Charles Ives

[Sergeant Rock]

....please share with me and everyone else, your own experiences with Ives' music and how you came to admire the music.

I discovered Ives through a Young People's Concert broadcast in 1967: Charles Ives: American Pioneer. It's on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/v/tsbaSwhtx9E

The only Ives recording I could afford then (I was still in high school) was the Sonata No.1 on the budget Columbia Odyssey label (played by William Masselos). I did hear Lenny's Ives 2, a borrowed LP from the library. Those two works cemented my lifelong love of Ives music.

Sarge

[Chronochromie]

Sorry to ramble on like a buffoon, but I guess I'm feeling a bit nostalgic tonight. For those that love this composer, please share with me and everyone else, your own experiences with Ives' music and how you came to admire the music.

I first heard his 2nd symphony, like a year and a half ago, when I was a more inexperienced listener. I didn't get it.

Then not long after that, I heard The Unanswered Question. I loved it so tracked down every major work of his and as my taste in music had expanded since I had first heard the 2nd symphony, it was easy to get into the rest of his stuff. The Fourth Symphony sealed the deal, it was love at first hearing. Along with the Concord Sonata, my favorite Ives.

[Monsieur Croche]

Is Ives popular anywhere outside US? Is Ives popular even in US?

Those with the interest and wherewithal could access data bases and come up with the stats of how often Ives is performed, and where.

Like much modern-contemporary, it is programmed not so frequently, but I recall while living abroad for about a decade at least several times it was programmed and played -- by major ensembles.

I can not say the same about all the years I've lived in major metropolitan centers in the U.S. [While a music student, I can recall one Ives song recital program, but that is all.]

Maybe, like Jazz, the market for Ives is greater in Europe than in its country of origin?

[Sergeant Rock]

Is Ives popular anywhere outside US? Is Ives popular even in US?

Those with the interest and wherewithal could access data bases and come up with the stats of how often Ives is performed, and where.

Very difficult to answer dB's question. I can tell you that between 1956 and 2010 Ives was programmed 53 times by the Cleveland Orchestra (conductors included Louis Lane, Dohnanyi, Chailly, Copland, Metzmacher, Michael Charry, Maazel). More times than I would have thought before doing the research.

Sarge

[Monsieur Croche]

The Fourth Symphony sealed the deal.... it was love at first hearing.

Ives' Fourth is a masterpiece I think worthy being a part of the canon of classical music, its merits place it right alongside many of those other masterworks of the canon, imho.

It will get played less often, the number of players, with chorus -- and two conductors -- having it more costly to program.

It is a masterpiece, and gorgeous, those two not always mutually inclusive. 

[Cato]

Charles Ives also entered my world in high school, and I believe I came across him thanks to an article about Arnold Schoenberg, which mentioned his cryptic reference to Ives, i.e.  "There is a great man living in this country.  His name is Ives."

And so I went to the library and found the symphonies and, I believe, John Kirkpatrick's famous recording of the Concord Sonata.

I was thrilled by both the early works and the later experimental ones.

Ives is a composer of memories, a chronicler of aural images from the past, a forager (not forger    ) among certain 19th-century American cultural aspects which he may have feared were fading in the increasingly chaotic and burgeoning cities of the 20th.  I believe there is also an impulse to continue the puckishness of his father...and to redeem him:

...However, the public did not continue to accept George as a musician. Wallach reports that in the 1870's there was a "rise in gentility" in Danbury, and with it George's status may have begun to decline (9). George faced the ridicule of a society that expected men to be in business; music was for "the ladies" (10). Feder notes that of the male musicians in Danbury, none was from Danbury, all had many jobs unrelated to music, and most did not last long in Danbury, presumably because of the uncomfortable position that they, as male musicians, were in. George himself finally had to revert to working under his nephew in the bank originally owned by his own father (11). Here he worked for the last part of his life, with his music having to take the role of an avocation...

...Charles achieved what his father failed to accomplish not only in business, but in music as well. Rossiter sums up what Charles Ives did for his father's music reputation:

George Ives lived an obscure life in Danbury, and its people treated him badly, both socially and musically. When his son acquired a reputation as a composer, he felt justified in using that reputation to secure for his father some small posthumous recognition (16).

Charles's business was selling life insurance; his music insured that his father's life was not without value....

See:

http://www.ryangarber.com/ives.html

[Mirror Image]

I appreciate everyone's feedback thus far. Most interesting!

[zamyrabyrd]

I discovered Ives through a Young People's Concert broadcast in 1967: Charles Ives: American Pioneer.
Sarge

Wow, this vid really made my day, and Lenny so youngish back then! Thanks!

[Mirror Image]

The Ives Of March Is Here!!!





Since our friend, Greg Moeller, is absent from the forum for an underdetermined amount of time, I thought I would start this fun tradition of his (since he and I both share a mutual admiration of this New England maverick).

