Charles Ives

[DavidW]

That is a cute enough pun that I think I will listen to some Ives this month... and I haven't listened to any Ives in the past ten years or so!

[Leo K.]

Which for instance? A lot of good Ives seems to be stranded on vinyl.

I'm planning to hear the CSO play the 2nd Symphony next month, under Mark Elder. 

Here is what I have in vinyl.

OOP LPs

John Kirkpatrick's 1945 recording of Ives's Concord Sonata, issued on
Columbia 78s.

Concord Quartet from a 1975 Nonesuch LP performing both
the first and second quartets.

William Masselos - Ives Piano Sonata No.1 (Columbia ML 4490)

Time-Life LP, Aloys Kontarsky plays Ives' "Concord" Sonata..

Noël Lee performs the Ives Piano Sonata No.1 (Nonesuch H 71169)

Pappa-stavrou plays Ives Concord Sonata (studio recording - CRI)

Violin Sonatas - Druian/Simms on Mercury

[Leo K.]

Also, I've heard some GREAT broadcasts, these are my favorites:


Ives Symphony No. 4 Rozhdestvensky & CSO (March 7, 1977)
Ives Symphony No. 4 Martyn Brabbins & the BRSO (July 11, 2003)
Ives Symphony No.4 Alan Gilbert, NYPO (date?)

James Sinclair's reconstruction of the original version, "for large orchestra" of Charles Ives's Three Places in New England, Neville Marriner, Minnesota Orchestra (early 80's I think)

Completed by Porter: Emerson Concerto (piano)Cleveland Orchestra, Christoph von Dohnanyi, cond. Alan Feinberg, piano

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

I really like the Piano Trio (w/ Yo Yo Ma on Sony).

I just bought that one. Excellent.

Concord Quartet from a 1975 Nonesuch LP performing both
the first and second quartets.

And I've got this one too. It's one of many, many Nonesuches that were never released on CD.

[Dax]

The Ives of March

http://www.sendspace.com/file/w9pj9o

[Mirror Image]

Now only if Monkey Greg will show up! This is quite a turn out for The Ives of March this year. You should be proud Monkey Greg!

[Leo K.]

Perhaps, hopefully, possibly of interest here (or in other threads that I didn't, however, find):

The following interview with Kent Nagano, exclusively on Charles Ives.

In English... (but also in German, for those who prefer it)

The Profound Existentialism of Charles Ives: Kent Nagano in Conversation




http://konzerthaus.at/magazin/Home/tabid/41/entryid/343/The-Profound-Existentialism-of-Charles-Ives-Kent-Nagano-in-Conversation.aspx

Kent Nagano über Charles Ives




http://konzerthaus.at/magazin/Home/tabid/41/entryid/344/Kent-Nagano-uber-Charles-Ives.aspx

Thanks for this!

[jlaurson]

Links aren't working, Jens.

Thanks! Fixed.

Oh, and also many thanks to North Star, for also fixing it!!!!!

Looking forward to the "Concord Symphony" tonight, with MTT & SFS at the WKH.

apropos:

The following interview with Kent Nagano, exclusively on Charles Ives.

In English... (but also in German, for those who prefer it)

The Profound Existentialism of Charles Ives: Kent Nagano in Conversation




http://konzerthaus.at/magazin/Home/tabid/41/entryid/343/The-Profound-Existentialism-of-Charles-Ives-Kent-Nagano-in-Conversation.aspx

Kent Nagano über Charles Ives




http://konzerthaus.at/magazin/Home/tabid/41/entryid/344/Kent-Nagano-uber-Charles-Ives.aspx

[jlaurson]

Krzysztof Chorzelski, violist of the Belcea Quartet, talks Anton Webern and Charles Ives while enjoying a cold one.

Anton Webern, Langsamer Satz, and the Belcea Quartet 




http://konzerthaus.at/magazin/Home/tabid/41/entryid/345/Krzysztof-Chorzelski-violist-of-the-Belcea-Quartet-has-a-beer-and-talks-Anton-Webern-and-then-some.aspx

[TheGSMoeller]

Seattle S's new release featuring a live performance of Ives Symphony 2. Available on Spotify...

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

I heard the CSO do the 2nd Symphony last night, under Mark Elder. A review here:

http://chicagoclassicalreview.com/2014/04/ives-raucous-and-subversive-second-symphony-highlights-elders-rewarding-cso-program/

Although I agree with some of the criticisms made, I think these were minor, and on the whole the performance felt tremendous and invigorating. A terrific piece to hear live. The audience seemed to agree with me; it got quite an ovation.

[Sergeant Rock]

A terrific piece to hear live. The audience seemed to agree with me; it got quite an ovation.

Wonderful to hear Ives appreciated.

Sarge

[Leo K.]

