aworks :: "new" american classical music

Stars and Stripes Forever (1896). John Philip Sousa /no comment/

George Bush took over from JoAnn Falletta to conduct Stars and Stripes Forever:

"We didn't expect him to know the score so well," Falletta said afterward. "He was not shy about conducting at all. He conducted with a great deal of panache."

I will ask a question though. Is it possible the President had any musical training as a kid? That never occurred to me. A quick check of Kitty Kelley's The Family doesn't indicate anything. The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music doesn't answer the question directly but does describe recent presidential interest (and disinterest) in classical music.

wikipedia: virginia symphony orchestra. george bush. john philip sousa. stars and stripes forever

The Year's at the Spring (1900). Amy Beach /deborah!/

Out West Arts correctly suggests we focus on Deborah Voigt's singing rather than her weight (or more precisely, her weight control). And then he gets to the important aspects of her recent recital:

The best parts were the American songs from Amy Beach and Leonard Bernstein, which finally seemed to kick things in gear after a rather uneventful hour and a half...A lot was missing last night, but there is no doubt that Voigt continues to be a stunning talent in the right places at the right times.

Related, Mark Swed has this to say about the singer:

She also needs musical substance. Strauss and Wagner might be her meal ticket, but her soul is in American music and music of our time.

My attitude is that anyone who sings Charles Ives is to be worshipped. Above and beyond is unexpected bonus...

(For the record, I own two different pressings of the CD to the right).

Piano Quartet (1890). Arthur Foote

Browsing through the recordings available this month on emusic, I started to "see" a pattern...

But I went for the Arthur Foote among others...

Memories (1897). Charles Ives

Primi Divi on the recent Gerald Finley recital:

...but Mr Finley’s selection included a number of the more accessible songs, “Memories”, for example, perfectly captured the excitement and anticipation of waiting for an opera to begin: a feeling likely to be well-known to Mr Finley’s fans (this song, incidentally, was one of Mr Finley’s encores in his last recital)...

The fun part of the song:

We're sitting in the opera house, the opera house, the opera house
We're waiting for the curtain to arise with wonders for our eyes

And the adagio part, which makes this song so bipolar:

It is tattered, it is torn
it shows signs of being worn
It's the tune my Uncle hummed from early morn

The song was first performed in 1949.

By the way, I finally bought a copy of 114 Songs by Charles Ives (they were out of the Stravinsky Refresher Score for the Overly Modern). If I'm exiled to the proverbial desert island, I'll be ready....

The Unanswered Question (1908). Charles Ives /clarity/

Andrew Woodrow on Ives' The Unanswered Question:

The Unanswered Question (the Ives they played) is written for a string orchestra, a trumpet, and a few woodwinds. The strings repeat the same thing over and over again (and the thing they repeat reminded me of Barber's Adagio), and the trumpet and woodwinds interject interrogative phrases here and there. It's clear. And beautiful.

The Unanswered Question (1908). Charles Ives /kfjc/

A review of an Ives album, from the KFJC (Los Altos Hills!) website including this succinct description of The Unanswered Question:

over a slowly shifting bed of strictly diatonic strings, a trumpet asks a 5-note question, and a woodwind quartet answers. Repeat 5 times, woodwinds getting more and more atonal and crazed. Existential burning consumes you.

In my previous Unanswered Question post, M. Keiser of Music in a Suburban Scene comments that it still sounds as if it could have been written last year. Timeless indeed.

Cujo, the KFJC reviewer, also points out Decoration Day is what we now call Memorial Day.

rgable: aworks wwi/prohibition era ives: aworks del.icio.us wikipedia google news google blog yahoo audio  memorial day: wikipedia

The Unanswered Question (1908). Charles Ives /tonality/

Rajarshi Chaudhuri wrote about Ives' The Unanswered Question:

So, is tonality seemingly everlasting - could be so - but the disturbing question - like a specter - still floats in the air and of course there is no answer other than silence and confusion!

In other Ives news, singer Bruce Hornsby incorporates Ives' Study No. 22 into one of his songs. And Cheryl Gibbs reviews a concert of American music in Richmond, IN and calls The Unanswered Question one of Ives' less approachable works. Well, for me, I heard it once and was instantly ensnared.

rgable: aworks wwi/prohibition era ives: aworks del.icio.us wikipedia google news google blog yahoo audio word for the day: polytonality apple stores, mormon temples, and where ives bought his ipod

Variations on "America" (1891-92, 1902). Charles Ives

I somehow had never heard this piece until just now. I'm ambivalent of Ives' use of popular songs and melodies in his compositions but America the Beautiful works well as a series of variations, in this case performed on piano.  It's on a CD Patriotism, Diversity, and the Pioneer Spirt: An Introduction to the 19th- and Early 20-Centruy American Music along with Stephen Foster, Scott Joplin (played by Roger Shields), Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, etc. There are no liner notes and looking at the back of the CD, this must be a re-packaging of recordings on Vox.