I'll probably start some Ives listening tonight and will begin with The Pond (Remembrance). A haunting work that shows an enigmatic side of the composer. Please everyone join me in celebrating Ives!

[Leo K.]

Somehow I missed the recent discussion here on the Ives thread! Thanks John for continuing to hold the torch for Ives here!

It's time to celebrate Ives again this month!

I remember discovering Ives during my senior year in High School (1989). I checked out a Leonard Bernstein record that featured four different lectures on composers, Ives being the last one. I'll never forget the sound of the Fourth of July (from the 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!).

Over the years I have come to appreciate and love Ives's early Symphonies and 1st String Quartet.  According to Ives he wasn't yet 'free' in his early work -  he was self-conscious what he presented to the public.  This may be true, yet that doesn't diminish the truthful beauty of his early work.  The early symphonies (1-3) project a reverent 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.  In the past I've put together a discussion on Ives' 3rd Symphony that I'll repost here

Third Symphony "The Camp Meeting" (1904)

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


[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 a page from the score of 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. 

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

[from an 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.


I.Old Folks Gatherin'

The 3rd Symphony is the climax of Ives's early style, and a kind of bridge between his past and his experimental future. Each movement of this symphony is based on an organ prelude Ives wrote for the Central Presbyterian Church in New York City (these early organ works are now lost). By 1902 Ives was working three of these preludes into a symphony, and in 1903 he worked on the short score (with most of the orchestration indicated).  The pencil sketch of the final version was finished in 1904.  He would continue to revise it over the coming years (it was probably fully completed in 1911). Personally, what I love most about the 3rd symphony is Ives's writing for the trombones (and horns for that matter), especially in the first movement.  The trombones appear after the curtain opening-like gesture of the strings, and all of a sudden...we are witness to a kind of wide open space of memory, green hills and camp meetings over a wind of New England sun and air.  I feel this way over the course of the whole symphony.

The first movement features these hymn tunes: Carl Gläser's Azmon (1829), Charles Converse's Erie (1868), and William Bradbury's Woodworth (1849). Mark Zobel notes that "Azmon is most commonly paired with Charles Wesley's hymn O For A Thousand Tongues to Sing (1739)".

(When I was a kid, I sang O For A Thousand Tongues To Sing in Church so many times I memorized the tune, so when I first heard this work I was surprised to recognize this tune and a couple of others.  My grandfather played hymns in church so this is one of the main reasons I love Ives's hymn derived works.  Most who were brought up in church would know much of this symphony from the get go.)

[Mark Zobel writes]
Several aspects of the musical context illustrate the idea of gathering. For example, the main theme is not heard at the beginning. Rather, it emerges from fragments of hymn tunes presented at the outset, which then coalesce into a complete thematic idea—a technique J. Peter Burkholder has called cumulative setting. Just as the camp meeting worshippers came from all around the countryside, these fragments appear from throughout the orchestra, and occur in such variety as to suggest the diverse individuals that Ives saw coming over the hills. Just as there was struggle in getting to the camp meeting, there is a "struggle" among these fragments to be heard as coherent units. At the end, they coalesce as though having been gathered together for the greater purpose of sounding out a complete tune—just as the camp meeting folk gathered together in song for the greater purpose of worship.

Regarding the use of these tunes, musicologist J. Peter Burkholder writes:
We have seen that most of Ives's works based on existing music use borrowed material within a formal and thematic structure that is coherent even if the listener does not recognize the borrowed tunes. Programmaticism plays a role in a relatively small number of works, and in only a few are the borrowings to be understood primarily as fulfilling a program or illustrating a text. Yet in addition to the works whose borrowings can be explained in terms of a musical procedure or extramusical program, there are several in which the process seems entirely arbitrary, like a joke or compositional tour de force. These are the works in the tradition of quodlibet, a small group in Ives's output but a significant influence on some of his greatest compositions. There are two basic techniques of linking existing tunes in a quodlibet: contrapuntal combination, in which tunes are piled on top of one another, and successive combination, in which fragments of various tunes appear in quick succession, whether in the same or a different instrument.

Ives was big on adding 'extramusical' associations in his works by using these hymns.  The hymn tunes in this symphony create a context, or setting that:

[musicologist Peter Burkholder]
served more than purely musical functions for Ives. Because the themes were drawn from American hymn tunes, they carried extramusical associations, from the specific words and images of the hymn texts, to the feelings evoked by hymn singing or the flavor of American song. Together with the form itself, which embodies a progression from fragments to wholeness and from vagueness to clarity, these associations give Ives's cumulative settings three kinds of extramusical significance: a celebration of American melodies; a sense of the spirit in which these hymns were sung; and...a perfect musical parallel to the experience described in the text or program.

