An Introduction to America’s Music

CHAPTER 8 | CHARLES IVES 201

Blessing” and “Sweet By and By”). Love of country and home; devotion to family

and to God—these are the communal values that music can express and sustain.

But for Ives, these songs derive their moral force not so much from their lyrics as

from their tunes. Even if their words are forgotten, Ives insists, the melodies still

“sing in my soul of the things our Fathers loved.”

IVES’S INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC

Ives’s instrumental compositions reveal many of the same traits as his vocal

works. Quotations, layering, and changes of voice abound, often leading to

jarring contrasts—quotations from Beethoven symphonies, for example, next

to fi ddle tunes and gospel hymns—and dense overlappings. In Putnam’s Camp,

Redding, Connecticut, for orchestra, Ives creates the illusion of two bands, each

playing a different piece, marching toward each other. In The Unanswered

Question a single trumpet repeatedly intones the same angular fi gure over a

string ensemble’s consonant, organlike chords while four fl utes respond with

growing agitation to the trumpet’s calls. Harmonic dissonance in Putnam’s

Camp comes to a head in a roar of cacophony, while in The Unanswered Question

clashes between layers come and go, each time yielding to the serene euphony

of the string background. In creating sounds that stretch the ears and minds

of listeners, Ives was following the lead of his intellectual heroes, Ralph Waldo

Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, who probed hidden unities and mysteries

of human existence.

The Concord Sonata, composed between 1904 and 1919 and printed in 1920

with the Essays before a Sonata, is the ultimate Ivesian synthesis. As Ives wrote,

it “is an attempt to present (one person’s) impression of the spirit of transcen-

dentalism that is associated in the minds of many with Concord, Mass., of over

a half century ago. This is undertaken in impressionistic pictures of Emerson

and Thoreau, a sketch of the Alcotts, and a scherzo supposed to refl ect a lighter

quality which is often found in the fantastic side of Hawthorne.” By honoring a

group of New Englanders in an esteemed European form, Ives declared the uni-

versality of both. By commemorating literary Americans linked to transcenden-

tal philosophy, he suggested their infl uence on his own outlook. By combining

sonata-style thematic development with quotation and layering, he proclaimed

their compatibility and his own command of the composer’s craft. By accompa-

nying his sonata with a book-length introduction, he admitted that a composer

of music like this had some explaining to do. And by having these items printed

at his own expense rather than adding them to his stock of unpublished manu-

scripts, he made a bid for public recognition as a composer.

For all its American subject matter, the Concord Sonata draws on the European

musical past in its large outlines, which resemble such monumental nineteenth-

century works as Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata. Only the last of its four

movements, “Thoreau,” breaks with the usual character of the European sonata.

Instead of taking the decisive tone of a typical fi nale, the movement begins softly,

mixes dreamy refl ection with livelier moments, and fades away at the end, with

the sound of Thoreau’s fl ute echoing over Walden Pond.

The end of the Concord Sonata suggests a prophecy Ives made a few years later

in the “Postface” to the 114 Songs. The art of music, he wrote, was progressing, not

The Unanswered

Question

the Concord Sonata

172028_08_183-204_r3_ko.indd 201 23/01/13 10:24 AM