Events
Charles Ives at 150: Music, Imagination, and American Culture included twelve concerts, eight sessions of talks and conversation, five master classes, a documentary film showing, and other events. The concerts, talks, and panels were live streamed, and most of them are available here for on demand streaming. Performances are listed below by medium, talks and panels by topic, followed by the full schedule.
Performances with commentary
Orchestral Music
Philharmonic Orchestra: The Unanswered Question, Three Places in New England, Symphony No. 2
Chamber Orchestra: Symphony No. 3: The Camp Meeting
New Music Ensemble: Chamber and Chamber Orchestra Works
Band Music
Concert Band and Symphonic Band: Band Showcase
Chamber Music
Pacifica Quartet: String Quartets
Stefan Jackiw and Jeremy Denk: Violin Sonatas
New Music Ensemble: Chamber and Chamber Orchestra Works
Piano Music
Gilbert Kalish: Piano Sonata No. 1
Steven Mayer: Piano Sonata No. 2: Concord, Mass., 1840-60
Student Recital: Shorter Piano Works
Choral Music
NOTUS: Sacred Choral Music
Songs
William Sharp and Steven Mayer: Charles Ives: A Life in Music
Faculty/Student Recital: Songs
Faculty/Student Recital: Models and Sources: Ives Songs and the Music That Inspired Them
Talks and Panels
Performing Ives’s Concord Sonata
Ives and His Time: Uplifting the “Gilded Age”
Ives’s Second and Third Symphonies
Ives, the Concord Sonata, and American Literature
Schedule of Events
Pre-Festival Events
Saturday, September 21, 2024
3:00 pm | Ford-Crawford Hall
Voice master class with Mary Ann Hart
Sunday, September 22, 2024
7:00 pm | Sweeney Hall
Charles Ives’s America: documentary film
Festival Schedule
Monday, September 30, 2024
8:00 pm | Auer Hall
Festival Opening Event Charles Ives: A Life in Music
William Sharp, baritone, and Steven Mayer, piano
Charles Ives: A Life in Music is a theater piece by Joseph Horowitz that tells the story of Ives’s life and career through narration, ten of his songs, and readings drawn from newspapers, letters, and his writings, performed by baritone William Sharp with pianist Steven Mayer and actor Caroline Goodwin. As this was the opening event of the festival, it began with messages of welcome from the dean of the Jacobs School of Music and the co-organizers of the festival.
Tuesday, October 1, 2024
5:00 pm | Ford-Crawford Hall
Voice master class with William Sharp
7:00 pm | Ford-Crawford Hall
Piano master class with Steven Mayer
8:00 pm | Musical Arts Center
Symphonic Band and Concert Band, conducted by Eric Smedley and Jason Nam
Charles Ives’s father was a bandleader in the Civil War and in his home town of Danbury, Connecticut, and Ives grew up with band music. This concert by the Concert Band and Symphonic Band presents marches he wrote for band and works by Ives that have been arranged for band, including pieces that capture his memories of bands, band music, and other music of Danbury in the late nineteenth century. Jason Nam, Eric Smedley, and two students conduct, and J. Peter Burkholder offers context.
8:30 pm | Ford-Crawford Hall
Piano master class with Jeremy Denk
Wednesday, October 2, 2024
5:00 pm | Ford-Crawford Hall
Music Theory Colloquium: Ives and Current Music Theory
with Chelsey Hamm, Derek J. Myler, and David Thurmaier
Three music theorists address aspects of Ives’s music and thought. Chelsey Hamm reframes his use of misogynistic language in arguments about music. Derek J. Myler presents a new perspective on Ives’s layering of simultaneous independent streams of music. David Thurmaier examines Wagner’s influence on Ives and his resistance to it.
