CHARLES IVES ( 1 874-1 954): AMERICAN ARCHETYPE OR ENIGMA?

I remembertalking withJohn Kirkpatrick back in the early 1970's in connection with a performing edition of Ives' Celestial Rail- road that I was preparing. Kirkpatrick, already legendary for his 1939 premiere of the Concord Sonata, related how, after working on the piece foryears, hevisited the composer with theintention of performing it. Years later the disappointment still lingered in his voice as he told me that lves was not interested in his performance or the piece, but rather the composer proceeded to im- provise on the Concord materials, creating a new piece on the spot. It is this restless spirit of change and lack of commitment to any definitive version of a work that makes lves so fascinating to other composers.

Like Mahler and Debussy, lves inherited the cosmic sense of one's complete musical output as a single, giant, all-encompassing work. This legacy from Wagner's Ring Cycle cast more limited notions of stylistic unity. lves fits the Wagnerian model in that, in the case of Essays before a Sonata, he writes about the larger implications of the Concord and its philosophical roots.

Maynard Solomon, in a recent brilliant article (IAMS, Fall, 1987) further enlarges

-- on thiscomplex artist. Thecruxof Solomon's arguments hinges on Ives' redating and perpetual revising of early pieces in later years in order to makethem more revolution- ary and to create a now accepted path- finder image for himself. Solomon contends that lves went so far as to create a persona for his father as the Great Innovator to install himself as the intellectual as well as actual heir. Charles and his wife, Harmony, were unable to have children of their own, a fact used by Solomon to develop the lves father and son competition. "Unable to surpass his father in his most fundamental roles and perhaps hoping to avoid reprisals for imag- ined transgressions, we may surmise that lves was impelled to make his father his permanent collaborator, idealizing their re- lationship, purifying his own motives, and professing a filial piety of immaculate qual- ity." (p. 446) W e might speculate that the image was born of a kind of self-created myth: naturally, he is lifted out of the mun- dane and raised up as a high priest of the incipient Avant-Garde.

Interestingly enough, Solomon points out that nowhere in Essays Before a Sonata or Memos does lves discuss his musical influences. W e would almost imagine that his works sprang Mivewa-like from some creative wellspring. Ifwe accept some of the later dates for his works, then the influences

of Debussy, Ravel, Scriobin, Stravinsky, ore plausible. The works themselves, therefore, represent more of a synthesis of syntax. Ultimately the significance of the two Piano Sonatos must rest on their intrinsic worth.

The First Sonata and the Piano Sonata No. 2 "Concord Mass., 1840- 1860" have been in the pianistic repertoire for about fifty years. Now that the novelty of the great size technical difficulty has worn off we can begin to look at them in the same way that we evaluatea Beethoven or Chopin Sonata. In the sense that these are multi-movement works, expansive and virtuosi, they superfi- cially resemble the earlier Romantic works; however, structurally, there is little similarity. The Wagnerian protocinematic sweep per- vades both sonatas, and the musical mate- rials of these works spill out their temporal boundaries into scores of other pieces.

Without generating a tiresome schol- arly catalogue of all references, I will try to describe the proliferation of the materials just in the "Hawthorne" movement of the Concord Sonata: If we label the succession of musical events by letters ofthe manner: A (AMP score p. 2 1-22, system 1 ), B (22.2- 23. I), C (23.2-24. I), D (24.1-26.3) transi- tion (E), F (27.1-28.2), G (28.2-28.3), H (28.3-29.1), 1 (29.1-.4) G' (29.4-30) ex- tended H (31.2-33.1), K (Chorale) (33.1-

34.2), K' (34.2-35.2), L (Morching Tune: 35.2). This succession of event tokes us to the climaxof the movement, roughlytwo thirdsof the way through. Celestial Railroad uses most of the same materials in the following order:A,W,B,X,E,Z,J1,G,J,G,H,K,K', Z (from a later section in "Hawthorne"), L (The Marching Tune leading tothe end of the piece).

W e can complicate matters by observ- ing that the Second Movement of the Fourth Symphony begins with the W material of Celestial Railroad as one layer in the solo piano part. The L section, with the Morching Tune of unknown origin is, itself a transplant to the "Putnam's Camp' movement of Three Places in New England, which is, itself a grafting on of two earlier pieces: "Country B a n d March (1 903) and Overture and March: "1776", the only completed portion of Ives' opera, Major John Andre (1 903- 04). The fact that no definitive version of either piano sonata can be made, since the scores, particularly that of the Concord So- nata, abound with alternative readings, makes a strong case for my previous asser- tion.