I should mention the numerous "shadow lines" heard throughout the music. They are usually played on a solo instrument, such as a clarinet or violin, and they are generally dissonant in contrast to the general tonal discourse of the music.  Certain recordings feature these "shadow lines" more than others, depending on the conductor's choice between various editions of the score.  Ives wrote these shadowlines in the 1904 pencil score, but in the end, he was quite ambivalent about their use and crossed them out.  However, he later requested that they be reinstated in later editions of the score.  He basically didn't want these shadow-like melodies to intrude onto the main discourse of the music, so he generally left it up to the conductor to decide.  Ives never explained why he wanted them there in the first place.     

This movement (in most editions used) ends with a shadow line...a solo violin playing What a Friend We Have in Jesus .  Zobel writes:

As Ives recalled, his father sometimes led the singing with a violin. Could this line be representative of Ives's father? For that matter, might all the shadow lines be representative of his father's influence? George Ives was skilled with a number of instruments, and the diversity of instruments in which the shadow lines appear could signify his presence in Ives's memory. Whatever their meaning for Ives, their presence leaves much to the imagination which, in the end, may be what Ives most wanted.


Next: Children's Day

[Leo K.]

...continued from above...

II. A Children's Day

Harmony Ives became pregnant within the first weeks of her marriage to Charles.  Both were excited and anxious to start a family, but during the month of April of 1909, a pregnant Harmony was taken to the hospital due to a problem with the pregnancy.  Tragically, she had a miscarriage and was given an emergency hysterectomy in the process.  She was in the hospital for a month.  She would never be able to have children again.

A devastated Ives worked on the song based on a poem by Keats, called "Like A Sick Eagle":

The spirit is too weak;
mortality weighs heavily on me
like unwilling sleep,
and each imagined pinnacle and steep
of Godlike hardship
tells me I must die,
like a sick eagle looking towards the sky.


As the 1909 summer came to a close, Charles and Harmony went vacationing with her family at Pell Jone's lodge on Elk Lake in the Adirondacks. Harmony recovered from her operation here, writing in her diary, "A perfect vacation.  Charlie working on the Symphony."

Who knows what kind of thoughts or emotions went through his mind while orchestrating the second movement A Children's Day, but whatever he was going through, his work was progressing with a strong maturity and confidence.  The playing children in his Symphony would continue to play for eternity, like a film tucked in a dreamy corner of the mind, easily recalled.

Charles Ives:
At the summer Camp Meetings in the Brookside Park the children, (more so the boys) would get marching and shouting the hymns...and the slow movement [Children's Day recalls] a serious time for children, Yes, Jesus Loves Me—except when old Stone Mason Bell and Farmer John would get up and sing—and some of the boys would rush out and throw stones down on the river.

Mark Zobel writes:
Another key aspect of Ives's childhood was play—imaginative, inventive play. Ives grew up during the golden age of childhood in which play of this kind was central. In a time before television, video games, and computers, play was a highly social and creative venture. Creative play and playing music often went hand in hand in the Ives household. Ives recalled once that, where practice and music making were concerned, George was not against a reasonable amount of "boys fooling." Such fooling included playing a fugue in four keys at once, singing a song in one key and accompanying in another, performing more than one song at a time, and performing off-beat, wrong-key accompaniments to familiar tunes. Far from frivolous wastes of time, these musical experiments stimulated Ives's creativity, ventures that would pay off later during his compositional years. As Ives later recalled, "what started as boy's play and in fun, gradually worked into something that had a serious side to it that opened up possibilities."

Ives chose hymns that would complement the playful, happy atmosphere of this movement.  The main tunes used are The Happy Land , Naomi (arr. Lowell Mason), and Fountain (arr. Lowell Mason).

The lyrics to The Happy Land could be Ives's testimonial to his sacred memory of childhood, his muse, a tangible promised land where he can still hold his father's hand and feel protected, and watch his father take up the violin and lead a chorus of farmers and townspeople to sing:

There is a happy land, far, far away,
Where saints in glory stand, bright, bright as day;
Oh, how they sweetly sing, worthy is our Savior King,
Loud let His praises ring, praise, praise for aye.

Come to that happy land, come, come away;
Why will you doubting stand, why still delay?
Oh, we shall happy be, when from sin and sorrow free,
Lord, we shall live with Thee, blest, blest for aye.

Bright, in that happy land, beams every eye;
Kept by a Father's hand, love cannot die;
Oh, then to glory run; be a crown and kingdom won;
And, bright, above the sun, we reign for aye.

Though Ives worked the Naomi hymn into his Symphony years before the loss of their child, Mark Zobel noticed a "striking parallel" between this hymn and "certain events in Ives's life" that are worth mentioning here, which I'll briefly describe: 

In the Book of Ruth, Ruth allows the aging and childless Naomi to adopt her [Ruth's] own son.  This enables Naomi and her new husband to have an heir, and also saves Naomi and her husband from being social outcasts. The lyrics of the Hymn are a prayer of thanks and gratitude for God's intervention:

Father, whate'er of earthly bliss
thy sovereign will denies,
accepted at thy throne, let this
my humble prayer, arise:

Give me a calm and thankful heart,
from every murmur free;
the blessing of thy grace impart,
and make me live to thee.