8:00 pm | Auer Hall
Stefan Jackiw, violin, and Jeremy Denk, piano
Source hymns by the First Presbyterian Church Chancel Choir, directed by Ryan Rogers
All four of Charles Ives’s sonatas for violin and piano feature movements based on hymn tunes, all in varieties of cumulative form in which the hymn tune theme is hinted at, heard in fragments and variants, and finally presented whole near the end. The Fourth Violin Sonata is the simplest and most direct, the Third the most Romantic, while the Second and First are more complex and include middle movements on popular tunes. Violinist Stefan Jackiw and pianist Jeremy Denk present the four sonatas in that order, from most accessible to most challenging, with Bloomington’s First Presbyterian Church Chancel Choir singing many of the principal source tunes. Jeremy Denk and J. Peter Burkholder offer commentary.
Thursday, October 3, 2024
12:00 pm | Ford-Crawford Hall
Violin master class with Stefan Jackiw
5:00 pm | Auer Hall
Ives Piano Music Student Recital
Guest Panel: Performing Ives’s Concord Sonata
with Jeremy Denk, Gilbert Kalish, and Steven Mayer
Five students present a selection from Ives’s music for piano, including a brief “Take-Off,” one of his Studies, the Three-Page Sonata in three movements, a programmatic piece based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s satirical story “The Celestial Rail-Road,” and the “Emerson” movement from his Second Piano Sonata (Concord). The recital is followed immediately by a panel on performing Ives’s Concord Sonata, featuring three of its best-known performers: Gilbert Kalish, Jeremy Denk, and Steven Mayer.
8:00 pm | Auer Hall
Ives Chamber and Chamber Orchestra Works
New Music Ensemble, directed by David Dzubay
Ives often grouped miniatures in sets, and this concert by the New Music Ensemble includes two sets for chamber orchestra and one for string quartet (joined by bass or piano for one movement each). Also on the program are his Three Quarter-Tone Pieces for two pianos tuned a quarter tone apart. The concert concludes with Ives’s Central Park in the Dark, his “picture-in-sounds” of the sounds of nature gradually obscured by music and other sounds of human activity until those suddenly stop and we hear again nature’s “night sounds and silent darkness.” James B. Sinclair, Paul Borg, and Derek J. Myler present commentary.
Friday, October 4, 2024
12:30 pm | Ford-Crawford Hall
Musicology Colloquium Festival Keynote Event: Ives and American Music
with Joseph Horowitz and J. Peter Burkholder
In this session, the co-organizers of the Charles Ives at 150 festival address why Ives’s music matters. Joseph Horowitz summarizes the new narrative history of American classical music in his book Dvorak’s Prophecy, which argues for the significance of composers and works that engage with vernacular music, and places Ives in that context as a master of embodying cultural memory through music. J. Peter Burkholder shows how Ives’s works celebrate the music and music-making of common people in his region of New England and New York, asserting through music itself that music from America is of equal value to its European counterparts, representing the people who make, hear, and love that music, and offering hope.
1:45 pm | Ford-Crawford Hall
with Joseph Horowitz, Tim Barringer, Derek J. Myler, Cordula Grewe, Melody Barnett Deusner, Denise Von Glahn, and Jan Swafford
In the festival’s first multidisciplinary panel, cultural historian Joseph Horowitz contrasts Ives’s more realistic musical portrayals of nature with his predecessor’s more conventional ones. Art historian Tim Barringer examines Ives’s ways of conveying visual impressions through music, linking them to American painting, photography, quilting, and other visual arts of his time. Derek J. Myler shows how Ives’s musical rendering of the Housatonic River accurately represents the way it flows. Two IU art historians and two visiting Ives scholars join the concluding discussion.
5:00 pm | Auer Hall
Ives Songs Faculty/Student Recital
More than twenty student singers, joined by faculty and student pianists, present a selection of songs from Ives’s collection 114 Songs, grouped by theme: Nature, Memories, Love, and Personalities.