What emerges from these observations is a picture of an artist who is truly likeJanus: firmly looking back at the Romantic artifice, and tentatively pointing the way to theTwen-

tieth Century Art of the Future. The obvious reordering of musical materials in the above examples demonstrates a sense of the rela- tionship of materials to structure that could be applied to the Twelve-Tone Music of Schoenberg or the Sound Mass construc- tions of Ligeti or Lutoslawski. Yet, with his firm grounding in the traditions of Europe by way of studies with Parker at Yale, lves comfortably embraces both eras.

Before describing the two monumental works presented here, itwould be instructive to review some features of Ives' life. Born and raised in Danbury, Connecticut, the composer's solid background of American values and New England common sense permeated his earlier years. His father was a Civil War band leader, and his mother sang in the local church chair. On the surface, these musical influences appear to be a clear contrast to the heavy European tradition lves learned at Yale (1 894-98), where he was a student of Horatio Parker. Our earlier discussion implies thatthe some- what simplistic Party Line, perpetuated by lves himself, had all the makings of a full- blown American Myth. We learn from a score of biographies of the influences of Emerson and Thoreau, and of Ives' determi- nation towrite music on his own terms, while pursuing a career in insurance. He held the position of a church organist from 1889-

1902, his lost professional musical associa- tion. A heart attack in October 19 18 forced him to reevaluate his creative activities, and after 1 92 1 much of his music underwent the aforementioned continual recomposition.

In an article in 1925 for the Pro Music Quarterly lves writes in some detail about his father's alleged experiments: "My father had a weakness for quarter-tones in fact he didn't stop even with them. He rigged up a contrivance to stretch 24 or more violin strings and tuned them up to suit the dictates of his own curiosity." In the light of recent research, we cannot really determine the boundary between Ives' self deception and an accurate report of his father's activities. How many American statesman were born in a log cabin, fought with Davey Crockett, and committed other spurious historical gallantries? In the final analysis, the works of Ives, particularly the two piano sonatas, The Second Quartet, The Unanswered Question, numerous songs, and a handful of orchestral works stand on their intrinsic merits: they are remarkable regardless of who created them and why. No composer is as good as his music (witness the image of a vulgar and arrogant Mozart, shocking audiences in Amadeus). The essential traits of this restless voyager over the edge of the changing environment that could always stand a little more bending and twisting:

"When I was a boy, I played in my father's brass band, usually one of the drums. Except when counting rest, the practising was done on a rubber-top cheese box or on the piano. The snare and bass drum parts were written on the same staff, and there were plenty of dittos (./.).

In practising the drum partson the piano (not on the drum-neighbours' requests(, I remember getting tired of using the tonic and dominant and subdominant triads, and Doh and Soh etc. in the bass. So [I] gat to trying out sets of nates to go with or take-off the drums-for the snare drum, right-hand notes usually closer together- and for the bass drum, wider chords. They had little to do with the harmony of the piece, and were used only as sound-combinationsas such. For the explosive notes or heavy accents in either drum, the fist or flat of the hand was sometimes used ..." (Memos, p. 42). W e must admire the composer's childlike sense of won- deratthe unknown, and indispensableelement

in all of his music. Years later, Clara Sipprell, the portrait photographer, describes lves at the sitting: "As I think of him with Mrs. lves standing at my door I still laugh. There he stood, hat cocked on one side, and an expression that said "I dare you." They were two of the loveliest people I've ever known but Mr. lves couldn't quite makethegrade. he wasstill a rebel. When I began to make pictures of him he blew out his cheeks, sat on his hands, acted like a contrary child. I never had such a time." (Moment of Light). lves profoundly apologized afterwards to the photographer.

First Sonata Lou Harrison in his Preface to the 1954 Peer

edition, sees the piece in the tradition of Beethoven's Hammerklavier, and Liszt's B Mi- nor Sonata: "this - is probably the penultimate romantic sonata, the same com- poser's Concord probably the last, for it is almost unthinkable that a workof this kind might bewritten nawor in the