As a composer, Ives had trouble accommodating his experimental side within the traditional large genres that his ambitions required. Finding the means to do so took him over a decade after he left Yale. The progress of his music and his vision of it can be traced through his symphonies. They reveal the formation not only of his art, but of American concert music's burning issues of the day.
The First Symphony , written at Yale, echoes European late-Romantic symphonies, but does so remarkably well considering that the composer was in his early 20s; it may be history's finest homework assignment.
The light and tuneful Second , written in the first decade of the century and filled with echoes of Stephen Foster, is in a sense a landmark. Despite some Brahmsian pages, it is the first symphonic work with a genuinely American voice, prophesying the "Americana" pieces Copland and others would write 30 years later. But its impact on history was nil: the Second was not heard until Leonard Bernstein premiered it in For most of his maturity, Ives had to compose more or less for his ears only.
The Second was only a waystation for Ives. Here, the material is wholly American: gospel hymns familiar from outdoor meetings. But the form is a three-movement symphony of relatively conservative cast, with a first- movement fugue and something of a scherzo. Only the intensely chromatic and expressive last movement, Ives's brand of post-Wagnerism, is forward-looking. Then Ives put symphonies aside for a while.
The Fourth is one of the most ambitious, innovative, uproarious and spiritual works of that century - in any medium. In the first movement, with its craggy and searching opening followed by a flowing hymn, we are introduced to a traveller, a pilgrim, and to the "glory-beaming star" that represents the transcendent light sought by pilgrims.
The ensuing journey is life - from high to low, comic to exalted. The riotous second movement is called Comedy. It is modern urban life; for Ives that meant Manhattan, which he called "Babylon" and "hell-hole". Yet he was always fond of New York's outrageous vitality. The third movement, the C major fugue, is set in a New England church, but that formal and doctrinal stop in the journey is not its end. The mystical finale is a mass of murmuring and finally ecstatic voices. They resolve into the hymn that has been running beneath the symphony's surface all along: "Nearer, My God, To Thee" - a title that reveals the destination of the pilgrim's journey, and that of the listeners.
The Fourth is Ives's greatest statement of that vision of approaching God: it is a work of universal religion. The music seems to disappear into the stars, still searching. We can sense the point of the Fourth as early as the Comedy of all places. Amid its masses of sound tumbling and crashing in air, the sharp-eared can discern something remarkable: all these shouting, drunken and riotous voices are somehow unaccountably moving together.
That is what Ives was getting at. Each of us on our own path, with myriad stumbles and detours, traces the transcendent purposes of the divine, and we are all headed in the same direction.
Box office: A tremolando is heard throughout the second movement. A fight between discordance and traditional tonal music is heard in the final movement. The piece ends quietly with just the percussion playing at a distance. In it Ives finally resolves all of his compositional issues and the full force of his considerable genius is heard. The final movement can be seen as an apotheosis of his work and a culmination of his musical achievement. A complete performance was not given until , almost half a century after the symphony was completed, and more than a decade after Ives's death.
Charles Ives left behind material for an unfinished Universe Symphony , which he was unable to assemble in his lifetime despite two decades of work. This was due to his health problems as well as his shifting conception of the work. There have been several attempts at completion or performing version. However, none has found its way into general performance.
The symphony takes the ideas in the Symphony No. Ives's chamber works include the String Quartet No. This range of extremes is frequent in Ives' music - crushing blare and dissonance contrasted with lyrical quiet - and carried out by the relationship of the parts slipping in and out of phase with each other.
Ives's idiom, like Gustav Mahler 's, employed highly independent melodic lines. It is regarded as difficult to play because many of the typical signposts for performers are not present. This work had a clear influence on Elliott Carter's Second String Quartet, which is similarly a four-way theatrical conversation.
Reception Charles Ives's music was largely ignored during his lifetime as an active composer, but since then his reputation has greatly increased. Juilliard commemorated the 50 th anniversary of Ives' death by performing his music over six days in Many of his works went unperformed for many years. His tendency to experiment and his increasing use of dissonance were not well taken by the musical establishment of the time. The difficulties in performing the rhythmic complexities in his major orchestral works made them daunting challenges even decades after they were composed.
One of the more damning words one could use to describe music in Ives's view was "nice", and his famous remark "use your ears like men! On the contrary, Ives was interested in popular reception, but on his own terms. Cowell's periodical New Music published a substantial number of Ives's scores with the composer's approval , but for almost 40 years Ives had few performances that he did not arrange or back, generally with Nicolas Slonimsky as the conductor.
