(Charles Ives): CHARLES IVES'S MUSICAL UNIVERSE (Antony Cooke)—Excerpt from Chapter 10: An independent validation of the manuscript dating system in the landmark paper by Carol K. Baron (original) (raw)
Related papers
http://www.buybooksontheweb.com/product.aspx?ISBN=1-4958-0476-3, 2015
Charles Ives’s Musical Universe: A Resource for Discovery ABSTRACT -- Charles Ives’s Musical Universe is the first large-scale volume to look at the mechanics and fabric of Ives’s compositions over his entire creative output, while also indirectly reexamining the confusing dates of his music and priority that continue to impact his legacy. If the limited available analytical documentation has left the workings of Ives’s music still largely a mystery, perhaps it is because too much energy seems to have been expended in trying to “explain away” the phenomenon of someone “who existed outside the mold,” than to discover what he did. Ives’s religious, philosophical and cultural roots, teaching and guidance of his father, George Ives, having been found incompatible with the status quo, his later education at Yale thus deemed necessary to provide the “proper” musical education he sorely lacked. Thus, the “new” Ives hardly is more of a pioneer than multitudes of other composers of his time. Had he been unexceptional, in fact, why the countless drives to define him in such unexceptional terms? There are, nevertheless, tangible reasons why Ives’s music sounds the way it does, far beyond the characteristic brief vernacular quotations that punctuate it. The complex “code” that underlies most of Ives’s music reveals a creative force that manipulated the structural and mathematically-oriented fabric of musical sounds in ways almost unique in the music of any century, and mostly far ahead of his contemporaries. In 1987, when Carol K. Baron wrote her Ph.D. dissertation, “Ives On His Own Terms: An Explication, a Theory of Pitch Organization, and a New Critical Edition for the Three Page Sonata,” she uncovered, apparently for the first time, the systematic methodology behind much of Ives’s music. Almost a decade later, in 1996, Philip Lambert published his landmark volume, The Music of Charles Ives; finally, in book form, something tangible about Ives’s music was in print, other than just its relationship to existing melodies. These leads showed that numerous technical aspects of Ives’s compositional language indeed could be isolated, beyond the rhapsodic elements that often defy precise analysis. Charles Ives’s Musical Universe picks up where Baron’s and Lambert’s trails lead left off—oddly, allowed to wither on the proverbial vine for almost two decades. Instead, substituted for shallow analyses of the fragments of tunes that comprise little more than “window dressing,” these attributes have done nothing to reveal the extraordinary facets of the musical structure itself. In covering in great detail a wide cross section of works from across his output, the massive detail and scope of Charles Ives’s Musical Universe stands fully alone and far apart from current musical literature about the composer. No less odd, many present interpretations of Ives’s life have been a source of confusion for those who remember his precipitous ascent to iconic status in the mid-twentieth century. Even the legendary catalog by John Kirkpatrick (A Temporary Catalog of The Music Manuscripts of Charles Edward Ives), has not been immune from the effects of revisionism that has relegated Ives’s works ever forward in time, rendering the remarkable catalog a curiosity, as if carelessly compiled. The provable means by which to tie Ives’s unique innovations, priority and provenance, however, remains critically tied to his significance as the foremost prophetic figure of the twentieth century, and as such, Kirkpatrick’s catalog can be demonstrated to be no less viable today than ever. Indeed, it has no peer. As a means of setting the record straight, in 1990 by Carol K. Baron conducted research that offered a scientific means of determining the dates of Ives’s manuscripts through greatly changing handwriting characteristics that had been affected by increasing fluency, care with his manuscripts, efforts to leave legible materials behind, even eventually health issues—and so on over the course of his productive years. Baron’s system, solidly endorsed by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, is the one consistent marker that does not appear to have been reflected in the new vision of Ives, and shows that the dates of Ives’s music, however, ought not to be controversial at all, as the writer demonstrates. The importance of correcting the record is not because a decade here or there changes the sound, or the expressive power of his music; it is because of all that followed in its wake. Indeed, Ives’s priority can be ascertained with little less certainty than that of almost any major composer, this volume at last providing the long-awaited detailed analyses of his music while attempting to put reason and dispassionate facts surrounding its foundations back into the dialog.
