aworks :: "new" american classical music

Variations on "America" (1891/1910-11). Charles Ives /ok, so obama is not a maverick, now what?/

Paul Rosenberg writes on OpenLeft about James Fallows' post regarding Barack Obama's rhetoric in his "big" speeches. This gets to the root of my concern about Obama and his character.

As an example of James David Barber's presidential character framework, Nixon would likely be classified as a worst-case active-negative type e.g. he does a lot of damage to the country as he grapples with his personal demons.

However, my take on Obama is that he may be a passive-positive president in the manner of the compliant, hands-off, drifting but ever optimistic Reagan. This is opposed to active-positivist Franklin Roosevelt who remained upbeat and accomplished substantive and enduring results. 

As Rosenberg asks whether Obama is just about a change in tone that taps into underlying existing sentiment or about something more fundamental, he has this interesting aworks-relevant paragraph about the scope of what Obama probably does not represent:

But it's not as Monty Python would have it, "something completely different."  It's not Frank Zappa changing key and time signature at the same time.  And it's certainly not Charles Ives, playing in two different keys at once, or Harry Partch, playing in just intonation, with 17 notes to the octave. So if Obama hasn't given a major speech on GLBT issues-as some of you are surely already protesting--it's precisely because there is no such latent change on GLBT issues overall, even though there certainly is such a change with regard to their service in the military.

Variations on "America" - Sain...

Aaaee (????). Charles Ives /is this by the same guy who did slugging a vampire?/

Image via WikipediaOk, now that I've resolved that large amounts of lala streaming won't use up my ISP bandwidth quota for the month (don't ask), I'm back and enjoying lala. I'm also reminded about the joys of the celestial jukebox.

Although I have no clue what it is, recommended by lala and next in my queue is an album named Prototype by an artist named Charles Ives. It's marked as alternative and released in 2007. There's also a major American composer named Charles Ives, of course. Wish me luck...

Prototype - Charles Ives

Slugging a Vampire - Mary Ann ...

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Update: CD Baby has the CD available for just $72.97.
Update 2: Just because Aaaee has electronic elements doesn't mean it wasn't written by the original Charles Ives e.g. The Unanswered Question by Captain Kirk.I don't vouch for that particular download site.
Update 3: No, not that Captain Kirk. I can't find a good link yet to the jazz Captain Kirk but I did find a link linking Grace Slick and the original Captain Kirk. This reminds me to announce I recently heard the pre-Jefferson Airplane version of Somebody to Love, by Grace Slick and the Great! Society -- Grace with a twist of innocence.

Someone To Love - The Great! S...

Sonata No. 2 (1947). Charles Ives /wow/

Image via WikipediaHeuwell Tircuit reviews yesterday's concert in San Francisco where Emanuele Arciuli played Ives' Sonata No. 2 and Adams' Phyrgian Gates:

Both Arciuli performances were astounding. I’ve not heard that kind of keenly polished playing of advanced piano music since the heyday of David Tudor. Arciuli’s forthright renditions covered the widest range of dynamics, and were artistic in every aspect. He played the tremendous chording in such a manner that each note stood out clearly, but with just the slightest emphasis on the most important note in a harmony. That’s most uncommon.

The Collection (1920). Charles Ives

Leonard Link reports Naxos will issue a series of recordings with all of the songs of Charles Ives. I have days where I think this collection of songs represents the greatest achievement of American classical music. At a mininum, I'll take the songs to the proverbial desert island.

Leonard does chide Naxos for ordering the songs by title rather than in a more satisfying manner. This will mean ripping to MP3 and constructing playlists, I suppose.

Also, it appears the texts generally won't be available. Fully appreciating the music without them is difficult. I solved that problem in the past by buying the music to 114 songs; couldn't afford the $250 for the 129 songs though.

By the way, it looks like lala has free streaming for about 15 recordings of Ives songs including Dora Ohrenstein singing The Collection.