After seeing a copy of Ives' self-published Songs during the s, Copland published a newspaper article praising the collection. Later, around the time of the composer's death in , Kirkpatrick teamed with soprano Helen Boatwright for the first extended recorded recital of Ives' songs for the obscure Overtone label Overtone Records catalog number 7.
Helen Boatwright and Kirkpatrick recorded a new selection of songs for the Ives Centennial Collection that Columbia Records published in His obscurity lifted a little in the 's, when he met Lou Harrison, a fan of his music who began to edit and promote it. Most notably Harrison conducted the premiere of the Symphony No. The next year, this piece won Ives the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Charles Ives gave the prize money away half of it to Harrison , saying "pare for boys, and I'm all grown up".
While there he was a champion of Charles Ives's music. When meeting Ives, Hermann confessed that he had tried his hand at performing the Concord Sonata. Remarkably, Charles Ives, who actually avoided the radio and the phonograph, agreed to make a series of piano recordings from to that were later issued by Columbia Records on a special LP set issued for Ives's centenary in Recognition of Ives's music has improved.
He received praise from Arnold Schoenberg, who regarded him as a monument to artistic integrity, and from the New York School of William Schuman. He won the admiration of Gustav Mahler , who said that Ives was a true musical revolutionary. In , Leonard Bernstein conducted the world premiere of Ives's Second Symphony in a broadcast concert by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra ; the Iveses heard the performance on their cook's radio and were amazed at the audience's warm reception to the music.
Leonard Bernstein continued to conduct Ives's music and made a number of recordings with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra for Columbia Records; he even honored Ives on one of his televised youth concerts and in a special disc included with the reissue of the recording of the second symphony and the Fourth of July movement from Ives' Holidays symphony.
Another pioneering Ives recording, undertaken during the 's, was the first complete set of the four violin sonatas, performed by Cleveland Orchestra concertmaster Rafael Druian and John Simms. Leopold Stokowski took on the Symphony No. Another promotor of Ives was choral conductor Gregg Smith, who made a series of recordings of the composer's shorter works during the s, including first stereo recordings of the psalm settings and arrangements of many short pieces for theater orchestra.
The Juilliard String Quartet recorded the two string quartets during the 's. In the present, Michael Tilson Thomas is an enthusiastic exponent of Charles Ives' symphonies, as is composer and biographer Jan Swafford. Ives's work is regularly programmed in Europe. Ives has also inspired pictorial artists, most notably Eduardo Paolozzi, who entitled one of his 's sets of prints Calcium Light Night , each print being named for an Ives piece including Central Park in the Dark.
In , Connecticut's legislature designated Ives as that state's official composer. His name is Ives. There is a report that Ives also won the admiration of Gustav Mahler, who said that Ives was a true musical revolutionary. However, the source of this story is Ives; since Mahler died, there was no way to verify whether Mahler had seen the score of the symphony or decided to perform it in —12 season of the New York Philharmonic.
Nonetheless, it is known that Ives regularly attended New York Philharmonic concerts and probably heard Mahler conduct the Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall. Another pioneering Ives recording, undertaken during the s, was the first complete set of the four violin sonatas, performed by Cleveland Orchestra concertmaster Rafael Druian and John Simms.
Leopold Stokowski took on Symphony No. The Carnegie Hall world premiere by the American Symphony Orchestra led to the first recording of the music.
The Juilliard String Quartet recorded the two string quartets during the s. To date, he has staged seven parts of a concert series devoted to the complete songs of Ives. A recording of the work was released by Naxos Records. Ives continues to be very influential on contemporary composers and arrangers as shown by the most recent Planet Arts Records release Mists: Charles Ives for Jazz Orchestra. Note: Because Ives often made several different versions of the same piece, and because his work was generally ignored during his lifetime, it is often difficult to put exact dates on his compositions.
The dates given here are sometimes best guesses. There have also been controversial speculations that Ives purposely misdated his own pieces earlier or later than actually written. Ives proposed in that there be a 20th Amendment to the U. Constitution which would authorize citizens to submit legislative proposals to Congress.
He even had printed at his own expense several thousand copies of a pamphlet on behalf of his proposed amendment. Skip to main content. Search for:. Ives: Biography. Charles Ives, c. Charles Ives, left, captain of the baseball team and pitcher for Hopkins Grammar School.
Licenses and Attributions.
0コメント