Yet More Syndication, Day 4 – “Washington’s Birthday” from New England Holidays Symphony by Charles Ives

This week’s theme is…Yet More Syndication!  I’m hard at work on more great content for the weeks ahead.  Until then, enjoy just a few more of my favorite episodes in rerun 🙂

Yet More Syndication, Day 4 – “Washington’s Birthday” from New England Holidays Symphony by Charles Ives

There really isn’t anyone else with a story like Charles Ives.  Not that I can find anyway.  And I don’t think it’s a story anyone would think to write.  Growing up in late 19th century New England with all its hearty folk, his father George was firmly integrated within the established structures of the American military and Protestant religion, as band leader and Methodist church musician, respectively.  From George’s example Charles learned to respect and honor the cherished traditions of American civility, but with odd twists.  George may have inhabited contexts that valued proprietary and conservative expressions of artistry with the square, stodgy hymns and marches of his professional appointments, but he had a deeply eccentric streak that constantly threatened to bubble over, filling the corners of his family life with unpredictable yet exacting techniques, and inundating the young Charles with an abiding interest in coloring outside of the conventional lines.  Charles drank deeply from George’s encouragement to find the fun between the cracks of traditional music, harmonizing melodies in the wrong key, listening for quarter tones, putting different and contrasting musics together in cacophonous ways, and simply observing how music and other sounds behaved in their natural habitats, free of musical aesthetics overlaid in order to constrain their innate reactivity.

Charles took his father’s guidance to heart, and began to capture the quaint America that he knew in odd and original music that seems avant-garde to our ears, but is revealed to be sincerely American if we look a little closer.  It is not exactly right to label it as “avant-garde” as you might do with the music that was written simultaneously across the Atlantic Ocean; Ives’ music comes from a much different impulse, one that seeks to combine the lyrical American folk traditions he knew with a musicality that is simply unconstrained by traditional tonal boundaries.  And so, if you are able to hear past what sounds off-putting and difficult at first, you may find yourself unexpectedly rewarded by a sweet and unassuming voice that could come from the lad next door, taking you on a buggy ride through a village in New England, passing through picturesque snapshot after snapshot, each with its own kind of music, and all of them quaint and charming.  When we are out and about, hearing the sounds of our environment commingled into a cacophonous row it is not displeasing to us; Ives’ genius is that he takes this idea and works it into his music.  If you can hear that, his works become enjoyable, vivid, even entrancing.  You realize that what sounds harsh and assaulting at first as actually incredibly warm, inviting, and distinctly American in the best way.

Washington’s Birthday from the 4-movement Symphony of New England Holidays is a terrific example.  After getting to know this movement just a little bit, I find it surprisingly comforting, well-paced, inventive, and most enjoyable.  The first few minutes of the movement are made of cloudy, shifting harmonies and bleary orchestration.  Washington’s Birthday is on February 15th, always snowy in New England, and these first few minutes depict the slowly drifting snowy landscapes Ives would have trodden upon at this time of year.  I have to say he really captures something about a peaceful, if bitterly cold, snowy evening.  I can clearly picture the still drifts of snow, bathed in the dusty light of street lamps, with the occasional gust of wind which slightly changes their shape every so often.  As the cold intensifies and we tire of the walk, the nagging flute seeming to echo the discomfort of the cold, we eventually discover our destination: a festive barndance filled with fiddlers and Jews’ harp players.  In this section Ives, as he so often did, sought to illustrate multiple events in space, much like a musical 3-ring circus.  While you may think that anyone can layer different music together and call it a sonic experiment, the rhythmic vitality that pops out of the texture reveals Ives to be a masterful technician with solid craft.  Not just anyone could do this, even if you may think that 😉  Do you hear any songs you recognize?  It is a good exercise to listen for the different events that commingle into the cacophony and this helps to make it more enjoyable than you might think at first.  After an unexpectedly gorgeous and lyrical episode, “Good Night Ladies” eventually brings the dance to a close with the now somber revelers leaving the party.

While the sensibility that drove Ives to create his sonic adventures is not really like that of the European avant-garde, it resonated with them.  Schonberg, among others, greatly admired Ives’ imaginative, deeply personal and most uncompromising approach.  While this doesn’t surprise me, I think it is worth pointing out that Ives was responding to much different impulses than the European avant-garde musicians.  Musical invention for Ives seemed to be a game and challenge to constantly top his previous flights of fancy, all drawn from an eccentric and personal inner landscape.  It is not wrought with existential struggle or dread as I often note in the music of Schoenberg, Debussy, Hindemith, and their ilk.  Ives is always writing from a place of great optimism and good cheer.  And when he didn’t care who listened, it was not out of any indignant prophetic vision, but rather from a rugged, individualistic smugness.  Distinctly American, isn’t it?  Ives was not preaching doom on a street corner, urging repentance; he was encapsulating his America in a series of cheeky and affectionate puzzles that he worked through as a hobby on the weekends.