Additional preview from new book (December 2020): "CHARLES IVES: THE MAKING OF THE COMPOSER"
2020
Trying to make sense of the music of Charles Ives without a substantial degree of preparation is more likely than not to end with the listener's rejection. Ives was, of course, used to such reactions, but that was over a hundred years ago. Regardless, his music still is likely to confound, although it is less likely to create outrage. Times have changed, but Ives's music sounds as current as ever. How did the phenomenon of an American composer emerging from what might seem to be less than ideal musical circumstances actually happen? Precisely, how, and when, as well as who and what, influences contributed to Ives's musical choices, his unusual originality, methodology, and musical personality? Up until this time, insufficient comparative analysis has been undertaken to determine, as closely as possible, In the process, in recent scholarship, the substantial musical exposure Ives received throughout his upbringing in Danbury often has been underestimated, and his formal studies at Yale over-credited—without the proper balance being understood or fully considered. "Charles Ives: The Making of the Composer" sets out on the ambitious trail of uncovering what really happened in the evolution of America's first great composer, during the years just before and after the turn of the twentieth century.
The French Art Song Style in Selected Songs by Charles Ives
2004
help the prima-donna-commercialized-conductors get their money easier" (Burkholder, 1996, 237). Composers such as Aaron Copland and Roger Sessions created an American sonority by incorporating the concepts of musical construction they studied at the Paris Conservatoire. Ives, conversely, received no instruction in Europe. In his "Ode to a Music Critic," Ives wrote that the fictitious critic he called "George" need not even attend a concert. Any piece written in Europe was, according to Ives, already accepted as music worthy of concert repertoire and would receive a good review. In the same context, Ives further separated his music from a European style with a comparative analogy of simple, one-syllable words (European music) versus more complex two-syllable words (his music). "I say-if a man hasn't had no experience except in 'one syllables,' he'd better not try to listen to a story in two syllables-he will simply get all bored. And if he's goin' to try to tell someone about the story, he'd better just stick to the first syllables and forget the rest " (Ives, 1972, 243). Ives was a self-proclaimed "all-American" composer who wrote over one hundred twenty-nine songs. Most researchers and Ives scholars, including his best friend and fellow composer Henry Cowell, agree that these songs are American traditions, documentation in sound of American history. The autobiographical statements in his books, Essays Before a Sonata and Memos proudly claim an American style without European influence. Ives ridiculed European ideas, particularly those of the French. Cowell confirmed that Ives "passionately, even vociferously, asserted the right of the American artist to be himself and therefore different from any European"(Cowell & Cowell, 1955, 9).
Music Theory Online, 2016
Press series Musical Meaning and Interpretation, edited by Robert S. Hatten. Like other titles in the list, McDonald's study focuses on locating and extracting meaning beyond the sounds. In keeping with the series mission statement he explores "expressive motivations behind musical structures." Given the success of Hatten's series, it's safe to say that Eduard Hanslick would not be pleased. [2] McDonald creatively excavates familiar works by Ives and identifies continuities and meanings lying deep within their multi-directional organizations that are not obvious or intuitive. He looks beneath surface events and pulls out disconnected fragments scattered in the structures of Ives's aural "jigsaw puzzles" (10). His goal is to reveal the ways Ives "reconceive[d] the temporality of music" (9). Understanding Ives's strategies is essential to our fuller appreciation of his achievement. In all cases the author explores the relationships of fragments to some greater coherence-within individual pieces, between pieces in Ives's oeuvre, and at work in the composer's overarching life philosophy. [3] Referencing over fifteen works including songs, a psalm setting, a string quartet, and a piano sonata, McDonald argues that in Ives's music time and space are reoriented, that linearity as traditionally conceived is displaced, and that multiple temporal levels coexist simultaneously (10). He acknowledges the work of his dissertation advisor, Robert P. Morgan, regarding the spatial dimension of Ives's music, but believes Morgan "overplayed his denial of the music's temporality. Temporal sequence and cause-and-effect relationship," McDonald argues, "are essential, even in extremely fractured musical environments" (10). Morgan's pathbreaking work published in 1977 as part of An Ives Celebration: Papers and Panels of the Charles Ives Centennial Festival-Conference is now over 40 years old; it has inspired at least a couple of generations of scholars, including this reviewer, whose own dissertation and subsequent publications have addressed multi-dimensional aspects of Ives's music (Cooney 1995). [4] McDonald posits linear connections and successions in Ives's song "Nov. 2, 1920" and String Quartet No. 2, and extracts relationships in "The Things Our Fathers Loved" that provide unique readings of these pieces. McDonald's observations are thought-provoking and welcome, especially when communicated with his consistently elegant prose. He learned much from
A Symphony: "New England Holidays" ecause of its mixed and lengthy evolution, the iconic Symphony of Holidays (sometimes referred to as Ives's Four Seasons) opens a large windows into Ives's world: a cross section of his cultural upbringing and the years of innovation can be found over the course of the movements, providing as fine a representation of it as exists. Within just the space of an hour of music, the following can be found: B claiming some unwarranted priority for the symphony as a whole, although the essence of the innovative writing in Thanksgiving can be found in the formative organ work that far predated it.