Symphony No. 4 (1910-16). Charles Ives /blog quotes/

• Charles Shere "There are four movements, composed between 1910 and 1916 (but Ives dates are almost always very slippery), each of so idiosyncratic a character as to require rather different performing forces and, more important, different psychological approaches."
• Devin Hurd "The quarter-tone smears in the second movement of Symphony No. 4 holds particular interest for me even as the breathtakingly ambitious scope (multiple conductors, multiple tempos, poly-harmonic textures, etc.) of this Symphony makes it one of the most awe inspiring works in the repertoire."
• Gerry Fisher "Charles Ives' Symphony #4, with its bizarre sonics and insistent originality is just the thing to get the blood circulating in housebound heads."
• David Gans "There were four reels in the stash, one of which was a copy of Charles Ives' Fourth Symphony (transcribed from an LP). The others were Grateful Dead music."
• Jon Jacob "I found myself shaking my fist at the radio."

A Set of Pieces for Theater or Chamber Orchestra (1932). Charles Ives /chamber pod/

I continue my iPodding via themed smart playlists (Coltrane, Terry Riley, Reich remixes, composers unfamiliar to me, folk artists with names starting with "f", etc.). I'll spend a day or more just listening to one playlist. This is proving to be a refreshing change versus listening by random shuffle, by album, by rating etc. It's also true such a concentrated approach feels a little bit like exploring with John Schaefer ("On this edition of New Sounds, we'll take a look at the burgeoning Icelandic zither-rap scene.")

Ok, all was fine until today's playlist of music tracks with the word "Chamber" in their titles. I like chamber music and chamber opera but Chamber music, apparently not so much. This includes Ligeti's Chamber Concerto, Arthur Berger's Chamber Music for 13 Musicians, and chamber-titled pieces by Stefan Wolpe, Thea Musgrave, and Ellen Taafe Zwilich. Coming up: works by Schoenberg, Partch, Gordon Getty, Colin McPhee, Howard Hanson and others.

The best of the lot so far: Charles Ives' A Set of Pieces for Theater or Chamber Orchestra No.2 : In the Inn (Potpourri) with "potpourri" as a particularly appropriate general description of Ives' music.

I also enjoyed an old Music Perspectives MP3 podcast "Chamber Music 101" with an interview of artistic director and singer John Whittlesey from the Intermezzo - New England Chamber Opera.

And in case you aren't aware of it, John Schaefer's New Sounds:

For 20 years, he's been finding the melody in the rainforest and the rhythm in an orchestra of tin cans...Tune in for the next wave or the most ancient forms of music.

Variations on "America" (1891). Charles Ives /as boomer prototype/

I never thought about it before but if you believe the Fourth Turning generational theories, Charles Ives belonged to a "prophet" generation, equivalent to our boomers. As a pattern, the prophet archetype is born in a civic high (e.g. after World War II), becomes an adult during an awakening (e.g. the Sixties), leads during an unravelling era (e.g. the Nineties), and acts as an elder during a crisis (tbd). Here's the equivalent cycle during Ives' life:

The Missionary Generation (Prophet, born 1860-1882) became the indulged home-and-hearth children of the post-Civil War era.  They came of age as labor anarchists, campus rioters—and ambitious first graduates of black and women’s colleges.  Their young adults pursued rural populism, settlement house work, missionary crusades, “muckrake” journalism, and women’s suffrage.  In midlife, their Decency brigades and “fundamentalists” imposed Prohibition, cracked down on immigration, and organized Vice Squads.  In the 1930s and ‘40s, their elder elite became the “Wise Old Men” who enacted a “New Deal” (and Social Security) for the benefit of youth, led the global war against fascism, and reaffirmed America’s highest ideals during a transformative era in world history.

Although heavily influenced by his father, Ives, as ideologist (pdf), rejected the American musical orthodoxy more than say, Aaron Copland, who was part of the next, more pragmatic Lost Generation. And in later life, significantly younger composers held him in high esteem, presumably as a model of American accomplishment.

this post inspired by the sixties song in-a-godda-da-vida, as seen in a fidelity investments ad. simpsons version on youtube.

