstanding; with excellent sound quality too. Litton's 4th is particularly wonderful. It's coupled with the first symphony, and "Central Park In The Dark". The Dohnanyi/Cleveland recording of the fourth symphony is quite good also.

Barry

I have heard the Naxos disc, and it's my favorite recording of the 2nd...but I haven't yet heard the Litton recordings....thanks for the heads up on those!  Ditto on the Dohnany...totally agree.

[Leo K]

Ives's music became (not right away, but eventually) more dissonant, complex, conceptual and exciting after he met and started to court Harmony Twitchell (1876-1969).



Harmony...a registered nurse...the women who made a man out of crazy Charlie...Charlie who just graduated from Yale in 1898 (with a D+ average), who was all over the map musically, always cuttin' up with his pals, moving to New York (coney Island, bars, central park in the dark, ann street, ragtime baby), getting started in the insurance business, living with his batchlor buddies in some joint called Poverty Flat...

Harmony's brother Dave Twitchell, was an alumni of Poverty Flat and a best friend of Charlie. For ten years she only knew Charlie as her brother's best friend.  Charlie was this guy who played the organ at Center Church in New Haven.  Harmony would sit there quietly in Church with her friend Sally, who would nudge Harmony everytime Charlie purposely deviated from the hymnal harmonies he was supposed to play.

Harmony was the daughter of the great Reverand Joseph Twitchell and his lovely wife Harmony. The parishioners who frequented Rev. Joes church included: Charles Dudley Warner, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and close friend Mark Twain.  Harmony called Mark Twain 'Uncle Mark'.  Her father was close to the great writer, who is the 'Harris' character in Twain's The Tramp Abroad.

Ives would later write: "I heard Mark Twain say through his own mouth, nose and cigar as he pointed across the room...to Mr. and Mrs. Twitchell: 'Those two blessed people-how greatly indebted I am to them.' "



When Ives was courting Harmony, he had to present himself  to Uncle Mark for 'approval'.  "Well," said Twain, "the fore seems all right; turn him around and lets see about the aft."  Then Twain turned to Harmony's sister Sue, who had told him about Charlies music, and he said, "Now that the young man has joined the Twitchell Family, he will get the same inspiration from his Harmony that I did from Joe and his Harmony."

Charlie and Harmony's first date occured on July 30, 1905.  They went to a concert in Hartford to hear Dvorak's New World Symphony.  Their courtship was a very Victorian courtship...very slow and formal, almost imperceptable to the human eye..."wary of too-impetuous steps, each unsure of the others feelings, each fearful of dissapointment"... 

[Leo K]

[continued from above]

In 1906 Ives responded to his love of Harmony by finding his voice as a composer.

The Unanswered Question was written in July of 1906. Biographer Jan Swafford comments:

In the 1930's, when he was rummaging for new pieces to put before the public, Ives picked up "The Unanswered Question," carefully revised it, and attached a program something like what must have been on his mind in 1906. The strings are "the silences of the Druids, who know, see, and hear nothing"; over this indifferent universal background the trumpet repeatedly poses "the perennial question of existence"; the winds are the "fighting answerers" who, for all their sound and fury, get nowhere. ... The program also encompasses a philosophical idea that Ives would address incomparably in his music and in his writings: in contemplating the sublime mystery of creation, a question can be better than an answer [180-81].

Meanwhile, Harmony starts to write Charlie.  Her letters are friendly and reserved, but the attraction is there and they must play the Victorian romance game.  In December they go out to Williamsburg, Virginia to visit a close friend of Charlie's.  Later she writes and tells him she loved the trip, and Charlie (fighting back bad health and depression) writes back..."It rained constantly and I took you back to the Holland House and bid you goodbye for sometime and felt very badly and felt as if I'd lost and left behind all that meant anything real to me."

About three weeks later, Ives has his first heart attack at age 32.

[Leo K]

[continued from above]

At the start of 1907, Ives recovers from his heart attack by lieing low at Old Point Comfort, some health spa in Virginia....not even seeing his beloved for a time. During this time he and Julian Myrick plan a new insurance ageny of their own. Meanwhile Harmony continues to write Charlie, revealing herself more and more. By setting her poetry to music (within the radar of Victorian parlor song vernacular), in particular a poem she wrote in 1906 called The World's Highway, Charlie nurtures the courtship along...maybe a little too slow for Harmony, who starts to hint that she's ready for him to make a move. Her poem literally tells him she's ready to leave the world she once knew (her nursing the sick from slumhouse to slumhouse) for him:

For long I wandered happily
Far out on the world's highway.
My heart was brave for each new thing
And I loved the far away.

I watched the gay bright people dance,
We laughed, for the road was good
But oh! I passed where the way was rough
And I saw it stained with blood.

I wandered on 'till I tired grew
Far on the world's highway
My heart was sad for what I saw
And I feared the far away.

So when one day, O sweetest day!
I came to a garden small.
And a voice my heart knew called me in
I answered its blessed call.

I left wandering far & wide
The freedom and far way
Bu my garden blooms with sweet content
That's not on the world's highway.

