Charles Ives

[Guido]

Well, I give you some great info, and you want more. You just take, take, take. I mean, good Lord, I'm only one man. 

I really don't know any of Ives's English itinerary. You might check the Swafford bio. When I have time later this week, I'll go through some of my other books. I do know he visited the Abbey Road Studios in London, where he recorded the Alcotts and the Emerson transcriptions. I'm sure you've seen the classic photo of Ives, Cowell, Ruggles and John Becker walking across the street single file. There were all sorts of little clues in it that led to rumors Ruggles had died.

For a second there you had me you old rogue!

Pity there's no Rupert Brook nearby.

Googled snippets apropos Darwin beetle searching and Grantchester

"Archdeacon Watkins, another old college friend of my father's, remembers him unearthing beetles in the willows between Cambridge and Grantchester, and speaks of a certain beetle the the remembrance of whose name is Crux major"

    ‘"But no pursuit at Cambridge was followed with nearly so much eagerness or gave me so much pleasure as collecting beetles. It was the mere passion for collecting, for I did not dissect them and rarely compared their external characters with published descriptions, but got them named anyhow. I will give a proof of my zeal: one day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles and seized one in each hand; then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so that I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as well as the third one."’

    ‘"I must tell you what happened to me on the banks of the Cam in my early entomological days; under a piece of bark I found two carabi (I forget which) & caught one in each hand, when lo & behold I saw a sacred Panagæus crux major; I could not bear to give up either of my Carabi, & to lose Panagæus was out of the question, so that in despair I gently seized one of the carabi between my teeth, when to my unspeakable disgust & pain the little inconsiderate beast squirted his acid down my throat & I lost both Carabi & Panagus!"’

'

Such a good story! Darwin is one of my heroes - one of the great scientists who intelligent though he was, was not preternaturally gifted or a genius in an obvious sense (like Newton or Einstein were) - he did rather badly at Cambridge - instead he relied on passion, hard work, clear thinking and determination to pull him through. Is Ives a similar figure? hmm...

[Joe Barron]

For a second there you had me you old rogue!

Old? Quel snark!

(The thing about Ives playing piano at Abbey Road studios is true, though.)

[Egebedieff]

...Grantchester...

Even though I had performed this decades ago, I hadn't known the whole Rupert Brooke poem The Old Vicarage, Grantchester. from which Ives extracted the text for the song.
http://www.bartleby.com/232/701.html

It is interesting to note that the Brooke poem shares much with the song and Ives's music in general -- the shift of styles with the hot Berlin Cafe as a foil for all of the pastorale musings about Granchester, and the getting caught up in the swing of the lines about the flaws of the folks in various villages and their inferiority to the folks in Grantchester:

And of that district I prefer   
The lovely hamlet Grantchester.   
For Cambridge people rarely smile,          80
Being urban, squat, and packed with guile;   
And Royston men in the far South   
Are black and fierce and strange of mouth;   
At Over they fling oaths at one,   
And worse than oaths at Trumpington,          85
And Ditton girls are mean and dirty,   
And there's none in Harston under thirty,   
And folks in Shelford and those parts   
Have twisted lips and twisted hearts,   
And Barton men make Cockney rhymes,...

But a more curious similar trait is that it is uses different languages (Greek and German) and language styles, like Ives (macaronic, a word you encounter w/ Pound). So Ives matches the classical reference of the bit of Greek Brooke throws in eiqe genoimhn (It is pretty much the Greek for the English that follows, but I assume it to be a classical reference, anybody know?) that prefaces Ives's extract with the Debussy quote.

Curious to know more about how the song came to be. '

[karlhenning]

The Swafford Ives biography is one of the most engaging composer biographies that I have read and his love of Ives music is palpable on each page (which I think is vital to really good musical criticism and biography). Highly recommended.

Duly noted.

[Guido]

I just got that The Light That is Felt CD - Susan Narucki and Donald Behrman singing a wonderful selection of Ives Songs. I can't quite express how brilliant this collection is - and its probably my favourite Ives song CD since DeGaetini/Kalish recording. Truly wonderful - both artists are just superb - beauty emmanates from every bar.