I'll also link to the recent NY Times article "A Slice of Americana with a Big Scoop of Ives," where Anne Midgette reviews works by Marcus Maroney (blog here), Anna Weesner, Ingram Marshall, and David Rakowski:

The concert was called "Out-of-Towners," but it could have been called "Americana for Our Time." It consisted of new and recent work by four non-New York American composers performed by members of the St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble. (Held on Saturday afternoon at the Chelsea Art Museum, it was the last in the group's "Second Helpings" series.) Its loudest statement was "Charles Ives lived" - the pieces, while not exactly derivative of Ives, were certainly evocative of him.

I'll also quote from a rather creative blog post by Bob Merkin where he, among other ideas, talks about good prospects for the music of Ives:

Ives would give the bitter angry Yankee finger to American Patriotism at this sad and pathetic moment in America. Thank God for the Future. Ives, with Sinclair's dedicated and brilliant creative assistance, has a chance to bring true and the best Patriotism -- Lincoln's, Jefferson's, Col. Shaw's -- back to the hearts of Americans gathered around the parlor piano. The flatscreen High Def TV will increasingly be: OFF as America learns again to sing The Songs Our Fathers Loved. I do so wish I had studied the piano. But I can sing Ives, in the Parlor, in the shower.

oh the PEOPLE! NOT! the politicians goddam thieves

He also rants on the use/misuse of the American flag in the name of patriotism. Although I display the flag for holidays and see that flickr American flag photo feed everyday (picture of an American flag in an English phone booth here), I also downplay the patriotic aspect on the aworks site -- no red/white/blue color theme nor even any flag. Given that up to half of aworks readers are not from the US, I figure they don't need an emphatic display of American boosterism (even if I am subtly advocating for American music). Still, I do take the American flag seriously, and I think it is partly because as a child, I would visit my Uncle on Memorial Day in Indiana (while my Dad and brother would attend the Indy 500, I was too young), and help him place American flags on graves of veterans.

And with respect to Merkin's high def tv comment, we all celebrate patriotism in our own way. Since I have no high-def tv to turn off and I certainly can't sing and there is no one around this morning who deserves "the finger," instead I'm off to SF to see if I can find a CD of band arrangements of Ives' music.  A genuinely patriotic activity even if not particularly authentic...

Good program notes of Variations on "America" here:

From the perspective of Ives's later work, Variations on "America" stands out for its decorous, almost pedantic good behavior. This may seem a strange assertion, given its rather cavalier treatment of the main theme, a melody sacrosanct even in Ives's day. But compared to the boldly experimental approach to musical form characteristic of all of his mature work, this piece, with its clear invocation of the centuries-old structure of introduction, theme, and variations seems positively reactionary

Un grand sommeil noir (1906). Edgard Varèse

vilaine fille points out, among other orgies, the Varèse orgy tomorrow at 5pm PDT on WHRB, playing through the works of the composer in chronological order. I've never heard of let alone heard Un grand sommeil noir. Unfortunately, if all goes well, I'll be headed home on Caltrain at that time. Still, I really like the idea of hearing an artist's works in this way, even if it is the pApAs fritAs orgy currently streaming as I write this. The Romanian Enescu plays Enescu in another five hours...

From the WHRB notes:

First encounters with Varèse (1883-1965) always seem to shock. Certainly few of his contemporaries knew what to make of him. Even today, Varèse seems easier to dismiss as an eclectic than appreciate as a composer. Looking back at the past four decades since his death, we are left with more questions than answers: In our world of even stranger sounds and music, does Varèse matter? Is there more to his music or is it all in the shock? Can the music of Varèse really speak to us? Though we’re more puzzled by these questions and never satisfactorily answered, there remains that elusive something which pulls us back to Varèse.

The Entertainer (1902). Scott Joplin

I tried podshows tonight, which has an inexpensive UK Classical Countdown show.  Unfortunately, the podshow I bought was Windows Media and streaming only, which makes it useless for downloading to my iPod.  I also wonder if I'll get hit with a credit card conversion fee since the charge was in pounds, not dollars.

From the FAQ (which I read after the purchase):

Why Can't I Download all the Podshows:

Because we're the world's first professional Pod Casting website, the record companies have never agreed to licensing for this kind of business. So we're just finalising the paperwork which means in a few weeks you WILL be able to download ALL Podshows to your MP3 player. Of course in the meantime there's the option to stream them.

At #14 was Alexander Peskanov playing rags of Scott Joplin, in this case, The Entertainer. Maxwell Davies followed. I may not make it to the end of the stream since I'd rather not be tethered to my computer for the evening.