Ives and Hymnody

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.

Gilbert Kalish, piano
Chamber Orchestra
Jeffery Meyer, conductor
Zachary Coates, baritone
Allan Armstrong, piano
J. Peter Burkholder, commentary

Charles Ives (1874-1954)

The Camp Meeting (Charles Ives and Charlotte Elliott, 1912)

Symphony No. 3: The Camp Meeting (ca. 1908-11)

Intermission

Piano Sonata No. 1 (assembled/revised ca. 1915-16, ca. 1921)

Program note by J. Peter Burkholder

This afternoon’s program reflects Charles Ives’s deep familiarity with American hymns and two sides of his musical personality, as church organist (1889-1902) and pianist. Both the Third Symphony and the First Piano Sonata use or adapt hymn tunes as themes. The symphony often resembles organ music, with contrapuntal textures or with strings, brass, and winds alternating like sets of pipes on a church organ. The sonata is idiomatic piano music, sounding at times like the player is improvising. It is infused with rhythms of ragtime, a style Ives absorbed in the 1890s playing piano with theater orchestras while in college at Yale.

Ives adapted The Camp-Meeting (1912) from the Third Symphony’s finale, and both end with the hymn Woodworth (“Just as I am”). Ives’s lyrics describe the singing that so inspired him at the outdoor revivals he attended and played organ for as a youth. For these days-long gatherings, people camped in tents or cabins, sharing meals and attending services full of preaching. But what Ives most remembered was “how the great waves of sound used to come through the trees” as the hymns “were sung by thousands of ‘let out’ souls.”

Symphony No. 3: The Camp Meeting (ca. 1908-11) captures the spirit of those revivals by dwelling on hymns sung there. The scoring for chamber orchestra lends a sense of intimacy, reinforced by the quiet opening and close of all three movements. Although Ives tried to interest conductors in performing it, the symphony waited for its premiere until Lou Harrison conducted it with the New York Little Symphony in April 1946. The audience was enthusiastic, and the New York Times critic praised it for a “richness of imagination, . . . a freshness of inspiration, a genuineness of feeling and an intense sincerity that lent it immediate appeal.” It was soon played twice again by other orchestras, and the next year it won the Pulitzer Prize for Music.

The outer movements are in cumulative form: instead of presenting a theme, then developing and varying it, as in sonata form or variations, the development comes first, and the main theme appears complete only at the end, joined by a  countermelody that has been developed and presented in a similar way. In Ives’s words, “the working-out develops into the themes, rather than from them.” In both movements, the main theme is a hymn tune, and the countermelody is paraphrased from a different hymn, reshaped to fit in counterpoint with the theme. The effect resembles an organist improvising on a hymn the congregation is about to sing, tossing around phrases of the tune before playing it whole. It is a musical parallel to images in the movements’ titles of people gathering and of sharing communion.

For the theme of the majestic first movement, “Old Folks Gatherin’,” Ives used Azmon, often sung to the words “O for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise,” with a countermelody based on Erie (“What a friend we have in Jesus”). At the outset, hints of both tunes interweave, then the opening phrases of Azmon take the lead in a fugato. A brief interlude features the first phrase of Woodworth in the horn, anticipating the theme of the finale. Development resumes until, after a hush, the flute plays a ravishing melody paraphrased from Erie. After more development leads to a climax, the music quiets, and at last we hear all of Azmon in the violins, joined by the flute countermelody.

The rambunctious second movement, “Children’s Day,” opens with a theme loosely paraphrased from Fountain (“There is a fountain”) over another hymn in long notes like a cantus firmus. The middle section takes the bouncy rhythms of There Is a Happy Land and turns them into a march. Ives recalled that sometimes at camp meetings “the children, especially the boys, liked to get up and join in the marching kind of hymns.” The first section returns, varied and extended, and as the music slows and quiets, we hear echoes of the march.

The finale, “Communion,” is slow and contemplative. The strings suggest phrases from Woodworth (“Just as I am”), the winds introduce a leaping figure, and the two ideas interplay as the music builds, then quiets. Over a pizzicato bass and murmuring violas, the violins extend the leaping figure into a lyrical melody that paraphrases Azmon, the first movement theme. Motives from Woodworth return, push forward to a climax, then slow and calm. At last we hear Woodworth complete in the cellos, joined by the lyrical paraphrase from Azmon as a countermelody. A pause and detour into another key delay the hymn’s final notes—“I come!” When they appear, they are echoed by orchestral bells, sounding “as distant church bells.”

Ives assembled his First Piano Sonata in the 1910s, drawing on music composed earlier. The harmony is full of dissonance and suggestions of polytonality. The overall form is like an arch, centered on the slow third movement, with scherzo-like ragtime movements around it and longer serious movements to begin and end. Themes and motives shared between movements unify the sonata, while frequent changes of tempo, mood, and style suffuse it with contrast.

The first and third movements are in cumulative form. The first centers on the hymn Lebanon (“I was a wand’ring sheep”), heard complete at the end in a high register accompanied by ideas that, like the theme, have been developed over the course of the movement. These same ideas return in the third movement, whose main theme Erie (“What a friend we have in Jesus”) appears in fragments in the slow first section, varied phrase by phrase in the fast and loud middle section, and complete at the slow, quiet close. The fifth movement is not based on hymns, but is an extended fantasia on a three-note motive, sometimes echoing moments from earlier movements.

In between are the ragtime movements, which Ives numbered IIa, IIb, IVa, and IVb. These began life as four “ragtime dances,” each in verse-chorus form, with the verses based on the gospel songs Bringing in the Sheaves and Happy Day and the choruses on the refrain from Welcome Voice (“I hear Thy welcome voice”). In recasting them for the First Piano Sonata, Ives wrote a new IVa with only a hint of the hymns. Taken together, they are like four variations on the same material, building to a rocking rendition of Bringing in the Sheaves.