I heard the CSO do the 2nd Symphony last night, under Mark Elder. A review here:

http://chicagoclassicalreview.com/2014/04/ives-raucous-and-subversive-second-symphony-highlights-elders-rewarding-cso-program/

Although I agree with some of the criticisms made, I think these were minor, and on the whole the performance felt tremendous and invigorating. A terrific piece to hear live. The audience seemed to agree with me; it got quite an ovation.

Thanks for the report, sounds like a great time. Aces!

[Mirror Image]

Charles Ives: The Sound of America

Charles Ives was the son of George Ives, a Danbury, Connecticut bandmaster and a musical experimenter whose approach heavily influenced his son. Charles Ives' musical skills quickly developed; he was playing organ services at the local Presbyterian church from the age of 12 and began to compose at 13. Ives' rural, rough-and-tumble childhood was revisited vividly and repeatedly in the music he composed as an adult.

In 1894 Ives entered Yale to study music, and his father died at age 40 from a heart attack. Professor Horatio T. Parker was not at all interested in encouraging Ives' experimental style. Ives dutifully learned the basics, creating an interesting but conventional Symphony No. 1 as his graduation thesis in 1898. After barely managing to earn his diploma, Ives moved with a couple of his fraternity buddies to an apartment in New York City. He became organist at Central Presbyterian Church and composed his first large-scale attempt to reflect the spirit of America, the Symphony No. 2. In off hours Ives worked on his wild, highly dissonant and ragtime-influenced Piano Sonata No. 1, making a din that his roommates described as "resident disturbances."

In 1902 a friend introduced Ives to the insurance agent Julian Myrick. They co-founded the first Mutual Life Insurance office in Manhattan. Through his hard work and easy ability to communicate with customers, Ives would become a very wealthy insurance executive. In 1906 he married Harmony Twichell, a woman from a prominent New England family. Ives continued to compose his music on commuter trains, in the evening, and on weekends, writing what pleased him without worrying what the outside world might think of it. In order to check details of orchestration, Ives hired out theater orchestras to rehearse his scores. In 1910 Ives gave New York Philharmonic conductor Gustav Mahler a score and parts to his Symphony No. 3, "The Camp Meeting." Mahler tried it in rehearsal after returning to Vienna, but died before he could perform it.

In the 1910s, Ives would produce several of his most important masterworks, the Symphony No. 4, the Orchestral Set No. 1: "Three Places in New England," the String Quartet No. 2, and the massive Piano Sonata No. 2, "Concord, Mass., 1840-1860," commonly referred to as the Concord Sonata. With the beginning of America's involvement in World War I, Ives raised funds for the war effort, supported an unsuccessful constitutional amendment prohibiting a declaration of war without the support of two-thirds of the populace, published a manual (Surveying the Prospect) that for years served as a bible for the insurance industry, and composed at an astounding pace. In October 1918 Ives suffered a severe heart attack that nearly killed him. In 1921 he published the Concord Sonata and in 1922 followed it with 114 Songs, containing songs dating from 1888 to the eve of publication. These editions were sent out free to anyone who wanted them, and many copies wound up in the wastebaskets of music conservatories.

In 1924 pianist and new music enthusiast E. Robert Schmitz made an appointment with Ives to buy insurance, but left instead with a copy of the Concord Sonata. He introduced the work to Edgard Varèse and to Henry Cowell, who became Ives' strongest advocate. Soon Ives' music began to appear on concert programs, and when Cowell launched his New Music Quarterly in 1927, Ives helped back the project financially. But that same year Ives confided to Harmony that he'd somehow lost the gift that compelled him to write music.

In 1930 Ives and Myrick both decided to retire, and from this time forward Ives concerned himself with revising existing works. Ives' eyesight was beginning to deteriorate, so he had huge Photostats made of his scores and also made recordings to work from. Composers Cowell, John J. Becker, and Lou Harrison helped Ives create legible scores of his music, instituting a scholarly tradition of Ives editing that continues to this day. In January 1939, pianist John Kirkpatrick performed the complete "Concord" in a recital so successful that even critics distrustful of modern music gave it rave reviews. In 1947 Ives was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in music for his Symphony No. 3, completed nearly 40 years earlier. With Ives' death in May 1954 his musical legacy became top priority for a generation of biographers, researchers, and performers.

Ives' early works expertly channel European influences into totally fresh constructs; mature works make use of quotation, collage techniques, spatial redistribution of instrumental groups and soloists, metric modulation, homegrown forms of pitch organization and dense, massed blocks of clustered chords. The difficult idiom of many of his pieces has denied Ives the mass appeal of Copland and Gershwin, and he can be an acquired taste. Some critics and conductors, mainly European, discount the value of his innovations, concluding that Ives was an amateur who didn't know what he was doing. By the turn of the twenty-first century renewed researches into Ives' theoretical approach revealed that he certainly did know what he was doing, and he has much to teach us yet today in terms of fresh ideas and techniques.