Had he been true blue avant-garde, writing out of apocalyptic philosophical convictions, he probably would have acted the part of the starving artist, forgoing the comforts of the good life in order to unleash his prophecy on humankind, no matter the cost.  But that was not Ives.  Instead, he made a fortune as president of the largest and most successful life insurance company in America, steadily producing his distinctly American music all the while.  He watched his work gain acceptance, praise, recognition and performances very gradually over the course of his life, but he was clearly not one so convicted to sacrifice the American Dream in protest of the public’s slow acceptance.  And it makes sense; his society did not demand an avant-garde.  It remained stable and optimistic well past the end of his life.  While we can listen to Schoenberg, Hindemith, or Shostakovich and have our souls darkened by existential angst, Ives may sonically affront us at first,but it does not take long to listen past the dissonances and hear the playful, optimistic American spirit at work just below the surface.

 

—

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Sublime Stillness, Day 4 – The Unanswered Question by Charles Ives

This week’s theme is…Sublime Stillness!  The mysterious art we call music refers merely to frequencies that fill the air around us, controlled in a specific way by its performers.  Technically this may be true, but we sense feelings and motions of intense clarity.  Sometimes the incredibly high density of musical events creates furious, busy textures.  And at other times achingly long-breathed sustained notes create a sublime impression of meditative stillness that seems to suspend time itself.  This week we look at some examples of this.

Sublime Stillness, Day 4 – The Unanswered Question by Charles Ives

 

One aspect of getting to know music that always astounds me is the value of repeated listenings.  The study of music history sometimes makes reference to the idea of “music literature”, which compares musical creation to the comparable art of crafting profound statements out of words.  I recently had a talk with an adult music theory student of mine who also takes organ lessons; he said that sometimes his friends can’t understand why a musician would devote so much time to analyzing, understanding and practicing one line of music that barely lasts 10 seconds.  What his friends don’t understand is that a great musical mind can pack even a brief passage full of incredible events and unexpected relationships.  Just as we sometimes need to repeatedly read a passage from Chaucer, Aristotle or Melville to draw out all of the layers of meaning and implications for the human condition, we must study, practice, perform and listen to great music to the same end.  Phenomenal minds have much to teach us, and some people do so by leaving their thoughts encoded into this mysterious language that we call music.  When enough people agree that a musical utterance is profound for some reason, we tend to call that music “great”; and if a composer produces enough of this kind of utterances and does so consistently, we tend to call that composer “great”.  The “great” composers and their “great” music form the study of what is called music history or music literature, and there is abundant treasure to found there.

I had a sense of this years ago, and sought to collect and listen to as many of the great classics as I could starting from a very young age.  I think that effort was marked by a certain immaturity, as I would often count the act of simply occupying the same room as the stereo while a compact disc played to the end as a listening.  But I realize now that it wasn’t necessarily; some music I listened to very attentively, but for much of it my mind was truly elsewhere, reading something, playing a computer game, or engaging in some other distraction.  Really listening to something is an all-consuming activity which requires 100% of your attention.  And when you are able to give that much, music that is really well-written, imaginative, and profound will always reward you somehow.

But it doesn’t often stop there.  If a great piece of music is really nourishing, it will reward repeated listenings.  Do you have a song, film, book, poem, restaurant, painting, or natural spot that you can revisit again and again, rewarded each time with a feeling of pleasure or a new insight into what makes it the wonder that it is?  Or maybe you more clearly discern the underlying structure with each new exposure, gaining appreciation for the brilliance of its construction.  All of these are the benefits of repeated exposure to art.

And people grow, mature, change.  If you listen to a piece of music now, and then listen 10 years later, it may as well be a different piece given how much different your experience will be in light of your experiences and education which have transformed you in the interim.  I have musical recordings that I listened to once in high school, but never since.  I can’t count the number of times that I have revisited something I listened to a decade ago to be astounded by some aspect I either didn’t notice, didn’t appreciate, or simply didn’t have the cognitive framework to understand back then.

