[Kathy in Alaska]

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The Stanley Brothers ~ You've Got To Walk That Lonesome Valley

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[Publius]

It’s time for the Seattle Chamber Music Festival! We have a concert scheduled for Monday, July 22. Thanks to the miracle of the Internet, you can hear the concerts live at the website of KING-FM. I’ll be providing programs and links to the concerts throughout the summer festival. In preparation for a concert, I’ll give you a preview of the pieces to be played. On concert nights, I’ll introduce the musicians.

Charles Ives (1874-1954) was one of the founders of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company of New York and the inventor of life insurance as a tool of estate planning.

But Charlie had a secret life. On weekends he was a composer. He went to Yale Music School during its period of German domination, played organ for years at an Episcopal Church in Manhattan, and sneaked into night clubs to play jazz with the musicians. He composed in a variety of forms, and I posted his Second Symphony last Thanksgiving here at the Canteen.

He was probably Ayn Rand’s model for composer Richard Halley in Atlas Shrugged. At a concert of “modern” classical music programmed by Nicholas Slonimsky in New York in the Thirties, Ives sat in front of a man who complained during the intermission that there were no melodies he could hum. Charlie, who believed that pretty music was effeminate, turned around and hissed, “You goddamn sissy!” He sounds like a man who could deliver Halley’s diatribe on music and business to Dagny Taggart in the book.

Charlie tried out a violin sonata early in his insurance days, but he scrapped the work and arranged one movement of the sonata for piano, violin and clarinet. As you heard with the Bernstein trio, largo means “very, very slow.” This is a contemplative piece with a dissonant edge. The end is sweet, which shows that Charlie could be a real softie at heart.

Ives: Largo for Piano, Violin and Clarinet