Let the sweet hope that thou art mine
my life and death attend,
thy presence through my journey shine,
and crown my journey's end.

In 1916, Charles and Harmony adopt a young girl named Edith, which in turn gives Charles and Harmony a new found peace and Joy during a particularly difficult and stressful time in their lives and marriage. Zobel observes:

Just as Naomi's adoption of Ruth's child eased a complicated social and economic situation, the Ives' adoption of Edith eased the complications of the preceding years by bringing new happiness into their lives.

It is not known whether Ives was conscious of this parallel or not, but Zobel states:

Ives's choice to retain the tune in later versions (particularly in the 1909 revision which, interestingly, was scored during their vacation at Elk Lake in August while Harmony was recuperating from the surgery) suggests that the tune might have taken on a special significance for him given the events of the preceding four months.


Next: Communion

[Leo K.]

...continued from above...

III.Communion

In May 1896, Ives handed in the one major work assigned for his sophomore year at Yale.  His First String Quartet (subtitled "From the Salvation Army") is a seed that would later blossom into the Third Symphony.

Like the later work, this Quartet was put together from various pieces he wrote for organ and strings at church.  The Quartet is an experimental piece, mostly made up of gospel hymns.  The first movement is a fugue based on the hymn Missionary Chant ("From Greenland's Icy Mountains") and Ives would later orchestrate it and place it in his Fourth Symphony. 

This Quartet is a rather loose and rambling student work but it is one of my favorite moments of Ives's hymn reflection-music (a fantasia-communion of hymns) and very much a blueprint for his later larger works.  The use of hymn quotations are very much like the Third Symphony, except at this stage the writing is not as conceptually or formally strong as the Symphony. Ives would later despise his music professor Horatio Parker but Ives learned about abstract musical form from his teacher.  Ives remembered how Parker went off the rails when it came to revival hymns or popular music of any kind...Parker would shout, "In music they should have no place.  Imagine, in a Symphony, hearing suggestions of street tunes like 'Marching through Georgia' or a moody and Sanky Hymn!"

Biographer Jan Swafford mentions how in 1900 Parker would lecture his students that 'revival music' was, "Vulgar with the vulgarity of the streets and the music hall.  If sentimentality is evil...what shall we say of vulgarity?...Let the stuff be confined to the mission where it may do some good.  Among people of any appreciable degree of refinement and culture it can only do harm."

Jan Swafford:
What could Parker do then, then, with his student who seemed incurably infested with crude hymnody and program music, who without shame could title a string quartet, that purest of genres, "From the Salvation Army?"

In New York, early on in 1911, Gustav Mahler walked into the Tams Music Copying Service (along Tin Pan Alley).  While browsing around inside, he noticed the score to a Third Symphony by some unknown American composer named Charles Ives.  After looking the score over closely, Mahler decided to take it with him back to his home in Austria, possibly intending to have this work performed in the future.  Mahler was almost finished with his tenure with the New York Philharmonic (as Director), but his time in New York had reportedly been an unhappy one. Mahler returned to Vienna, but his heart disease was very advanced and he died in May.

Jan Swafford writes:
Mahler had glanced at a Symphony by an unknown and apparently amateurish American and recognized a kindred spirit.  He saw a composer placing, as he did, the commonplace, the humble, the shopworn in a symphonic context, and in the process renewing both the material and the symphonic genre.  Mahler also saw a deliberate and touching musical naïveté close, in its Yankee voice, to his own way of evoking Austrian folk songs and landlers. 

The finale of Mahler's own Third Symphony is very similar to Ives's Third.  Both finales are slow and rather meditative and mystical.  Even the programmatic content is similar; in Mahler the theme is love, and in Ives the theme is communion.  The differences lie in the length and the dynamics.  Mahler uses around 25 minutes and ends with a glorious crescendo, while Ives takes about 7 minutes and remains relatively quiet throughout.  Different strokes for different folks...yet both are great.

Henry Cowell:
He [Ives] feels that music, like other truths, should never be immediately understood; there must always remain some further element yet to be disclosed. A complete musical statement, in all its clarity and simplicity, like any absolute truth is an ultimate, not a beginning. Ives reserves it, therefore, for the culmination of a work.

The finale to Ives's Third has eluded me for many years.  It is almost like water.  When I try to remember the music, I have a difficult time remembering its sound.  I vaguely remember a kind of kaleidoscope mish- mash of strings and woodwinds that meander through a forest, with no direction.  When I was first getting to know this work I often would stop listening after the 2nd movement, or would fall asleep if I decided to stick it out.  The movement feels formless.  This effect may have been what Ives intended.  Unlike the other movements, he doesn't quote from as many hymns. 

This may be because of the title...Communion...resolving from separation into an enjoining energy...individual-less. 

