Charles Ives

[Guido]

It somewhat disrupts the flow of the thread though - renders the rest of the posts a bit meaningless, or at least without proper context. I can't stop you though 

[Guido]

Sorry for any inconvenience. Most do not have follow ups, so there is no flow to disrupt. Any portions that contribute to a flow are picked up in others' posts, so any rivulets of flow are preserved there, although perhaps without some context.'

Doesn't perturb me too much! Your posting style then is Brahmsian - destroying any posts which you feel are not worth preserving for posterity. Ives might not have minded leaving the banal next to the sublime though!

[Guido]

Absolutely - one of Ives' most profound and moving insights in my opinion and one of the reasons his music holds so much appeal for me. I didn't realise that it was of such importance to Mahler, but then I have never really got the 'sublime' part of Mahler either except perhaps in the 9th Symphony. As Jan Swafford points out in the Ives biography, the two make an interesting comparison, which is why that story that Mahler almost conducted Ives' 3rd is so compelling. Of course Gayle denies that it could have happened due to her revised chronology. Later composers have used it too - HK Gruber and Friedrich Gulda for instance. I'm not sure if Shostakovich uses the banal in the same way - for him it is often used to parodistic effect which of course Ives and the others mentioned here emphatically do not. But Shostakovich must have got the practise at least partially from Mahler so maybe there are works in which he uses it in the same way as these guys.

[Joe Barron]

Guido, for an enlightening comparison of Ives and Mahler, see Robert Morgan's article in 19th Century Music.

[Guido]

This is the only place that I have seen this beautiful photo of Ives - anyone know where I can get a version of it without the writing?

[karlhenning]

Ives on Huntington Avenue.

[Guido]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Charles-Ives-A-Concord-Symphony/dp/B000WCN8OQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1236806180&sr=8-2

The above CD is absolutely fantastic - makes you hear the Concord Sonata in a whole new light. The Orchestration is far too 'clean' to be Ives, so the work sounds half Ives and half Brant, but it is just an absolute delight to hear - and truly astonishing that such a pianistic work could sounds so well for orchestra. Highly recommended.

[karlhenning]

"Does for Ives what Ravel did for Musorgsky"

[sul G]

I'm afraid I can't warm to the Brant orchestration, even though in itself there is nothing wrong with it, and Brant is probably the one person one would have chosen to do it, too. As Guido says, it's 'too clean to be Ives', but I think I have more of a problem with that than he does - to me, the most important thing about the explicitly transcendental sonata is the striving: the difficulty and the strain, the single-pianist-taking-on-the-world is part of the music and taking that away means that one method by which Ives expreses this most important aspect of the music is missing. It's an attractive sound but that's not really enough for me in a work which is so much more than that.

[karlhenning]

I have roughly similar feelings about an orchestration I once heard of Gaspard de la nuit.

[sul G]

Yes, I find that hard to imagine, even though Ravel himself happily orchestrated so much of his piano music. No, scrap that - perhaps because Ravel himself happily orchestrated so much of his piano music, so I can't imagine he'd have left Gaspard alone (perhaps his single most important piano work) if he hadn't had good reason. Like the Concord, Gaspard is transcendental too, though in a different way - remember Ravel's express wish to compose the hardest piano piece ever (he loved setting himself these little challenges)? And again, the difficulty of Scarbo is what makes it so demonic - replacing the piano with a bit of col legno/trem./ponticello/xylophone (or whatever) can really be no replacement for having the pianist play as if genuinely possesed. The difficulty of Le Gibet is the articulation - Gil-Marchex's famous '27 types of touch' - IOW the creation of an orchestral sonority but without an orchestra, and this is what makes it such a spellbinding work; one would also lose the frightening will-he-won't-he of that internal B flat pedal, which remains static despite everything that flies around it. The ease with which this could be reproduced in an orchestra would rid the piece of what makes it so magical. And in Ondine harps sliding all over the place may be more 'watery' but they wouldn't have that fragile brittleness which is so heartbreaking... No, sometimes it's best to leave well alone

[karlhenning]

You've said all I might have (and more) a great deal better than I should have.