Want to try an exercise in repeated listening with me?  Fantastic!  We’re going to listen to a very famous piece by the American Composer, Charles Ives (for more about Ives, see this post).  It’s called The Unanswered Question.  It lasts about five minutes and this particular video shows the score so you can follow along if you want:

 

What are your initial impressions?  Kind of bizarre, right?  If you know anything about Ives, then you know to expect the unexpected, and I would say this certainly delivers.  You were probably struck by the arresting stillness of the pervading string instruments, and the odd angularity of the trumpet and woodwinds.  Okay, let’s listen again…

It’s a little clearer now, right?  Starting to become a little more than a puzzling, shapeless mass of sound.  Did you notice that the trumpet has discreet entrances, answered by the woodwinds every time?  Great!  Good listening.  Let’s listen again…

At this point perhaps you have realized that the trumpet plays essentially the same motive every time it enters, and the response of the woodwinds, while similar each time, becomes more agitated and frenetic with each passing iteration.  And have you started to discern the texture of the strings with more clarity?  Okay, one more time…

At this point perhaps you have noticed that the trumpet plays 5 pitches in each motive, some ending on one note, and some on another, always completing almost half a tone row, but before they were cool.  Also, is the harmony of the string chorale becoming clearer to you?  Are you starting to notice a cohesiveness behind all of this, so that it doesn’t feel so disjointed and alien?  In my experience, Ives takes a few listens, but it almost always happens.  With literature of any sort you often have to trust your teacher, that there is deep value beneath the surface, waiting to be uncovered with enough investigation, just as so many prior appreciators have done.

But it’s always a little odd, isn’t it?  And it was written during the first decade of the twentieth century, half a world away from the place where you would expect musical experiments of this nature, although even these would only come a little bit later, most especially after the First World War.  That Ives was ahead of his time is well-known, but I think it is fascinating how warm his musical language actually is if you listen a little bit past the surface which is often so off-putting at first.

What is the “unanswered question”?  Naturally, it’s a little rhetorical.  But the trumpet insists on asking, even if the woodwinds’ answer fails to satisfy and becomes too stridently dogmatic.  The strings just play on, like a deistic universe, containing, but not ever really interacting with the questioner or its unsatisfying answers.  Was Ives searching for meaning himself in spite of living through America’s most stable years, and prospering himself?

Ives is one of those composers who essentially demands repeated listenings to even begin to make sense.  But so many others demand repeated listenings to unearth their full richness.  Whatever the nature, great literature, musical or otherwise, always rewards repeated exposure, within minutes, or over the course of a lifetime.

—

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Want to listen to the entire playlist for this week and other weeks?  Check out the Smart and Soulful YouTube Channel for weekly playlists!

Do you have feedback for me?  I’d love to hear it!  E-mail me at smartandsoulful@gmail.com

Do you have a comment to add to the discussion?  Please leave one below and share your voice!

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Music About Snow, Day 4 – “Washington’s Birthday” from New England Holidays Symphony by Charles Ives

This week’s theme is…Music About Snow!  Snow is one of those everyday miracles.  Not quite water, not quite ice, the enchanting and magical hybrid of water’s states of matter transforms many locales of privileged climate into the proverbial “winter wonderland” for several months out of each year.  Its imagery is powerful on many levels, from the blanket that coats the landscape to the stunning crystalline structure apparent upon more careful inspection.  It acts almost as a living creature with its own distinctive behaviors, interacting as it does with winter’s capricious wind and temperature changes.  Snow is a fresh, powerful and mysterious substance that has inspired musicians for centuries.  Survey the many ways musicians have effectively represented snow in their compositions.

Music About Snow, Day 4 – “Washington’s Birthday” from New England Holidays Symphony by Charles Ives

There really isn’t anyone else with a story like Charles Ives.  Not that I can find anyway.  And I don’t think it’s a story anyone would think to write.  Growing up in late 19th century New England with all its hearty folk, his father George was firmly integrated within the established structures of the American military and Protestant religion, as band leader and Methodist church musician, respectively.  From George’s example Charles learned to respect and honor the cherished traditions of American civility, but with odd twists.  George may have inhabited contexts that valued proprietary and conservative expressions of artistry with the square, stodgy hymns and marches of his professional appointments, but he had a deeply eccentric streak that constantly threatened to bubble over, filling the corners of his family life with unpredictable yet exacting techniques, and inundating the young Charles with an abiding interest in coloring outside of the conventional lines.  Charles drank deeply from George’s encouragement to find the fun between the cracks of traditional music, harmonizing melodies in the wrong key, listening for quarter tones, putting different and contrasting musics together in cacophonous ways, and simply observing how music and other sounds behaved in their natural habitats, free of musical aesthetics overlaid in order to constrain their innate reactivity.