I've also just ordered this CD:


http://www.amazon.com/Variations-America-Samuel-Barber/dp/B0024JQNB0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1248126507&sr=8-1

which contains a couple of Fugues for Organ (I imagine from his student days) which I haven't heard before. Also An early Prelude and Fugue by Barber which has never been recorded before. A very good repertoire selection as far as I can see - can't wait to hear it.

[The new erato]

Guess whose symphonies now are on Hyperions halfprice sale? For a few days only..........

[Guido]

I just realised that halfway through the Housatonic at Stockbridge, the last of the Three Places in New England, there's a harp part that comes in at the same time as the Celeste - it's marked ppp imperceptibly so understandibly is hardly audible in most recordings I have of it (apart from the Leonard Slatkin/St Louis Symphony recording), but it's an extraordinarily beautiful part, and apparently also exceptionally difficult. If you can get a score try and play it at the piano.

[Guido]

New Ives disc on the way

http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.559370

Sinclair's recording of the remaining movements of Holidays and also a premiere performance of the Overture in G and I think possibly the General Slocum too. Looking forward to it.

(He's recording Symphony no.4 in 2010)

[Joe Barron]

Odd, it doesn't include Washington's Birthday. I know Sinclair has recorded it before, but if we want to hear the whole Holidays straight through, what are we supposed to do---switch disks? I don't like these Ives recordings where all we get is fragments.

The Fourth Symphony sounds exicting--if, of course, he plays it straight through and doesn't litter it with another bunch of Porter's "realizations."

[Guido]

Well remember that the Holidays is actually just a collection of tone poems, there's no particular line of symphonic thought linking them - I personally enjoy them better separately than back to back, but they would get far fewer outings if they weren't grouped as a symphony like they are, so I'm not going to complain!

[Joe Barron]

Well remember that the Holidays is actually just a collection of tone poems, there's no particular line of symphonic thought linking them - I personally enjoy them better separately than back to back, but they would get far fewer outings if they weren't grouped as a symphony like they are, so I'm not going to complain!

Yeah, but if you're going to do three, why not just take the extra step and do them all? It's like buying a car with three tires. I prefer to hear all the movements back to back, in order. There may be no line of symphonic thought linking them --- Ives objected to the idea that it wasn't really a symphony, by the way --- they do make up a larger, single tone poem, an American "Seasons": Washington's Birthday is winter, Decoration Day is spring, Fourth of July summer, and Thanksgiving fall. There's a satisfaction and a logic in hearing them all together, and I would at least like to be given the option. We could have programed our Cd players to do all four movements in succession --- provided that all four movements were actually on the disk.

[Bogey]

I did not know the gentleman at the right of my avatar had a connection:

http://www.americancomposers.org/raksin_herrmann.htm

[Guido]

Am I the only person who prefers "the Celestial Railroad" to Hawthorne? They're closely related of course, as well as the Comedy of the Fourth Symphony (which I also prefer to Hawthorne), but the former piece is more beautiful and satisfying to my ears - I've always thought Hawthorne was one of the most austere of all of Ives' movements (not a sleight on it particularly, I think it's meant to be), phantasmagorical though it might be.

I cannot get enough of that early Fugue on Shining Shore in four keys - this recording specifically where it is very atmospheric and sensitively played:



That final string cluster is as final as any perfect cadence I've ever heard, especially in this recording.

[Joe Barron]

Am I the only person who prefers "the Celestial Railroad" to Hawthorne?

Yes.

BTW, I will be in Danbury tomorrow for Charles Ives Day: visit pine Mountain, the Ives homestead, and gravesite with a concert in the afternoon by the Danbury Ragtag Orchestra. Sunday afternoon there will be a ful-blown concert by the Danbury Symphony Orchestra (who knew there was such a thing?) playing the Symphony no. 2. Not my favorite Ives,  but since I'm there... and it's all free.

[bhodges]

BTW, I will be in Danbury tomorrow fro Charles Ives Day: visit pine Mountain, the Ives homestead, and gravesite with a concert in the afternoon by the Danbury Ragtag Orchestra. Sunday afternoon there will be a ful-blown concert by the Danbury Symphony Orchestra (who knew there was such a thing?) playing the Symphony no. 2. Not my favorite Ives,  but since I'm there... and it's all free.