Mark Zobel:
The title [Communion] was never used when the organ piece on which it was based was played in church. Only when the music was recast in the form of a symphony (a decidedly secular genre) was the term invoked in a programmatic way. It seems clear that Ives, though perhaps not in the role of preacher, was trying to suggest something of the inner life to the listener as well as emulate the decidedly non-sectarian spiritual tone of his hero Beethoven, whose Ninth Symphony has achieved a state as close to universal as any symphonic work of the modern tradition. Just as the hymn tunes Ives borrowed would undoubtedly have suggested something devotional to postwar listeners, the use of the term communion was perhaps calculated to suggest something deeper than an outdoor encampment.

In the past I haven't listened to this symphony with a story in mind.  As I mentioned earlier I love Ives's writing for the trombones, but his overall orchestration of this work is glorious. More than any other work by Ives I usually listen at the sonority of the instruments rather than a 'story.'   Yet I really like the ideas Mark Zobel puts forth in his dissertation on this Symphony. He has given me a new appreciation for this work.  Now I realize the great concept behind this Symphony:   

Mark Zobel:
How interesting that Ives chose communion, a theologically loaded term, as the theme for this final movement, especially since the symphony depicts a Christian journey of sorts...we have seen how Ives's tune-usage illustrates the idea of a journey. In Old Folks Gatherin', Ives gives the listener his impressions of people coming from all around the countryside to take part in the camp meeting. Musically, he represents this in the form of a cumulative setting wherein tune fragments are gathered together from around the orchestra to coalesce at the end into a unified thematic statement. In Children's Day, Ives gives the listener impressions of childhood playfulness. Here, he uses devices such as quodlibet and wrong-note accompaniments to familiar tunes in order to represent (1) children at play on the campground and (2) the kind of "boys fooling" that often characterized music making in his childhood home. On one level, the ideas expressed in Old Folks Gatherin' and Children's Day suggest a program for the symphony wherein people arrive as "old folks" and are then transformed spiritually into a child-like state of innocence which then prepares them to receive communion. Intended by Ives or not, the pattern of events depicted in this symphony bears a striking resemblance to Jesus' scriptural admonishment about first becoming like little children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. This does not indicate that Ives is deliberately making a theological argument, only that there is a striking parallel between this aspect of the Biblical narrative and the musical context thus far.

Moreover, the final movement lends further support to that parallel. Perhaps realizing that the communion ritual is rather mystical and abstract, and that it embodies properties that are not of the familiar world, Ives used fewer familiar tunes here than in the previous two movements. In Old Folks Gatherin' and Children's Day, borrowed materials appear in almost every measure. Here, however, the borrowings are relatively rare. Just as there is little of the familiar world in the theology of the communion ritual, there is little of the familiar musical world in this final movement.

The subtleties of this finale are deep and lasting.  There is a quality in the quiet strings that hints of a plane beyond quietness.  Now that I've learned to listen closer I now recall the little bits I like.  The work no longer feels claustrophobic - it feels transparent like a secret everyone knows that doesn't need to be said.  The finale to the Third is a kind of prototype for many similar endings in Ives's future works: the Piano Trio, the 2nd String quartet, the Concord Sonata, and the 4th Symphony among others.

The Third Symphony had its premiere on April 5, 1946 under Lou Harrison's direction with the New York Little Symphony.  Much critical acclaim followed this performance, leading to the Pulitzer Prize awarded to Ives on May 5, 1947 for music. 

Characteristically, Ives called the award "a badge of mediocrity" and also quipped, "Prizes are for boys, I'm grown up."  However, in private, Ives intimated in a letter to friend Lou Harrison that he was flattered by the award.

Mark Zobel:

As of this writing, one hundred years have passed since Ives completed principal composition of the Third Symphony in 1904. Questions as to its enduring significance may seem ill timed now, as grass roots America (the tunes of which Ives eagerly borrowed) scarcely knows the name of Charles Ives, much less any of his music. He is certainly beloved by pockets of music-lovers the world over, but to speak of this particular work as somehow preserving the essential spirit of the American camp meeting tradition with the same widespread and long-standing influence as the Epistles would be an overstatement. As music, the Third Symphony is an important part of America's musical heritage. As a pastoral and mythic vision, however, it is awaiting discovery.
Currently, America's musical attentions lie elsewhere—whether on the popular songs of our time, or masterworks more central to the canon. Just as the Great Depression, the spread of Fascism, and World War II primed postwar audiences for the Third Symphony's tonal familiarity and tuneful reminiscences, one wonders if the declining economy, spread of terrorism, and war in Iraq might not prime the audiences of today. We owe it to ourselves to find out, because this symphony has things to teach us about the beauty of the inner life which, for Ives, was a most wonderful "place in the soul, all made of tunes, of tunes of long ago."

[bhodges]

A devastated Ives worked on the song based on a poem by Keats, called "Like A Sick Eagle":

The spirit is too weak;
mortality weighs heavily on me
like unwilling sleep,
and each imagined pinnacle and steep
of Godlike hardship
tells me I must die,
like a sick eagle looking towards the sky.