[Joe Barron]

I'm afraid I can't warm to the Brant orchestration, even though in itself there is nothing wrong with it, and Brant is probably the one person one would have chosen to do it, too. As Guido says, it's 'too clean to be Ives', but I think I have more of a problem with that than he does - to me, the most important thing about the explicitly transcendental sonata is the striving: the difficulty and the strain, the single-pianist-taking-on-the-world is part of the music and taking that away means that one method by which Ives expreses this most important aspect of the music is missing. It's an attractive sound but that's not really enough for me in a work which is so much more than that.

Very well said.

[Guido]

Oh I certainly don't think it displaces the original at all - the original is without question better. But I do appreciate the orchestrated version too, but almost as a Brant work as I should have implied more strongly. Apart from anything when played by several sustaining instruments one realises quite how utterly gorgeous Ives' harmony is a lot of the time in this piece which I tend to miss a little when the 'heroic striving' and manic dynamism of the pianism is so often the most captivating aspect of the music.

I think a work as great as this can survive the transcription, even if the original cannot be displaced. Not that one would want to displace the original! You get what I'm trying to say though. Yes it loses a vital quality that Ives intended for the music, but for me it has also opened up appreciation of a new facet of the piece, so I can't help but like it. I don't love it like the original, but I do enjoy it a hell of a lot!

[Joe Barron]

This reply appears here, since it was off topic in the SQ thread.

That's a fascinating take Joe, and one which I agree with - this is exactly what Swafford tries to do, and he makes a most compelling case for it. It would be a severe disservise to Ives to summarise his achievement as just an innovator - these things are always at the service of a higher ideal and concept in his music.

Perhaps, but it's also a disservice to discount the experimerimental side. You seem to approve of Swafford's attempts. I'm not sure I do. Ives wrote several purely experimental pieces, like the Three Page Sonata, which Swafford describes, somewhat dismissively, as "sports" --- that is, atypical of Ives in that they do not "tell a story." I disagree. I think they are crucial to Ives's development. Whatever he was trying to do, he felt they were important while he was working on them.

[karlhenning]

. . . Ives wrote several p0urely experimental pieces, like the Three Page Sonata, which Swafford describes, somewhat dismissively, as "sports" --- that is, atypical of Ives in that they do not "tell a story."

Why not call them studies, and leave off the derision?

[Joe Barron]

Why not call them studies, and leave off the derision?

I'm not sure he meant to be derisive. Swarfford uses the term "sport" to mean something outside of Ives's usual aesthetic project, i.e., an attempt to create a scene or program. Trouble is, there are so many such "sports" that when grouped together, they seem at all "atypical." Most of the short piano works are "studies," and Ives labeled them as such.

I'm getting obsessive about quotation marks.

[karlhenning]

I'm getting obsessive about quotation marks.

"Really"? 

[Joe Barron]

"Really"?  

Don't be "cute."

[Joe Barron]

You don't need to look too hard to see that the affinity Ives shares with  Bolcom (and a lot of others, e.g., Zappa) that isn't shared with Carter.

I find more Ives in Carter than in Bolcom or Zappa, or, rather, I find the same things interesting about Ives that Carter does: the sense of multplicity, of layering, of silmultaneous perspectives, the rhythmic ingenuity. Of course, Ives is a seminal figure, and like most seminal figures (Beethoven included) he pointed in several directions at once, and his successors explored the new territories more single-mindedly. Carter followed Ives's example in one direction, Bolcom and Crumb in others.  

', I'm not quite sure what you're asking me. I think I've already made that clear that by sport, Swafford means an anomaly. What I'm saying is that there are enough of these anomalies that they are not all that anomalous.