By the summer of 1907, Ives could breath a sigh of relief...Harmony was dating him exclusively and there was not a suitor in sight (and she had had many, as Ives painfully knew)...inspired, Charlie decides to play her his 'real' music...his experiental stuff.  With her sitting next to him on the piano, he bangs out The Unanswered Question and Central Park in the Dark. 

She is not offended.  She would write later, "He Fixed it...so I could understand it somehow..."

Charlie tells her afterwords in a letter, "You are always absolutely loyal and loving and gentle and always have understood me, from the beginning.  I always felt that intuitively as you always seemd to understand intuitively.  That was one of the most wonderful things about it all."

In the autumn of 1907, on a trip to the Adirondocks, Charlie (after two years of courting) works up the nerve to tell her he cares for her, and quickly apologizes for being too forward!  She writes, "I dont feel badly Charlie to have you say you care and there is just one reason why I dont & I shant tell you until you ask me." 

Ives now undertands it is time to lay everthing on the line...and announces his decision to visit her at her home at Hartford.

Just as he about to leave...he gets sick again.

[Leo K]

[continued from above]




Very concerned, Harmony writes, "I'm so sorry, Charlie, that being sick is what kept you yesterday--I thought it was lots to do perhaps...I'm awfully dissapointed--these days are so heavenly...But I shant enjoy them now until I know about you."

As soon as he recovers, he sets off from New York to meet his Beloved.  It is October 21, of 1907, the time of year Harmony calls "the peace of God."  The next day, on the Wood Road to Farmington, he spills his guts as they walk side by side.  They kiss.  "When you said there what you did," remembered Harmony afterwards, "I was swept into a flood & can't remember much else...that moment can never be changed or lost---It is one of the supreme moments of existence."

At the end of their long Victorian courtship, Charlie and Harmony appear to find a kind of spiritual rapport together that will intimately last till Charlie dies in 1954.

Harmony writes:

Darling--I feel so strongly what you say about our love...bringing happiness into other lives besides our own---I know the joy and beauty of it can be communicated to others and that is what I long to do with it---to give out of my abundance that the world may be a little happier.

I think, as you say, that living our lives for each other & for those with whom we come in contact generously & with sympathy & compassion & love, is the best & most beautiful way of expressing our love...but to put it too in concrete form of music or words would be a wonderful happiness, wouldn't it? I think you will & that will be doing it for both of us, my darling...

May I live to guard & grow more worthy of the love you give me...always, darling we will give God thanks & praise for revealing Himself as much as he has in each of us to the other--I dare to love you so fully, so utterly because it is all just God & religion...no one ever had a clearer call to their life's fulfillment & duty than I have had thru my love...my dear dear love.

July 28, 1908.  A little more than a month after their wedding, Charlie and Harmony walk near Stockbridge, along the Housatonic (in New England) on a Sunday morning. 

Ives:

We walked in the meadows along the river, and heard the distant singing from the church across the river.  The mist had not entirely left the river bed, and the colors, the running water, the banks and elm trees were something that one would always remember.

When they get back to New York, Harmony notices Charlie writing on his stave paper, attempting to get their serene walk along the Housatonic at Stockbridge into music.

Ives writes on the early sketch during the work's conception:

Housatonic Church across River sound like Dorrnance [a favorite hymn]. River mists, leaves in slight breeze river bed--all notes and phrases in upper accompaniment . . . should interweave in uneven way, riverside colors, leaves & sounds--not come down on main beat . . .

Ives also inserts a poem (by poet Robert Underwood Johnson) into the score:

"Contented river! In thy dreamy realm--
The cloudy willow and the plumy elm:"...
...Thou hast grown human laboring with men
At wheel and spindle; sorrow thou dost ken;...
Thou beautiful! From every dreamy hill
What eye but wanders with thee at thy will,
Imagining thy silver course unseen
Convoyed by two attendant streams of green...
Contented river! And yet over-shy
To mask thy beauty from the eager eye;
Hast thou a thought to hide from field and town?
In some deep current of the sunlit brown
Art thou disquieted--still uncontent
With praise from thy Homeric bard, who lent
The world the placidness thou gavest him?
Thee Bryant loved when life was at it's brim;...
...Ah! There's a sensitive ripple, and the swift
Red leaves--September's firstlings--faster adrift;..
...Wouldst thou away!...
...I also of much resting have a fear;
Let me thy companion be
By fall and shallow to the Adventureous sea!"

[barry guerrero]

Wow! Thanks. I happen to really, REALLY like Ive's "The Husatonic At Stockbridge". Great piece.   

[Leo K]

Wow! Thanks. I happen to really, REALLY like Ive's "The Husatonic At Stockbridge". Great piece.   

Yeah, same here...I love all the versions of that piece...song, chamber and full orchestra.  I even like MTT's full orchestra version with a choir singing the lyrics.

[Leo K]

Third Symphony "The Camp Meeting" (1904)

I. Old Folks Gatherin'
II.Children's Day
III.Communion


Ives on holiday, scoring the 3rd Symphony, his wife Harmony relaxing beside him.