Interesting Ives comments, thank you. Just as an aside, "Like a Sick Eagle" is one of my favorite of his songs, ever since hearing it by Jan DeGaetani and Gilbert Kalish. (For those who don't know the song, the singer is supposed to move from note to note through quarter-tones, which creates a sickly, exhausted feeling.)

--Bruce

[Dax]

David Wooldridge, on pp 150-1 of his book From the Steeples and Mountains, reckons that Mahler took a score of the 3rd Symphony back to Europe and gave it at least a reading in Munich. Was any further evidence ever unearthed about this?

[Mirror Image]

Thanks for mentioning and opening a discussion on Ives' 3rd, Leo! Good to see you're still peaking in at GMG. I'll need to revisit The Camp Meeting for myself. I recall it's the shortest of Ives' symphonies. There's a loveliness and lyrical quality to it that is quite beautiful.

[Leo K.]

Thanks John! I check in mostly on the weekends I don't work.

One of my favorite Ives works:

An Election (It Strikes Me That...)
For Male (in unison) Chorus and Orchestra

Also known as...

November 2, 1920
for Voice and Piano

Ives wrote this work in response to Harding's presidential victory (won by a landslide) in 1920.  In the score of the song, Ives writes, "sung as a soliloquy of an old man whose son lies in Flander's Fields."  We don't need to get into the details of the political arena at the time (Harding led a corrupt and incompetant administration), but on hearing the music it is obvious this is one of Ives's 'blowing off steam' pieces.  I never think too much on the political anger when I hear this work...I really love the unison voices and the ending, which is my favorite Ives ending ever.  He wrote his own lyric, which reads more like a rant: 

It strikes me that
some men and women got tired of a big job; but, over there our men did not quit.
They fought and died that better things might be!
Perhaps some who stayed at home are beginning to forget and to quit.
The pocketbook and certain little things talked loud and noble, and got in the way;
too many readers go by the headlines, party men will muddle up the facts,
so a good many citizens voted as grandpa always did,
or thought a change for the sake of change seemed natural enough.
"It's raining, let's throw out the weatherman, kick him out! Kick him out! Kick him out! Kick him out! Kick him!"
Prejudice and politics, and the stand-patters came in strong, and yelled, "slide back! Now you're safe, that's the easy way!"
Then the timid smiled and looked relieved, "We've got enough to eat, to hell with ideals!"
All the old women, male and female, had their day today,
and the hog-heart came out of his hole;but he won't stay out long,
God always drives him back!
Oh Captain, my Captain!A heritage we've thrown away;
but we'll find it again, my Captain, Captain, oh my Captain!

I discovered some a great commentary on this work, by Emily Graefe:

The song raises issues of the duty of each citizen to vote intelligently, and to uphold the founding fathers' vision of democracy. It focuses on the dualities of the individual's duty to action and passivity in relationship to the betterment of society. Although sung by one man, there is dialogue between him, who speaks of the duty the individual as to society, and the people who have forgotten this duty. They are shown as passive, while the singer is active. The song pities those who wanted to keep the status quo. They are presented in stark contrast to the soldiers who fought and died for change in World War I. The listener is reminded of this with the brief musical and lyrical quotation of the popular war song, "Over There" by George M. Cohan, in measure six. We are told that the soldiers "fought and died that better things might be!" whereas "the timid smiled and looked relieved, 'We've got enough to eat, to hell with ideals'!" The Transcendentalists would see the timid as resigning their individuality to what society proscribes, instead of challenging ideas and finding something to believe in.

Ives presents his bias clearly and the listener does not doubt which set of people he believes are better individuals. The soldiers possessed individual honor and duty to serve their country and force a change for the better. The people at home, on the other hand, are easily satisfied and lose their desire to change the world for an ideal. They do not act on their own accord because they are part of a group mentality and possess a placidity that prohibits their own ideas from being fostered.

Musically the piece is varied. As is evidenced by the lyrics, a dialogue is set up between two different groups that represent action and inaction, which gives the song a unique character.  This is handled musically by the use of staccatos in the accompaniment when the group speaks. An ostinato figure beginning in measure four is said to be played in "an uneven and dragging way," showing the sluggishness of the passive group and makes that inaction cohesive throughout the piece. The staccatos show how their mentality is detached from the larger understanding of what is good for society. Throws of passion are tempered by lines that are practically spoken, which help to express the duality present in the song. The music enhances the whirlwind of emotion shown in the lyrics.

The song incorporates unusual musical ideas to further Ives' point. To begin with, the piece has no key signature or time signature. This is common in Ives' music because of his chromaticism and polyrhythms, but also, those things would simplify the piece and break it down  into conventional language, just as politicians break things down for the public so they feel they have nothing worth voting for. Ives shows the contrast between "there" and "here" by the triplet rhythm groupings for the "there" section (m. 6, 7) in the beginning. It is found in both the melody and the accompaniment, either separately or together.