[Article taken from All Music Guide]

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I'm sure a lot you know Ives' history and for those who don't the above article will provide you with some quick information on the composer and his life. The reason I'm resurrecting this thread is to tell everyone how much Ives' music has meant to me through the years. I may not listen to his music much or I may go through phases where all I do is listen to his music, but there's one thing that's undeniable: no other composer sounds like him. The first time I heard Ives was about 12 years ago when I heard jazz guitarist Bill Frisell's album Have A Little Faith. This particular album was also notable for introducing me to the music Copland (another favorite American composer). The first piece I heard was The 'St. Gaudens' in Boston Common from Three Places in New England. My ears were absolutely glued to my headphones. I never heard music like this before and the fact that this was from an American classical composer --- a sense of pride suddenly overwhelmed me. I thought "I didn't know the US had a classical tradition of their own?" This exposure led me to my first Ives purchase: Bernstein's recording of Symphony No. 2 (and other misc. orchestral works) on Deutsche Grammophon. This was all it took as I was finally hearing full-blown orchestral Ives. This wasn't Romantic music, which I had a little previous exposure to through my grandfather, this was coming from another planet entirely. Anyway, where I'm getting at this changed my life and my view on music forever. This was my gateway into this music. I can only look back on these listening experiences with a smile as it was Ives who really taught me to appreciate this music and to 'use my ears like man.'

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.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

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've only been listening to Ives in serious detail for the last couple of years. Before that, I only really knew him based on a few "greatest hits." At that time, I agreed with an assessment from I think Peter Schickele, that Ives' music "was more interesting than good."

I don't think that anymore; in fact after exploring his work in more depth, I think he is probably the greatest composer yet to arise in the USA, possibly by quite a large margin. Major works like the 4th Symphony, "Concord" Sonata, and 2nd String Quartet are the kind of masterpieces that really take a lot of deep exploration to get to the bottom of.

I also find it interesting how his oeuvre is split between the early "American Dvorak" period and the later experimentalism. I enjoy both; I certainly don't dismiss these early works as "apprentice pieces." They include some fully formed masterworks that are easy to overlook in view of the innovative radicalism of the later works.

[Mirror Image]

Thanks for sharing this, Apollo. What I find really remarkable is how ahead of his time he was and how he really predated a lot of these polystylists like Schnittke for example. People talk about how inventive Schnittke's Symphony No. 1 is but they fail to remember that Ives was already doing this in the early 20th Century --- possibly even before. I'm currently listening to his Orchestral Set No. 2 (Dohnanyi/Cleveland performance) and really amazed by it and how he stacked up all of these seemingly opposite genres into something that was cohesive and just as natural for him as breathing.

[71 dB]

As long as I have been listening to classical music (almost 20 years), I have been ignoring Ives totally. Only recently I decided to actually listen to some of his music on Spotify. To my surprise, Ives seems to be much more interesting composer than I had assumed. I bought some Ives on CD and I'm now waiting for the super slow postal service to deliver them to me.

What I find really remarkable is how ahead of his time he was and how he really predated a lot of these polystylists like Schnittke for example.

Yeah, I get the "ahead of his time" -vibes from Ives. Something in his music is similar to the contemporary American composers I have been exploring recently.

[lescamil]

Thanks for sharing this, Apollo. What I find really remarkable is how ahead of his time he was and how he really predated a lot of these polystylists like Schnittke for example. People talk about how inventive Schnittke's Symphony No. 1 is but they fail to remember that Ives was already doing this in the early 20th Century --- possibly even before. I'm currently listening to his Orchestral Set No. 2 (Dohnanyi/Cleveland performance) and really amazed by it and how he stacked up all of these seemingly opposite genres into something that was cohesive and just as natural for him as breathing.

One must remember that it took a long time for much of Ives's music to be performed and gain exposure, especially worldwide, probably especially to Russia where Schnittke was, so chances are that Schnittke's music developed with little or no knowledge of Ives. Ives's 4th symphony did not receive a complete performance until 1965.

[71 dB]

One must remember that it took a long time for much of Ives's music to be performed and gain exposure, especially worldwide,..

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

[BitPerfectRichard]

I first came across Charles Ives as a teenager when my mother bought me a rather weird album called Classical Heads - various classical pieces arranged and re-interpreted by a retired French Horn player called Joseph Eger, on the UK Prog Rock label Charisma.  It included an arrangement of The Unanswered Question, and I found that this was the one piece from the album that stuck with me over time.  The track was ascribed to "Ives" and I had no idea who or what "Ives" was.  Back in 1971 there was no Internet.  This version included a voiceover reciting poetry that may or may not have been purpose-written for the piece.  In my mind, that poetry is forever conflated with the music.

It is still far and away my favourite piece by Charles Ives.  The best recording of it that I have is by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, on Sony Classical from 1990.

Kent Nagano has spoken at length on Charles Ives, and for the last 8 years or so he has been Music Director of my local Montreal Symphony Orchestra.  Nonetheless, I wait in vain for The Unanswered Question to appear on the programme....