(A page from the score)


[Charles Ives:]
I seemed to have worked with more natural freedom, when I knew the music was not going to be inflicted on others. And this is probably one of the reasons that, not until I got to work on the Fourth Symphony, did I feel justified in writing quite as I wanted to, when the subject matter was religious. So many of the movements in things used later were started as organ preludes and postludes etc. for church services, [and] I knew that they might be played. One has a different feeling in forcing your “home-made” on a public that can’t help itself, than on a friend who comes to your house and asks you to play. (You have to finish at a public hymn, but a friend can walk out!) In other words, a congregation has some rights which an intimate or personal friend hasn’t in full…Anyway, in considering my music, the secular things—that is, those whose subject matter has to do with the activities of general life around one—seem to be freer and more experimental in technical ways.

On looking at this page from the Third Symphony, I am reminded of the Alcotts score from the Concord Sonata.  Like the Alcotts, the score of the symphony looks serene and very much like a hymn.  In fact the Symphony is primarily based on various hymns that Ives remembered from his childhood.  This 3rd symphony is a relatively early work, very tonal compared to his later work, and can be grouped with the 1st and 2nd Symphonies, the 1st String Quartet and the Violin Sonatas. 

Over the years, I have come to really love Ives's early Symphonies, and his 1st String Quartet.  According to the quote above, Ives felt that he wasn't yet 'free' in his early work, and he was more self-concious over what he presented to the public.  This may be true, yet that doesn't diminish the real truthful beauty of his early work.  Sometimes I enjoy these works even more than his later, more dissonant work.  The early symphonies in particular project an acheing pastoral mood from the viewpoint of a romantic 19th century individualist, with one foot still rooted in reality, that ultimately sounds more rich and satisfying than a sentimental or romantic view.  The 3rd Symphony is the climax of Ives's early style, and a kind of bridge between his past and his experimental future.

The work's subtitle "The Camp Meeting" gives us the context of this very nostalgic music.  Ives's childhood memories of outdoor camp meeting rivivals were very meaningful for him, and problably connected him to his father on a deep spiritual level.

[from in online encyclopedia]
Camp meeting, outdoor religious meeting, usually held in the summer and lasting for several days. The camp meeting was a prominent institution of the American frontier. It originated under the preaching of James McGready in Kentucky early in the course of a religious revival (c.1800) and spread throughout the United States. Immense crowds flocked to hear the noted revivalist preachers, bringing bedding and provisions in order to camp on the grounds. The meetings were directed by a number of preachers who relieved each other in carrying on the services, sometimes preaching simultaneously in different parts of the camp grounds. Shouting, shaking, and rolling on the ground often accompanied the tremendous emotional release that followed upon “conversion,” although these extravagances were opposed and discouraged by conservative ministers. Camp meetings were usually held by evangelical sects, such as the Methodists and Baptists, and by the Cumberland Presbyterians and other newer denominations that developed out of the religious revival. In modified form they continued to be a feature of social and religious life in the region between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi River until comparatively recent times. In a sense, they survive in summer conferences and assemblies, such as the Chautauqua Institution, in revivals, and their spirit is captured by some televangelists.

Ives scholar Mark Alan Zobel writes:

Of course, by Ives’s time camp meetings had ceased to be conducted out of necessity and had become more of an elective form of worship. Moreover, getting to the meeting place was much less of an ordeal. The roads were better and the rail systems were well established. Travel in Connecticut during the late nineteenth century was hardly the same as, for example, Kentucky in the early nineteenth century. Nevertheless, extra effort was required. Families still had to bring substantial provisions and cumbersome camping gear. The roads, though better, were generally flat dirt rather than paved or stone. Washed-out roads and wagon-wheel ruts hampered the camp meeting folk of Ives’s time just as they did the frontier families of the early 1800s. Only those willing to endure the struggle and discomfort made it to these outdoor encampments.

This idea of enduring adversity and gathering together is a theme that seems to have captured Ives’s imagination. In Memos, he recalls images of farmers and their families traversing the countryside on foot or in wagons, all making their way to the meeting place. One imagines Ives (then age four) witnessing the scene—perhaps from his family’s buggy while en route, or perhaps from within a tent erected on the campsite. The memory is of ordinary people coming from all around to take place in some strange, adult ritual that young Charlie could barely have understood. It must have looked unlike anything he was used to. Surely he had seen gatherings before: people going to church in Danbury, family celebrations at home, and holiday parades in town. Nevertheless, the experience of seeing so many travel so far to a seemingly remote place must have excited him—if for no other reason but that it was something out of the ordinary.

The 3rd Symphony takes us through a whole day at one of these Camp Meetings.  The first two movements give us a different point of view (old folks and children), and finally, in the last movement, all come together and share communion with the Divine.


Next: Old Folks Gatherin'

[barry guerrero]

I believe that the 3rd symphony was the one that Mahler was allegedly taking a look at.

[Leo K]

Yes, thats correct...Soon I will post up a little discussion on this when I cover the 3rd Mov. of Ives's 3rd.