8:00 pm | Auer Hall
Pacifica Quartet
While Ives’s violin sonatas are relatively consistent in style and approach, his string quartets, performed here by the Pacifica Quartet, are as different as can be. Ives’s First String Quartet is in a late Romantic style akin to Dvorak or Brahms, using themes paraphrased from American hymn tunes. His brief Scherzo for String Quartet is both literally a joke (“scherzo” in Italian) and an experiment in new techniques. His Second String Quartet is dissonant and difficult to play but has a Romantic heart, as the instruments portray four friends who converse, argue, then—in a lesson for us today—rediscover what they have in common and share a profound and revelatory experience. J. Peter Burkholder introduces the quartets, with musical examples played by the Pacifica Quartet.
Saturday, October 5, 2024
9:00 am | Ford-Crawford Hall
Panel 2: Ives and His Time: Uplifting the “Gilded Age”
with Alan Lessoff, Joseph Horowitz, Tim Barringer, Allen C. Guelzo, Eric Sandweiss, Jan Swafford, and Wendy Gamber
In the festival’s second interdisciplinary panel, cultural historian Joseph Horowitz links Ives to other late-nineteenth-century American cultural figures. American historian Alan Lessoff reconsiders our image of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the United States, the so-called Gilded Age. Art historian Tim Barringer, American historians Allen C. Guelzo, Eric Sandweiss, and Wendy Gamber, and Ives biographer Jan Swafford offer brief responses, followed by a wide-ranging discussion.
10:45 am | Ford-Crawford Hall
Panel 3: Ives and American Wars
with Allen C. Guelzo, Denise Von Glahn, Chelsey Hamm, Jan Swafford, James B. Sinclair, and David Thurmaier
In the festival’s third multidisciplinary panel, Civil War historian Allen C. Guelzo shows how Ives represented through his music and accompanying texts (including lyrics and programs) his view of the Civil War as a “won cause” fought to liberate the enslaved. Music historian Denise Von Glahn and geographer Mark Sciuchetti explore how Ives’s Concord Sonata reflects Concord, Massachusetts, and its surroundings, including the presence of African Americans. Music theorist Chelsey Hamm analyzes Ives’s songs about World War I to show how Ives uses dissonance as a symbol of democracy. Three visiting Ives scholars from different disciplines join the concluding discussion.
2:00 pm | Ford-Crawford Hall
Panel 4: Ives’s Second and Third Symphonies
with David Thurmaier, Allen C. Guelzo, Ivan Shulman, Tim Barringer, Alan Lessoff, Denise Von Glahn, and Chelsey Hamm
In the festival’s fourth multidisciplinary panel, music theorist David Thurmaier relates the history of two premieres of Ives’s Second Symphony and compares excerpts from each: Leonard Bernstein’s 1951 world premiere with the New York Philharmonic, and Bernard Herrmann’s 1956 European premiere with the London Symphony Orchestra. American historian Allen C. Guelzo characterizes Ives’s Third Symphony as remembering and celebrating the hymns, hymn-singing, and spirit of the revival meetings Ives experienced as a youth. Ivan Shulman reports on an interview with Ives’s neighbor Luemily Ryder, at whose house Ives listened to the 1951 broadcast of his Second Symphony, and on the solution to a long-standing mystery about his reaction to hearing it. Visiting scholars from art history, American history, musicology, and music theory join the closing discussion.
4:00 pm | Auer Hall
Symphony No. 3 and Piano Sonata No. 1
Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Jeffery Meyer
Gilbert Kalish, piano
The three pieces on this concert reflect Ives’s memories of the hymn singing at outdoor revivals during his youth and capture their spirit. The song The Camp-Meeting describes the sound of singing from afar, using fragments and variants of two hymns until one is presented whole with a countermelody paraphrased from another. Ives adapted the song from the finale of his Third Symphony (The Camp Meeting), whose outer movements feature the same type of cumulative form, surrounding a fantasy on several hymns in the middle movement. The First Piano Sonata has five movements: the first and third are again in cumulative form on hymn-tune themes; the second and fourth together present a set of four hymn variations infused with ragtime rhythms; and the finale is a free fantasy. The Chamber Orchestra and pianist Gilbert Kalish perform, and J. Peter Burkholder introduces the pieces, aided by baritone Zachary Coates, pianist Allan Armstrong, and conductor Jeffery Meyer.