This unifying rhythm shows the unity in duty to the country and society. Also, the texture of thick chords shows unity because the notes are played together. This rhythm is not found again until the ending call to "my Captain." Also not heard until the ending is a triple forte dynamic. It occurs in the beginning on the word "fought." The soldiers' duty was expressed through action, whereas society's desire to  "quit," is marked by a pianissimo. Underpinning the phrase "beginning to forget and to quit" are minor descending chords to show his melancholy over this fact.

The state of the majority's inaction is shown musically. When Ives is describing the common attitude as being "to hell with ideals," he has the singer descend on a chromatic scale.  This motion alone shows the exhaustion and release with which the individual can easily resign his role as an active citizen. Details like these descending chromatic figures show the general downtrodden nature of the country's political situation. The five-note clusters in the left hand of the accompaniment for "to hell with ideals" are ascending and come together with the descending right hand line. The result is not harmony and agreement, but collapsing inwards and is another example of the inactive mood he tried to create. Both the chromaticism and tone clusters  do not serve a traditional purpose harmonically.

By associating these stagnant musical ideas with the inaction of society, Ives further links his  text to the music. The murkiness of the clusters of tones is ambiguous and unpleasant, especially for the audiences of his day. They represent the passive citizens in the song, and the unharmonious nature of the clusters marks the citizens' grating effect on the country. The dark dissonances serve to echo the dark place that the American government is in: the alternative path of the individual, one in which he resigns his duty to society, leads to a dim world with little enlightenment.

The ending section with the call to "my Captain" is the climax of this emotional and bitter critique on society. One might expect this hopeful end full of major chords and clear harmony because of its hopeful ending that America will reclaim its past of involved government. Ives chose not to be so simple for this ending. The chords in the last five bars are the same, beginning with a loud proclamation (f) followed by a quiet one (p).

This is symbolic because the dynamics show the polarity that exists between individualism and the group. The first chord is anchored in the bass clef with a C-major chord. The vocal melody outlines a C-major chord before hovering around e, only to settle on c, giving the impression that C is the root. What is placed in the accompaniment on top of the C chord, though, is an A-minor chord.

This bitonality serves to demonstrate the two forces of individualism and group, with great tension resulting from the two. The second, quieter but more dissonant, is built out of a set of augmented fourths centered on C, D, and E (C to F-sharp, D to G-sharp, and E to A-sharp), which show that Ives chooses his intervals with some unifying element. The tonal ambiguity for the ending section proves that even though the past can be looked to for inspiration, it cannot be replicated. By evoking this past spirit, clarity is not reached because it has no place in the present. The diminuendo for the passage suggests that the memory will die away if it is not enhanced by a modern event to replace the ghost of the past.

The nation's "heritage" is discredited because its citizens have neglected their duty of being informed about their government and living by high ideals. The song ends with a call to "my Captain," Walt Whitman's poetic reference to Abraham Lincoln.

Ives leaves the listener with an idealization of the past of Lincoln's day when Ives believed that a strong individual led the country and when the people could be democratic about voicing their opinions. That age in history could not be repeated, though. The Transcendentalists felt the weight of the past pressuring them to live up to the ideals of their revolutionary forefathers, just as Ives fondly remembers an old way of American government. Ives recognizes that the past cannot be recreated, so he uses this memory to propel the country into action.

The Transcendentalists used a similar technique in regards to the Anthony Burns slave trial. They did this by emphasizing America's formative identity as a bastion of freedom. When southerners threatened to bring the escaped slave Anthony Burns back to the south, northerners were rallied by the idea that they had to preserve their identity with freedom. By evoking images of the Revolutionary War, they moved the citizens of Boston to action to prevent the return of the slave. Ives believed that "the need of leaders in the old sense is fast going – but the need of freer access to greater truths and freer expression is with us."

He used the memory of a leader to encourage citizens to become their own leaders empowered to make their own decisions.

I feel this is an great, if not essential work, in Ives's catalogue.  It has a comical and industrial air about it.  I keep imaging a cold winter sky every time I hear this.  It is very raw and brittle sounding...very cold, in a sense.  Yet the ending is such a blissful cry...the mood blooms into something else...MY CAPTAIN (Whitman's evocation of Lincoln after Lincoln's assassination). 

[Leo K.]

In a way, you can say this post is a continuation from the post above (Ives's piece on President Harding)...

Lincoln, The Great Commoner
For Unison Chorus and Full Orchestra



Lincoln..."Oh, Captain, my Captain."



This started as a song, written in 1921 and is included in Ives's 114 Songs.  The orchestra version here possibly dates from 1923.

This feels like a companion work to An Election (It Strikes Me That...).  The mention of "My Captain" in the Election, the unison chorus, and almost the same musical material (that awesome low bell) in both endings tie these two songs together.  The brass writing is stunning and scary in a sublime way.

