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Ives: Three Quarter-Tone Pieces / Five Take-Offs / Hallowe'En / Sunrise

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Ives: Three Quarter-Tone Pieces / Five Take-Offs / Hallowe'En / Sunrise

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Charles Ives (1874-1954): Piano, Chamber and Vocal Works Charles Ives was born in 1874 in Danbury, Connecticut, a small New England town dominated by the...

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Charles Ives (1874-1954): Piano, Chamber and Vocal Works

Charles Ives was born in 1874 in Danbury, Connecticut, a small New England town dominated by the Ives clan. His father, however, rejected the conventional life to become a musician. After leading reputedly the finest band in the Northern army during the American Civil War, George Ives provided musical nourishment for his townspeople while simultaneously undertaking musical experiments that sowed the seeds of his son's development. Charles was twenty, enjoying college life, when his fiercely selfdisciplined, adventurous father died. He lost the only person who heard his music sympathetically and perceptively.

Charles had been sent to Yale to learn the basics of composition from the mainstream composer Horatio Parker, who found the young man's music insufferable. A few years after graduation, Charles understood that earning a living in music required compromising his musical vision.

He therefore entered the insurance business, becoming a legend in the business and achieving enormous financial success, which his employees attributed to an unfailing understanding of human nature.

For some fifteen years he spent gruelling days in business and nights composing, but in 1918 suffered a massive heart attack. With his health deteriorating he wrote his last work in 1926 and retired from business. He lived until eighty, however, revising his scores and quietly using his affluence in the cause of American composition. Apart from his indefatigable wife Harmony, and close friends such as composers Henry Cowell and Carl Ruggles and their wives, Ives was almost completely isolated musically.

Cowell published some of his music; scattered performances attracted some attention. Performances of his music begin in earnest in the late 1930s, when the pianist John Kirkpatrick unveiled the monumental 'Concord' Sonata. Then a 1946 performance of his Third Symphony, conducted by Lou Harrison, led to a Pulitzer Prize. The musical world was beginning to appreciate Ives' significance just as he died in 1954.

These bare facts tell but little of an extraordinarily visionary mind. An heir to New England Transcendentalism, Ives shared its reverence for the beauty and power of the individual, and its mystical faith in the one-ness of humanity and nature. He detested the stale traditions that dominated musical life: 'rules' were acceptable only if they facilitated creativity. In this spirit he constantly sought new and appropriate means of ordering his impulses, arriving at compositional methods that anticipated the thinking of generations yet to come.

'Playability' was never an acceptable limitation: 'Is it the composer's fault that man has only ten fingers?' To Ives, ordinary mortals at worship, singing roughly and out of tune, but from the soul, knew more about music than those with flawless vocal techniques. His love of spontaneous, untrained creativity led him to unprecedented feats of compositional virtuosity. For if one loved the spirit of a revival meeting, where everyone sang from the heart, in his and her own tempo and key, why should a musical impression of such an occasion be tyrannized by the conventions of having one key, one tempo, or one conductor at a time? He loved to quote popular music, not to make the public feel comfortable, but because he was at one with the music of everyday life. Unfortunately, his uncompromising search for an honest expression of a nation's soul produced music that most people refused to perform. This visionary Ives is the subject of the present recording.

The pieces for instrumental ensemble are Ives at his wildest. The Gong on the Hook and Ladder, later set for small orchestra, is heard here in its original version, dating from about 1912. Ives wrote:

"The Annual Parade of the neighborhood Volunteer Fire Company was a slow marching affair - for the Hook and Ladder was heavy, and the Gong on the hind wheel 'must ring steadylike' - and coming downhill and holding backward fast, and going uphill out of step, fast and slow, the Gong seemed sometimes out of step with the Band, and sometimes the Band out of step with the Gong - but the Gong usually got the best of it. Nobody always seemed to 'keep step,' but they got there just the same."

Disc 1

The Housatonic at Stockbridge

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Composed by: Charles Ives
Cheryl Seltzer, piano
Eric Trudel, piano
Robert Gardner, baritone
Joel Sachs, piano
Victoria Villamil, soprano

The Housatonic at Stockbridge - 3:24

Soliloquy

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Composed by: Charles Ives
Cheryl Seltzer, piano
Lielle Berman, soprano
Eric Trudel, piano
Joel Sachs, piano
Victoria Villamil, soprano
Recording date: May - June 2005

Soliloquy, or a Study in 7ths and Other Things - 0:49

On the Antipodes

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Composed by: Charles Ives
Cheryl Seltzer, piano
Laura Garritson, piano
Douglas Dickson, piano
Ryan MacPherson, tenor
Joel Sachs, piano
Victoria Villamil, soprano

On the Antipodes - 2:37

The Gong on the Hook and Ladder

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Composed by: Charles Ives
Joel Sachs, piano
Mia Wu, viola
Beverly Lauridsen, cello
Eva Gruesser, violin
Rachel Evans, viola

The Gong on the Hook and Ladder (original version) - 1:28

Hallowe'en

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Composed by: Charles Ives
Cheryl Seltzer, piano
Joel Sachs, piano
Mia Wu, viola
Beverly Lauridsen, cello
Eva Gruesser, violin
Rachel Evans, viola

Hallowe�en - 2:33

In Re Con Moto et al

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Composed by: Charles Ives
Cheryl Seltzer, piano
Mia Wu, viola
Beverly Lauridsen, cello
Eva Gruesser, violin
Rachel Evans, viola

In Re Con Moto et al, Op. 20 - 3:02

Sunrise

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Composed by: Charles Ives
Cheryl Seltzer, piano
Tamara Mumford, mezzo-soprano
Douglas Dickson, piano
Mia Wu, viola
Jooyeon Kong, violin
Sheila Schonbrun, soprano

Sunrise - 5:35

Remembrance

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Composed by: Charles Ives
Cheryl Seltzer, piano
Douglas Dickson, piano
Kenneth Tarver, tenor
Eva Gruesser, violin
Sheila Schonbrun, soprano
Recording date: May - June 2005

Remembrance - 1:01

Aeschylus and Sophocles

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Composed by: Charles Ives
Walter Savage Landor,
Cheryl Seltzer, piano
Mary Phillips, mezzo-soprano
Laura Garritson, piano
Mia Wu, viola
Beverly Lauridsen, cello
Victoria Villamil, soprano
Eva Gruesser, violin
Rachel Evans, viola
Sheila Schonbrun, soprano

Aeschylus and Sophocles - 4:10

Set of 5 Take-offs

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Composed by: Charles Ives
Joel Sachs, piano

The Seen and Unseen? (Sweet and Tough) - 3:04
Rough and Ready et al and / or The Jumping Frog - 2:21
Song Without (Good) Words - 4:02
Scene Episode - 2:16
Bad Resolutions and Good WAN! (Jan. 1, 1907) - 1:12

3 Quarter-Tone Pieces

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Composed by: Charles Ives
Cheryl Seltzer, piano
Joel Sachs, piano

Largo - 4:05
Allegro - 2:38
Chorale - 4:38

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Composer(s):
Ives, Charles

Artist(s):
Evans, Rachel; Gruesser, Eva; Landor, Walter Savage; Lauridsen, Beverly; Sachs, Joel; Schonbrun, Sheila; Seltzer, Cheryl; Villamil, Victoria; Wu, Mia

Label: Naxos American Classics
UPC: 636943919422
Item Number: 8559194
Release Date: Mar 22, 2005