7:00-7:45 pm | Musical Arts Center Mezzanine
with Allen C. Guelzo and Denise Von Glahn
8:00 pm | Musical Arts Center
Three Places in New England, Symphony No. 2, and other works
Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Arthur Fagen
William Sharp, baritone, Steven Mayer, piano
Peter Bogdanoff, visual presentation
The Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Arthur Fagen, presents three of Ives’s most famous works. The Unanswered Question features two simultaneous streams of music that are radically contrasting and entirely independent yet combine to convey an experience. Over soft, dream-like music in the strings, the trumpet repeatedly poses a question, answered by four flutes who grow ever louder, faster, and more discordant until they give up in frustration, leaving the question unanswered. Three Places in New England, accompanied here by a stunning visual presentation created by Peter Bogdanoff, captures through music Ives’s impressions of viewing the monument to the first Black regiment in the Civil War, of an amateur band and a child’s dream at a Revolutionary War encampment, and of watching the Housatonic River flow and the mists above it while hearing a hymn from a church across the river. Ives’s Second Symphony is in a Romantic style akin to Brahms, Dvorak, and Tchaikovsky but blends American music into that European framework, paraphrasing every theme from an American popular song, fiddle tune, hymn tune, or patriotic song. J. Peter Burkholder introduces each piece and explains how Ives uses the source tunes, sung by William Sharp with Steven Mayer at the piano.
Sunday, October 6, 2024
10:30 am | First Presbyterian Church, 221 E. 6th Street
Service with Ives choral and organ music
2:00-5:00 pm | Auer Hall
Ives, the Concord Sonata, and American Literature
Piano Sonata No. 2: Concord, Mass., 1840-60
Steven Mayer, piano
Readings from Emerson, Thoreau, and Ives read by William Sharp
Panel 5: Ives, the Concord Sonata, and American Literature
with Laura Dassow Walls, Denise Von Glahn, Christoph Irmscher, David Michael Hertz, Joseph Horowitz, Jonathan Elmer, Allen C. Guelzo, and J. Peter Burkholder
Ives’s Piano Sonata No. 2: Concord, Mass., 1840-60 is one of his most important works, with four movements on the writers Emerson, Hawthorne, The Alcotts, and Thoreau. Steven Mayer performs the sonata, accompanied by excerpts from Emerson, Ives, and Thoreau read by William Sharp. The performance is followed by the festival’s final interdisciplinary panel, with IU scholars from English and Comparative Literature joined by visiting scholars of American literature and musicology and the festival co-organizers, each giving a brief statement followed by a wide-ranging discussion.
Monday, October 7, 2024
8:00 pm | Auer Hall
Models and Sources: Ives Songs and the Music That Inspired Them
Faculty/Student Recital
More than two dozen student singers, joined by faculty and student pianists, present a concert that compares Ives songs with the music he based them on. The first half of the concert contrasts songs by Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, and others with Ives’s settings of the same texts, where Ives always sought a different reading of the poetry alongside subtle allusions to his model. The second half pairs seven Ives songs with the hymns and popular songs he used as sources, transforming what he borrowed to suggest meanings that could not be conveyed in any other way.
Tuesday, October 8
8:00 pm | Auer Hall
NOTUS, directed by Dominick DiOrio
Ives worked as a church organist from February 1889 (when he was 14) through June 1902. Throughout those years, he wrote sacred choral music in the late Romantic style, represented here by the anthem Crossing the Bar and the cantata The Celestial Country. In his last two positions, where he was choirmaster as well as organist, he also composed sacred works for choir, such as Psalm 67 and Psalm 100, that explored new techniques and were probably tried out in rehearsal but never sung in services. Two decades later, he drew on numerous new techniques in Psalm 90, often regarded as his choral masterpiece. The Contemporary Vocal Ensemble NOTUS performs, conducted by Dominick DiOrio and two student conductors, and J. Peter Burkholder provides commentary on each piece.