Charles took his father’s guidance to heart, and began to capture the quaint America that he knew in odd and original music that seems avant-garde to our ears, but is revealed to be sincerely American if we look a little closer.  It is not exactly right to label it as “avant-garde” as you might do with the music that was written simultaneously across the Atlantic Ocean; Ives’ music comes from a much different impulse, one that seeks to combine the lyrical American folk traditions he knew with a musicality that is simply unconstrained by traditional tonal boundaries.  And so, if you are able to hear past what sounds off-putting and difficult at first, you may find yourself unexpectedly rewarded by a sweet and unassuming voice that could come from the lad next door, taking you on a buggy ride through a village in New England, passing through picturesque snapshot after snapshot, each with its own kind of music, and all of them quaint and charming.  When we are out and about, hearing the sounds of our environment commingled into a cacophonous row it is not displeasing to us; Ives’ genius is that he takes this idea and works it into his music.  If you can hear that, his works become enjoyable, vivid, even entrancing.  You realize that what sounds harsh and assaulting at first as actually incredibly warm, inviting, and distinctly American in the best way.

Washington’s Birthday from the 4-movement Symphony of New England Holidays is a terrific example.  After getting to know this movement just a little bit, I find it surprisingly comforting, well-paced, inventive, and most enjoyable.  The first few minutes of the movement are made of cloudy, shifting harmonies and bleary orchestration.  Washington’s Birthday is on February 15th, always snowy in New England, and these first few minutes depict the slowly drifting snowy landscapes Ives would have trodden upon at this time of year.  I have to say he really captures something about a peaceful, if bitterly cold, snowy evening.  I can clearly picture the still drifts of snow, bathed in the dusty light of street lamps, with the occasional gust of wind which slightly changes their shape every so often.  As the cold intensifies and we tire of the walk, the nagging flute seeming to echo the discomfort of the cold, we eventually discover our destination: a festive barndance filled with fiddlers and Jews’ harp players.  In this section Ives, as he so often did, sought to illustrate multiple events in space, much like a musical 3-ring circus.  While you may think that anyone can layer different music together and call it a sonic experiment, the rhythmic vitality that pops out of the texture reveals Ives to be a masterful technician with solid craft.  Not just anyone could do this, even if you may think that 😉  Do you hear any songs you recognize?  It is a good exercise to listen for the different events that commingle into the cacophony and this helps to make it more enjoyable than you might think at first.  After an unexpectedly gorgeous and lyrical episode, “Good Night Ladies” eventually brings the dance to a close with the now somber revelers leaving the party.

While the sensibility that drove Ives to create his sonic adventures is not really like that of the European avant-garde, it resonated with them.  Schonberg, among others, greatly admired Ives’ imaginative, deeply personal and most uncompromising approach.  While this doesn’t surprise me, I think it is worth pointing out that Ives was responding to much different impulses than the European avant-garde musicians.  Musical invention for Ives seemed to be a game and challenge to constantly top his previous flights of fancy, all drawn from an eccentric and personal inner landscape.  It is not wrought with existential struggle or dread as I often note in the music of Schoenberg, Debussy, Hindemith, and their ilk.  Ives is always writing from a place of great optimism and good cheer.  And when he didn’t care who listened, it was not out of any indignant prophetic vision, but rather from a rugged, individualistic smugness.  Distinctly American, isn’t it?  Ives was not preaching doom on a street corner, urging repentance; he was encapsulating his America in a series of cheeky and affectionate puzzles that he worked through as a hobby on the weekends.

Had he been true blue avant-garde, writing out of apocalyptic philosophical convictions, he probably would have acted the part of the starving artist, forgoing the comforts of the good life in order to unleash his prophecy on humankind, no matter the cost.  But that was not Ives.  Instead, he made a fortune as president of the largest and most successful life insurance company in America, steadily producing his distinctly American music all the while.  He watched his work gain acceptance, praise, recognition and performances very gradually over the course of his life, but he was clearly not one so convicted to sacrifice the American Dream in protest of the public’s slow acceptance.  And it makes sense; his society did not demand an avant-garde.  It remained stable and optimistic well past the end of his life.  While we can listen to Schoenberg, Hindemith, or Shostakovich and have our souls darkened by existential angst, Ives may sonically affront us at first,but it does not take long to listen past the dissonances and hear the playful, optimistic American spirit at work just below the surface.

—

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Do you have feedback for me?  I’d love to hear it!  E-mail me at smartandsoulful@gmail.com

Do you have a comment to add to the discussion?  Please leave one below and share your voice!

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