More commentary from Emily Graefe:

Sometimes the individual needs a role model to be inspired by when he searches for ways to be active in his own transcendence. Looking to others for inspiration to be an individual, Ives chose to recognize Abraham Lincoln. While he has other songs named after people, such as "Walt Whitman" and "Emerson," those songs deal with the ideology of those people rather than their actual lives. Initially Lincoln appears in "from 'Lincoln, the Great Commoner'" (Song 11) with text by Edwin Markham and a poem by Ives placed under the title.

Ives returns to Lincoln later in the 114 Songs, as we have seen, by putting the former president in the crucial climax of "Nov. 2, 1920." Conjuring up Lincoln brings up thoughts of individualism and the idealism and  duty that accompany individual action. Another admirable characteristic was Lincoln's commonness, which helped make him accessible to those looking for transcendental guidance. This is shown more in the Markham text rather than in the Ives poem (see following), especially in the opening line: "and so he came from the prairie cabin."

The Transcendentalists greatly admired the common man. Looking to Lincoln as a commoner helps to encourage the individual's journey towards enlightenment. By aspiring towards the simple life, one could escape from superficial elements of society and achieve transcendence.

Ives' poem is meant to heighten the individual duty Lincoln exhibited to his country and himself, and is a great insight to what he believed was the essential Lincoln. He lists the challenges Lincoln had to face, "The curse of war and strife!/The harsh vindictiveness of men," but noted that "What needed to be borne_he bore!/What needed to be fought_he fought!/But in  his soul, he stood them up as_naught!"

For Ives, Lincoln's duty to carry out his ideas is what should be admired and remembered. Ives could list his anti-slavery efforts or action in the Civil War, but all of the problems Lincoln faced could be simplified by stating that he did what he believed was right.

The song itself "from 'Lincoln, the Great Commoner'" opens immediately with a sense of action in the accompaniment. It is marked "firmly, but actively and with vigor" to show that when the individual becomes active he must do so with conviction.

And so he came from the prairie cabin to the Capitol,
One fair ideal led our chieftain on,
He built the rail pile as he built the State,
The conscience testing every stoke,
To make his deed the measure of the man.
So, came our Captain with the mighty heart;
and when the step of earthquake shook the house,
wrenching rafters from their ancient hold,
He held the ridgepole up and spiked again the rafter of the Home
He held his place he held the long purpose like a growing tree
Held on thro' blame and faltered not at praise,
and when he fell in whirlwind, he went down as when a
Kingly cedar green with boughs goes down with a great down,
upon the hills!

The first half of the lyrics explains Lincoln's convictions. The second half tells of the strength of those convictions. To show the stability one needs to stand as an individual, Ives used recurring musical ideas to strengthen this point about being an individual. The piece is unified by a rhythmic motif (dotted eighth/sixteenth note) in the first part of the song. Aside from this rhythmic motif, he uses the opposite of that rhythm (sixteenth/dotted eighth) three times in a row during "came our Captain." This is an important link to be made because it involves the subject, Lincoln, and the verb, "came," to show how he fulfilled his duty to his country through action.

Later in the song, Ives repeats the same accompanying chord four times underneath the phrase "held the long purpose." The chord is based on perfect fifths stacked on top of one another beginning with e. As the fifth is a stable interval, Ives builds a chord on it to  express Lincoln's purpose and reliability in performing his duty. In contrast to Lincoln's stability are the forces that tried to wrench America apart, which led to the Civil War. The harmonies throughout are centered on an E pedal tone, but Ives changes this to heighten the mood shift, caused by playing note clusters with the fist, achieved with the phrase, "wrenching rafters from their ancient hold." Although within a designated range, the randomness of the notes the player will hit in his performance fury shows the chaos and unpredictability that contrasts with the repetition Ives uses to emphasize key points in favor of Lincoln.

Oh my god...that ending.  Unforgettable.

[bhodges]

And thanks for posting these comments. I don't think I've ever heard either of these pieces, and An Election (especially) sounds essential in the current climate.

--Bruce

[Leo K.]

And thanks for posting these comments. I don't think I've ever heard either of these pieces, and An Election (especially) sounds essential in the current climate.

--Bruce

Thanks Bruce, I appreciate that. I'll have to get those songs out, it's been awhile since I listened to them!

[bhodges]

Thanks Bruce, I appreciate that. I'll have to get those songs out, it's been awhile since I listened to them!

At one time, when I was younger and thought I had to have a "favorite composer," Ives was it. (Now I can't imagine choosing just one.) In any case, despite the symphonies, orchestral works, choral and chamber music - all invigorating - I think his reputation could rest solely on the 114 songs alone. It is a remarkably varied output, with many innovations and surprises. And many of them are just flat-out beautiful and moving.

Lately I've been revisiting Roberta Alexander's lovely recording, as well as Gerald Finley's very fine two discs.

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--Bruce