Ives and Current Music Theory

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.

Orit Hilewicz (Indiana University) and Julian Hook (Indiana University), co-chairs 
Chelsey Hamm (Christopher Newport University) 
Derek J. Myler (East Carolina University) 
David Thurmaier (University of Missouri-Kansas City) 

Music Theory Colloquium: Ives and Current Music Theory 

Orit Hilewicz (Indiana University) and Julian Hook (Indiana University), co-chairs 

Chelsey Hamm (Christopher Newport University) Reconsidering Charles Ives’s Problematic Language 

Derek J. Myler (East Carolina University) 
On the Paradox of Polymusic 

David Thurmaier (University of Missouri-Kansas City) 
A Letter from Charles Ives: Rhinemaidens, Chromaticism, and Wagnerian Influence 

This program is made possible by the Music Theory Five Friends Master Class Series honoring Robert Samels.

Program note by Jeremy Denk

These four violin sonatas, like the first four symphonies of Mahler, are a form of autobiography. They tell and retell Ives’s childhood memories of music, trying to recapture their magic, their fervency and sincerity. They abound in social details: farmers singing off-key, rag pianists improvising, mothers worrying, pastors preaching, soldiers dreaming of the old days. This music is often visited by failure (like music in real life), but, in this reconstructed world, the need for expression keeps finding a way.

These sonatas also tell a story of Ives’s development as a composer. In reverse order—4, 3, 2, 1—Ives starts out somewhat civilized. By the end, he’s dissonant, thorny, craggy, difficult: but still a hopeless Romantic.

Sonata No. 4: “Children’s Day at the Camp Meeting”

A camp meeting was a revival weekend of worship. Ives explains:

There was usually only one Children’s Day in these Summer meetings, and the children made the most of it—often the best of it.

So—a sonata about the intersection of piety and youthful pranks. In the first movement, one group of children march to a hymn; another boy dutifully practices his fugues. These styles interrupt and overlap wildly. Ives quips that “the loudest singers, and also those with the best voices, as is often the case, would sing most of the wrong notes.” The counterpoint thickens, until the Deacon rings a gong, and the kids innocently march off as if nothing had happened.

The ravishing second movement, a tone poem of sorts, “moves around a rather quiet but old favorite Hymn of the children.” The piano reflects “the outdoor sounds of nature on these Summer days—the west wind in the pines and oaks, the running brook.” In the middle, the kids throw rocks in the brook: Allegro conslugarocko. This almost destroys the mood, but again, the Deacon calms them down.

The last movement improvises—with hints of the blues—before revealing “Shall We Gather at the River.” The hymn doesn’t last long. With a sudden youthful rush, and an off-kilter echo, Children’s Day is over.

Sonata No. 3

Ives described the Third Sonata as a weak attempt to please snooty Europeans. You do hear a suspiciously lovely Romanticism—some Brahms, maybe even Reger (!)—but still, plenty of true Ives. Most of the piece centers around the hymn I Need Thee Ev’ry Hour.

The first movement has four sections. Each begins by improvising on Need, then pursues its own path. Verse 1 is devout; Verse 2 starts to dance; Verse 3 escalates to a hoe-down; and Verse 4 slows for a transcendent, sweet-and-sour recapitulation. After each verse is a refrain, partly based on Beulah Land.

The second movement teleports us to a roadside bar for a witty ragtime apotheosis on the hymn There’ll Be No Dark Valley.

The third movement abruptly returns to church and I Need Thee Ev’ry Hour. It is easy to imagine Ives the organist, improvising. The music evokes a religious quest, an impassioned searching (“I need thee!”). In the middle, we encounter a bluesy waltz, seemingly incompatible with the rest. But at the shattering climax, Ives combines hymn and waltz. These ideas weave around each other in a benediction. The violin’s Need is surrounded by luminous chords and blue notes, transforming the well-worn clichés of the American hymn.

Sonata No. 2

The first movement of the Second Violin Sonata is not about a season, but the hymn Autumn, which inspires all of its themes. An otherworldly introduction gives way to fiddling, dancing, a variety of riffs, styles, and struggles, until—at last!—the complete hymn thunders out. “In the Barn” is a joyful disaster. It starts with country fiddling, slips slyly into urban ragtime, and as time passes, every imaginable genre makes a cameo—overheated Wagnerian Romanticism, fashionable exoticism, a dizzying tour of the early-twentieth-century musical world. In the final movement, “The Revival,” the chaos is forgotten. Ives gives the musicians time to inhabit a religious ecstasy: a gradual liberation, from timeless depth to foot-stamping passion, that is liberating (and moving) to play.

Sonata No. 1

The First Sonata begins with dark, searching fragments. Once the fast music begins, Ives switches to joking mode. The first clear arrival is the most irreverent joke of all: he has rewritten the hymn Shining Shore into a lumbering cowboy song! Both violin and piano try to ride this Allegro (as it were) into the sunset, but the dark opening returns, even darker.

The second movement, one of Ives’s most profound, explores memories of the Civil War and the idea of division. The violin begins musing over The Old Oaken Bucket, an emblem of nostalgia. Ah, the good old days—were they good? Before long, the piece divides in terrifying two, with the marching pianist instructed to drown out the violin. The violin tries to speak, but is barely heard. At last, the violin emerges from behind the piano, only to repeat the piano’s march with heartbreaking tenderness. The music turns to Tramp, Tramp, Tramp!, and the trials and glories of war, as remembered by boastful veterans. But from glory we return to intractable battles.

The last movement opens with a wild piano march: Work, For the Night Is Coming! But, shortly after the violin enters, the piece suddenly slips into another tune: Watchman, Tell Us of the Night. Watchman starts out in the guise of ragtime, and visits several styles, before finally becoming itself: an aching, yearning hymn.

Out of eerie stillness the opening of the movement reappears. It gathers, like a whole town of marchers, each to different drums, until it reaches an ecstatic climax—hymn, bells, circling bass. This ecstasy does not diminish even as the music quiets, condensing into one last gospel “Amen.” You can almost hear them all humming there, in the New England countryside, possessed by religious feeling and a sense of the infinite, as the day fades into dusk.