"You dang kids these days and your atonal composers! It's too much! I can't take all that cacophony!"
Posted on 06/29/2008 4:30:50 AM PDT by Apollo 13
It is Sunday and I am in the mood to probe the interest at FR for one of America's all time greatest artists and more specifically, classical composers: Charles Ives. I learned about him via composer, lyricist, and Brian Wilson collaborator Van Dyke Parks (also a true American original). And my love has, since it began in 1990 or thereabouts, never diminished). I have all of his recorded works and would not want to single out one masterpiece, they're all great, with the possible exception of the First Symphony (mainly because there's still too much Schumann and Brahms in there, and too little American quirkiness, so to speak). Some of the pieces I have thrice, because it's so lovely to compare Bernstein's, Tilson-Thomas', and Seiji Ozawa's view on them. The 'Concord Sonata' is a masterwork, a personal meditation on four American sages. Ives is a most metaphysical composer, able to translate poetry and philosphy directly into music of the first magnitude, without intermittent rationalization of it all. And he's a poet himself. I mean, just take the titles and subscripts of his works... 'Calcium Light Night', 'Central Park In The Dark', 'Three Places In New England', and many more. I love the man. Any more diehards out there?
I have a recording by the Kronos Quartet that has a song on it called “They Are There”, featuring an obviously inebriated Charles Ives singing and playing the piano. Strange stuff, to say the least...
I’m sorry to report to you that this hasn’t a thing to do with taste/likes and dislikes.
you said “it hurts my ears”.
It hurts them because they aren’t equipped to comprehend it without certain effort and action.
Europe looks down upon american composers regrettably. Their loss.
The amount of innovation that Ives brought to the harmonic realm is just astounding. Especially in his piano music. Many times he created dense and demanding structures that cannot be played as written. He is an Einstein in every sense. Every time I write for piano, I feel the urge to borrow or pay homage to his ideas.
Most of all I admire that he was Real.
Ives associated discordant music with masculinity. The Classical Music establishment in the United States of the time was run by women and he was uncomfortable with its effeminate associations. ‘Stand up and use your ears like a man!’ Ives actually spoke like this.
Was it Carl Ruggles who said, “Stand up and use your ears like a man!”?
I agree with him. Statements like “it hurts my ears” bother me to the extreme, in fact.
Rich, dense, complex music requires one to evolve their sense of hearing and comprehension beyond the passive abilities that their environment gave them over the years.
Foster, Sousa and Joplin bridge the High/Low divide like no other 19th century American composers. Though Foster was really a pop composer.
(see post #24)
Discordant, dense music:
The ultimate manliness.
They bridge it in such a perfect way. I can’t easily find their equivalents in european music.
I’ve always thought that it’s very unfortunate that “serious” american composing in the 19thc-early20thc took a while to root, become accepted and popular. You can count those guys on one hand (almost).
Because only a few people wrote, they were more open minded to other musical influences, they didn’t carry the chip on their shoulders that europeans did at the time, so they fully accepted bridge composers and styles.
I love the American Spirit.
Accepting, pioneering, open to changes.
Which is why I dislike it when americans refuse to assimilate this music.
It’s the ONLY musical history you have!!
Thanks for the recommendation, I’ve been looking for some insight into that period -largely ignored in music history classes (even here!).
About the european bridge composers:
I forgot about Offenbach and Strauss. I don’t remember reading anywhere about the level of acceptance or disapproval they enjoyed amongst their more serious colleagues.
Thanks for the recommendation, I’ve been looking for some insight into that period -largely ignored in music history classes (even here!).
About the european bridge composers:
I forgot about Offenbach and Strauss. I don’t remember reading anywhere about the level of acceptance or disapproval they enjoyed amongst their more serious colleagues.
Strauss Jr. was one of the few contemporary composers that Brahms admired. R. Strauss called him the ‘Laughing Genius of Vienna’.
I grew up listening to Strauss waltzes and spanish tangos on my dads Blaupunkt record player (a gian piece of furniture)
So there was no ill feelings by R. Strauss....I bet people got them mixed up a lot, they still do.\
I wouldn’t have expected that the composer of the Frau ohne schatten, and Egyptian Helen thought well of the other Strauss. Especially given that he was sometimes a snob, even when it came to Mahler’s music. But that might have been rivalry.
Great call.
I would like to direct the interested unitiated towards Ives’ works on the superb Naxos label, non-elitist, educational, and inexpensive. My latest purchase was ‘Three Orchestral Sets’, with the Malmö Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Ives scholar James Sinclair. It has the bonus of featuring the world première of a reconstructed version of the Third (and unfinished) Set. Sound quality and performance are fantastic, it is like rural marching bands are making their way through your listening room...
And it sells at € 7.00, that would mean around $ 8.00 or so. Investigate, and if you don’t like it then give it as a present to your fellow man!
BTW: I am Dutch. It’s been a great joy, but also a not-so-easy task to collect Ives over the years. His music doesn’t tend to stay in print for long overseas. But I am happy with what I have.
PS: a great, albeit somewhat pricier introduction to Ives is the disc by Bernstein and the NYPO on Deutsche Gramophone. It has his Third Symphony and is filled to the brim with various pieces, e.g. ‘The Unanswered Question’, which is breathtaking in its... ahem... unansweredness (in a religious/metaphysical way, I mean). It was recorded at NY’s Avery Fisher Hall and sounds marvelous.
Wowee! This post of yours is a real gift! I see a lot of my disks in the recommendations too... Esp. the symphonic work under Tilson-Thomas on the now-defunct CBS Masterworks label.
Many, many thanks out of Holland.
Ives’ “Variations on ‘America” is an interesting piece. My favorite American composers of classical music are Lowell Mason, probably best known for composing the Christmas carol “Joy to the World” (1836), and George Gershwin.
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