This sounds marvelous, Joe.  And even if the Danbury ensemble isn't world-class, they could turn out to be pretty good.  (I'm thinking, yet again, of all the very fine semi-pro musicians out there, filling up orchestras all over the country.)

Do report, please!

--Bruce

[Joe Barron]

Normally, they do Ives day the weekend before his birthday, but they pushed it back this year to coincide with the concert. I'm trying to get my sister and b-in-law to go with me. program will also include the Hebrides overture and the Enigma Variations.

Bruce, the performance can't be any worse than the one I heard in Danbury in 1974. Bernstein conducted the American Symphony Orchestra, and I won't say they butchered it, but it was pretty ragged. I guess is his gestures weren't very clear, and I remember some wrong notes and late entrances. It wsn;t the orcestra, either. MTT cnducted the second half of the program, in more difficult pieces, and they were fine.

Speaking of MTT, has anybody else seen his "Keeping Score" program on the Holidays Symphony? It's made for beginners, and I dislike having the conductor's analysis substitute for my own, but it was a nice, basic guide to the music, and I did learn one or two things.

[Brahmsian]

Speaking of MTT, has anybody else seen his "Keeping Score" program on the Holidays Symphony? It's made for beginners, and I dislike having the conductor's analysis substitute for my own, but it was a nice, basic guide to the music, and I did learn one or two things.

I missed it unfortunately, Joe.  Would have liked to see the one on the 'Holidays Symphony', as it is a work I'm not familiar with.  I also missed last night's 'Keeping Score' on Shostakovich's 5th symphony.    I enjoyed the ones I have seen on 'Symphonie Fantastique', 'The Rite of Spring', and the 'Eroica' symphony.

[Wendell_E]

I missed it unfortunately, Joe.  Would have liked to see the one on the 'Holidays Symphony', as it is a work I'm not familiar with.  I also missed last night's 'Keeping Score' on Shostakovich's 5th symphony.    I enjoyed the ones I have seen on 'Symphonie Fantastique', 'The Rite of Spring', and the 'Eroica' symphony.

Several of them, including the 'Holidays Symphony' and Shostakovich 5th, are/will be available on DVD.  Not something I'd probably buy, but might rent them from Netflix, though currently the only one they list is one on the Tchaikovsky 4th.

[Guido]

Yes.

It appears that way. But as an Ivesian I don't mind - when faced with consensus and discouragement, the question Are my ears on wrong? is always pertinent (at least when it comes to Ives...) 

[Joe Barron]

I realize I haven't written anything about my trip to Danbury the weekend of Oct. 31. Not much to say about it really, except that when we were visiting the Ives family plots at Wooster Cemetery, Nancy Sudik, our tour guide, told us about for Saranne (Sally) Ives Wilkes, Moss's daughter, who is still living and in her late eighties. Her stone, with the date of death blank, waits for her in a row of newer stones nearer the road than those of the family founders. Sally visits by Nancy's office at the Danbury Music Center occasionally, and she once told Nancy that all of the Iveses were "stuffy" --- all of them, that is, except Uncle Charlie and Aunt Harmony.

On Sunday, Nov. 1, the Danbury Symphony (with Nancy in the horn section) played the Ives No. 2 on a program that also included the Hebrides Overture and the Enigma Variations. Ariel Rudiakov conducted. It was a tight, rousing performance, and a lot of fun, despite some intonation problems in the strings. Not my favorite Ives -- the alter music is that --- but always worth a listen. (One of the musicians told me afterwards that she asked a violinist if she could hit all the notes, and the violinist replied, "If I could hit all the notes, I would have had a very different life.") This is an ingenious, a brilliant feat of contrapuntal engineering, and to my mind, the best nationalistic-romantic symphony every written by an American. Here Ives was doing what Dvorak suggested that Americans do --- apply indigenous materials to a large-scale Germanic format. (He did not, however, use African American or native American music, as Dvorak suggested, because they were not fundamental  to his own experience. Rather, he used the tunes he grew up with. Nationalism in this Dvorakian sense was actually foreign to Ives. To base a symphony on an arbitrary selection of local, indigenous materials was, to his mind, a form of manner, and ultimately phony.) But the music lacks depth. Ives doesn't scale the transcendental heights here that he did in his later work, and to do that, he had to move away from European models of form.