Charles Ives’s America

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.

Arthur Fagen, conductor
Alejandro Meza, flute
Hsiang Yen Chiu, flute
Olivia Dorer, flute
Hope Lee, flute
Sebastian Petzinger, trumpet
William Sharp, baritone
Steven Mayer, piano
Peter Bogdanoff, video artist
J. Peter Burkholder, commentary

Charles Ives (1874-1954)

The Unanswered Question (1908, rev. 1930-35)

     Soloists
     Alejandro Meza, flute
     Hsiang Yen Chiu, flute
     Olivia Dorer, flute
     Hope Lee, flute
     Sebastian Petzinger, trumpet

The Circus Band (Charles Ives, arr. ca. 1899 or ca. 1920-21)

The Housatonic at Stockbridge (Robert Underwood Johnson, arr. 1921)

     William Sharp, baritone
     Steven Mayer, piano

Three Places in New England (ca. 1908-21, rev. 1929 and 1933-35)

     I. The “St. Gaudens” in Boston Common
     II. Putnam’s Camp, Redding, Connecticut
     III. The Housatonic at Stockbridge

Intermission

Symphony No. 2 (ca. 1902-9)

     I. Andante moderato
     II. Allegro molto (con spirito)
     III. Adagio cantabile—Andante—Adagio cantabile
     IV. Lento maestoso
     V. Allegro molto vivace

Program note by J. Peter Burkholder

The orchestral works on this evening’s concert are among Ives’s most famous and frequently performed. All three helped to establish his reputation through performances, publication, and recordings in the 1930s-1950s, long after he wrote them. Although they are so different from one another that they may sound like music by three different composers, each exemplifies traits that are typical of Ives.

Ives sketched The Unanswered Question around 1908 and revised it in the 1930s, adding a program note. It was published in 1941 and premiered in 1946 in New York as part of the second all-Ives concert ever. It has become perhaps his most popular piece.

In musical terms, it is an experiment: a study in having two streams of music, playing simultaneously, that are as different as possible and entirely independent of one another yet somehow fit together to convey an experience. The strings play soft, wide-open chords that slowly change, like a dream or meditation. A trumpet enters with a brief, twisting melody whose every note is dissonant against the strings. Flutes respond in dialogue with the trumpet, whose melody remains unchanged while the flutes grow ever louder, faster, and more discordant, then fall silent as the trumpet has the last word. Somehow the music works even without Ives’s program, which tells us the strings represent “The Silences of the Druids—who Know, See, and Hear Nothing” while the trumpet poses “The Perennial Question of Existence” and the flutes represent humans trying to find an answer before giving up in frustration.

Three Places in New England continues the Romantic tradition of tone poems about places, such as Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture and Smetana’s The Moldau, with a twist: Ives focuses on the people in those places and brings them to life through their music. The Chamber Orchestra of Boston under Nicolas Slonimsky premiered the piece in New York in January 1931, then took it to Boston, Havana, and Paris, where critics hailed Ives as a “pioneer” comparable to Igor Stravinsky, “a true precursor, an audacious talent, who may lack technique and skill but who . . . discovered a number of rhythmic and harmonic processes in vogue today,” through whose music “modernism acquired a remarkably individual flavor.”

Such reviews brought Ives attention yet fostered a mistaken view of his music, emphasizing his innovations while missing the Romantic heart of these tone poems. The misunderstanding resulted from the way his music came to be known, roughly in reverse chronological order; his first three symphonies, which amply demonstrate his “technique and skill” and his deep grounding in the European symphonic tradition, were not publicly performed until fifteen to twenty years later. What is most important in Ives’s music is not his techniques, however innovative, but how he uses them to convey a deeply personal vision and to capture in music the scenes and people around him. As our festival has sought to demonstrate, what makes him relevant today is not whether he “discovered [new] rhythmic and harmonic processes” but how his music opens windows on American culture and helps us remember what is most valuable from the past.

The “St. Gaudens” in Boston Common is a musical parallel to the massive bronze relief sculpture by Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907) on the memorial in Boston Common to the 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, led by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. The 54th was the first regiment of Black soldiers formed after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863 authorized the participation of African Americans in the Union Army. After training near Boston, the regiment marched past the future site of the memorial, traveled south, and served with distinction, helping to turn the tide of the Civil War and demonstrating to skeptics that Black soldiers were equal to whites in discipline, skill, and bravery. Saint-Gaudens shows rank upon rank of soldiers marching, each face an individual, all marked by grit and determination. Ives’s music captures the same determination, blending Union songs with music linked to African Americans, depicting the slow march south, and portraying their most famous battle, an assault on Fort Wagner in South Carolina, where they breached the walls but were pushed back with heavy losses. After the battle, they march on, mourning the dead but determined to continue the fight for freedom.

Putnam’s Camp, Redding, Connecticut is a state park near the Iveses’ summer home, on the site where Revolutionary War soldiers under General Israel Putnam camped during the winter of 1778-79. The movement begins as an affectionate portrait of a village band playing at a Fourth of July picnic in the park. Mistakes written into the music mark the band as amateurs whose level of skill does not

match their enthusiasm. At times a collage of melodic scraps from marches and patriotic songs suggests memories of other concerts and picnics. A child wanders off into the woods and falls asleep, depicted in music that slows, grows softer, and sinks lower until it fades away. The child dreams of Revolutionary War soldiers marching across the landscape to the music of fifes and drums. Suddenly the child awakes, hears the village band still playing, and runs back to the picnic. In a raucous coda, the music of the band and the dream combine and crescendo to a slam-bang finish.

The Housatonic at Stockbridge conveys Ives’s impressions of a walk with his wife along the Housatonic River soon after they were married. The main melody, adapted from a hymn tune, evokes the singing from a church across the water, while multiple layers of repeating patterns suggest the deep current of the river, ripples on its surface, and the movement of mists and of leaves in the trees above. As the river swells on its way to the sea, so does the music, until a quiet final reminder of its serene beginnings.

The premieres of Three Places in New England in 1931, the Concord Sonata in 1939, and the Third Symphony in 1946 brought Ives recognition and praise, but it was the premiere of his Second Symphony in February 1951 by the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein that won him a large public for the first time, at the age of 76. He had completed the piece around 1909, drawing on earlier music.

Ives’s Second Symphony is Romantic in sound and idiom, akin to symphonies by Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Dvořák. The overall structure is a kind of arch, with the slow third movement at the center. The second and fifth movements are both fast and in sonata form, and the first and fourth movements share the same music, both serving as an introduction to the following movement.

What sets this symphony apart is Ives’s blend of American and European styles. Every theme is adapted from an American tune—hymns in the third movement and popular songs, patriotic songs, and fiddle tunes in the others—while at least one transitional passage is each movement is drawn from a piece by Bach, Brahms, or Wagner. His purpose was to bring American music into the international world of classical music, showing that the popular songs and hymns of the United States were as rich a source for a symphony as any folk music from elsewhere. By interweaving American and European sources, Ives proclaims the unity of his musical experience as an American exposed to both traditions. This is how symphonic music ought to sound, to an American who grew up hearing American popular songs, hymns, and fiddle tunes as well as Bach, Wagner, and Brahms.

Many of the tunes Ives used as sources for his themes are no longer familiar to listeners today. Fortunately, his music makes sense without recognizing any specific tune. What matters is the contrast in style between a hymn and a march, or a dance tune and a patriotic song, each type of music carrying associations with the context from which it springs and the people who know and love it. His themes sound American, and they suffuse the symphony with a new dialect that renovates the Romantic symphony from the inside out.