Central Park in the Dark (1906). Charles Ives /favorite things, and more/

Tyler Cowen weights in on all things Connecticut, including Moby, Liz Phair, Chuck Close (portrait of Philip Glass here) and his favorite works by of course Charles Ives:

most of all Central Park in the Dark and The Unanswered Question, plus some of the piano music.  The Concord Sonata is wonderful to hear live, but he often loses his bearings in the longer pieces.  Bernstein or Michael Tilson Thomas are the best conductors for his music.

I don't remember if he had much to say about Indiana. A quick check reveals all: Peru's Cole Porter is overrated but Richmond's Ned Rorem is at least mentioned.

Wikipedia, complete with unsourced assertion, on Central Park in the Dark:

In 1906 Ives would compose what some have argued was the first radical musical work ^{[citation needed]} of the twentieth century, "Central Park in the Dark". The piece simulates an evening comparing sounds from nearby nightclubs in Manhattan (playing the popular music of the day, ragtime, quoting "Hello My Baby") with the mysterious dark and misty qualities of the Central Park woods (played by the strings).

And a previous aworks post about New Jersey composers, including Milton B.
 

aworks list :: charles ives according to google

1. Symphony No. 2. Redlands Symphony performance. web:63,700 blog:21 news:2
2. Symphony No. 4. Those who insist that all classical music is dull and lifeless will find a challenge in this work. web:36,300 blog:17 news:0
3. Symphony No. 3. web:33,400 blog:19 news:0
4. Symphony No. 1. Maazel delved into the iconoclastic Charles Ives. web:29,700 blog:18 news:2
5. Sonata No. 2. 20,700:web  blog:12 news:0.
6. Central Park in the Dark. Tim Pfaff reviews a Dallas Symphony CD on Hyperion. web:17,900  blog:18 news:2
7. Ann Street. It might interest you to know that there is a famous song about an Ann Street by the composer Charles Ives. You should look it up. web:3,460 blog:6 news 0
8. Like a Sick Eagle. Last night I was in rapture listening to baritone Gerald Finley and pianist Julius Drake on a recent Hyperion recording with an impressively chosen group of 31 (of the 114 that exist), including outstanding versions of Memories (1897), Ich Grolle Nicht (1898), Like a Sick Eagle (1920) and the rarely done Slugging a Vampire (1902). web:2,720 blog:4 news 0
8. The Children's Hour. web:2,720 blog:1 news 0.
10. Gyp the Blood’ or Hearst - Which is Worst?. Sigh, aworks is the top web link on a favorite Ives work. Worse, my trivial last.fm tag is the twenty-ninth result. web 438 blog:1 news 0:
    

Symphony No. 4 (1910-16). Charles Ives

Scott Mortensen has updated his Charles Ives site and commented on the Ensemble Modern recording of John Adams (with Frank Ollu) conducting the Fourth Symphony:

No one who hears the final transcendent moments of this symphony will ever forget it, and this performance does a great job of capturing it all on disc.

Scott reports the disc is short and only available on-line. Ordering proved to be a bit of a struggle. What are the German words for "I forgot my Paypal password"? I happened to drive by the PayPal/eBay offices in San Jose today on my way to Rasputin Records and I do sometimes see PayPal'ers on the train, for what it's worth. However, I eventually succeeded by clicking random buttons:

Klicken Sie nach Erhalt der E-Mail auf den enthaltenen Link, um zur PayPal-Website zu gelangen. Anschließend werden Sie dazu aufgefordert, Angaben zu machen, die nur Ihnen als Kontoinhaber bekannt sind.

I found a used copy of Charles Ives Remembered: An Oral History over the weekend. Talking about Ives' first American ancestor:

William Ives was a ship's captain. The Truelove, his ship, brought settlers from England to Boston in 1635 and then the first settlers to New Haven in 1638.

now listening: pockets (minimal version). four tet