Four Centuries of Great Music October 20, 2024 Sesquicentennial of the Birth of Composer Charles Ives

FCGM-10-20-24 Sesquicentennial of Charles Ives’ Birth

Today on Four Centuries of Great Music I am celebration the Sesquicentennial of the birth of composer Charles Ives, which was exactly 150 years ago today on October 20, 1874.  Many consider Ives the first truly American composer who incorporated American musical traditions into his music.  He was also a revolutionary who incorporated most of what we hear in modern classical music into his music including polytonality, polyrhythmicity, and microtonality.  Ives always attributed all of these instincts to his father who was a band director.  His father taught him to value the importance of traditional, folk and popular music as well as classical musical structure.  His father taught him the basics of music theory and composition prior to Charles Ives going to Yale to study music.  And throughout his early life Ives was surrounded by band music and marching bands in parades as you hear them come toward you and hearing the second band playing another piece before the first band has marched away so you hear those two different melodies and rhythms at the same time.  And you hear that very prominently in his orchestra music.

Today we are quite familiar with his music, but that wasn’t the case during his lifetime where very few pieces were published at the time that the works were written - as he was really only writing music for himself to get the musical feelings out.  Most of his works were written before the end of the 1920s, but only became well know in the 1940s and 1950s.

Today I want to begin with his chamber music, specifically his first string quartet written in 1891.  As Ives's first mature composition of extended length, its extraordinary fluency gives ample evidence of his solid control of traditional musical techniques. Moreover, the work is considerably more than a facile exercise based on classical models; there are already indications of the Ives to come, in the extensive quotations and, above all, in the composer's ability to bend the form to suit the idiosyncrasies of his own musical inclinations.  In it’s original form, it is in 4 movements


Charles Ives: String Quartet No. 1  Chorale: I. Andante con moto
Charles Ives: String Quartet No. 1  Prelude: II. Allegro; Allegro con spirito
Charles Ives: String Quartet No. 1  Offertory: III. Adagio cantabile
Charles Ives: String Quartet No. 1  Postlude: IV. Allegro marziale

The Juilliard String Quartet
Charles Ives: The Two String Quartets
Columbia Records/Sony

But to get the full scope of Ives writings, it is important to listen to his symphonic writing.  To illustrate that, I want to begin this second half hour of our celebration of the Sesquicentennial of the birth of composer Charles Ives with  his third symphony, The Camp Meeting.  The Camp Meeting was written between 1908 and 1910. In 1947, the symphony was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Ives is reported to have given half the money to Lou Harrison, who conducted the premiere in New York on 5 April 1946. Bernard Herrmann, another composer who became a friend of Ives, conducted a CBS broadcast performance of the symphony soon after.  The Symphony celebrates the “camp meeting” or revival meetings common in New England in the late 1800s with each of the three movements commenting on different aspects of the camp meeting I. Old Folks Gatherin'  marked Andante maestoso
II. Children's Day - Allegro moderato and finally  III. Communion  marked  Largo

Charles Ives:  Symphony No. 3 (The Camp Meeting)   I. Old Folks Gatherin' - Andante maestoso
Charles Ives:  Symphony No. 3 (The Camp Meeting)   II. Children's Day - Allegro moderato
Charles Ives:  Symphony No. 3 (The Camp Meeting)  III. Communion - Largo

Charles Ives: Complete Symphonies
Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra
Deutsche Grammophon

I would like to end this first hour celebrating the Sesquicentennial of the birth of composer Charles Ives with a short orchestral piece, his Central Park In the Dark

Charles Ives:  Central Park In the Dark
Michael Tilson Thomas and the Chicago Symphony
Ives: Holidays (Symphony) - The Unanswered Question - Central Park In the Dark

I want to open his second hour of our celebration of the Sesquicentennial of the birth of composer Charles Ives with perhaps his most important piano work, the Concord Piano Sonata, his piano sonata No.2.  This piece was written between 1909-1915 and published in a revised version in 1947, which is what you will be hearing today.  

The piece demonstrates Ives' experimental tendencies: much of it is written without barlines, the harmonies are advanced, and in the second movement, there are cluster chords.  The piece also amply demonstrates Ives' fondness for musical quotation: the opening bars of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 are quoted in each movement. James B. Sinclair's catalogue of Ives's works also notes less obvious quotations of Beethoven's Hammerklavier Sonata as well as quotations from Debussy and Wagner. Unusually for a piano sonata, there are optional parts for other instruments: near the end of the first movement there is an optional part for viola, and in the last movement a flute (an instrument which Thoreau played) briefly appears.  And the Emerson movement has notation which is quite vague to stimulate the improvisatory approach by the pianist.

It is in 4 movements meant to give an impression of the spirit of transcendentalism that is associated in the minds of many with Concord, Massachusetts of over a century ago. This is undertaken in impressionistic pictures of Emerson (1st movement) and Thoreau (fourth movement), a sketch of the Alcotts (third movement), and a scherzo supposed to reflect a lighter quality which is often found in the fantastic side of Hawthorne (second movement).

Charles Ives:  Piano Sonata No. 2 - Concord, Mass, 1840-1860  Emerson
Charles Ives:  Piano Sonata No. 2 - Concord, Mass, 1840-1860 Hawthorne
Charles Ives:  Piano Sonata No. 2 - Concord, Mass, 1840-1860 The Alcotts
Charles Ives:  Piano Sonata No. 2 - Concord, Mass, 1840-1860 Thoreau

Jeremy Denk Plays Ives
Think Denk Media

The only two works that Charles Ives had published were the Concord Sonata and his 114 songs.  The 114 songs were composed between 1888 and 1921 and were publish in the collection in reverse chronological order, with the most recent song “Majority” being the first and the oldest song “Slow March” being song 114. These songs were written in unconventional  idioms, with each song being unique.  Ives explained “A song has a few rights, the same as any other ordinary citizen. . . .  if it happens to feel like trying to fly where humans cannot fly - to sing what cannot be sung - to walk in a cave on all fours - to tighten up its girth and bind hope and faith and try to scale mountains that are not - who shall stop it.

I would like to close this tribute to the music of Charles Ives on the Sesquicentennial of his birth with songs from this set of 114 all performed by baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and pianist Michael Ponti from the album Ives: Songs:
Song 49 In Flander’s Fields
Song 60 Autumn
Song 74 The Children’s Hour
Song 77 Elegie

You have been listening to songs by Charles Ives from his collection of 114 songs
Song 49 In Flander’s Fields
Song 60 Autumn
Song 74 The Children’s Hour
Song 77 Elegie

As performed by baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and pianist Michael Ponti from the album Ives: Songs

Thank you for joining me today on Four Centuries of Great Music for this celebration of the  Sesquicentennial of the birth of Charles Ives which was exactly 150 years ago today on October 20th 1874 and join me again next Sunday from 3-5pm for a new episode and remember and encore of this episode can be heard this coming Saturday from 3-5pm.