Charles Ives: Piano Sonata No. 2, Concord, Mass.,

I wrote these programme notes for Christ Church Music Weekend, May 2016.

And there sits the little old spinet-piano which Sophia Thoreau gave to the Alcott children, on which Beth played the old Scotch airs, and played at the Fifth Symphony.

Chalres Ives (1874-1954) was not well-known during his lifetime, but posthumously he was one of the first American composers to reach international renown. Despite long periods of compositional inactivity and several (probably psychological) “heart attacks,” his output was fairly substantial, and rich in experimental harmonies, polytonalities (more than one key at once), and rhythms. He integrated this modernist experimentalism into traditional American idioms from his youth, resulting in a fascinating sound-world of nostalgia and progressivism.

Concord is a town in Massachusetts which became a remarkably rich literary centre in the 19th century. It is for the primary Concord transcendentalist writers that this piece's movements are named:

1. "Emerson" (after Ralph Waldo Emerson)
2. "Hawthorne" (after Nathaniel Hawthorne)
3. "The Alcotts" (after Bronson Alcott and Louisa May Alcott)
4. "Thoreau" (after Henry David Thoreau)

One of transcendentalism's central beliefs was in the inherent goodness of people and nature, and that society and its institutions corrupted the purity of the individual. Turning away from empiricism, the transcendentalists believed in the truth of the subject; of each individual's intuition.

In spite of this, Ives locates this work within the institution of Western classical music's canon. In the third and fourth movements which Sebastian will play this afternoon, you will hear clear quotations of the famous “fate” motif from Beethoven's fifth symphony referred to by Ives in these notes' opening quotation. Furthermore, in spite of Ives's experimental harmonies, the form of this piece bears strong resemblance to that of the traditional Beethovenian sonata, and his quotations are usually preceded by a bold yet sentimental “human-faith melody,” which appears time and again. Ives writes: “all around you under the Concord sky, there still floats the influence of that human-faith melody, transcendent and sentimental enough for the enthusiast or the cynic respectively … with a Beethoven-like sublimity.”

You will also hear reference to his place within American musical tradition in the “Missionary Chant” opening of “The Alcotts.” Bronson Alcott was a school teacher, and would reportedly whip himself if his students misbehaved, to show them that the “divine teacher” (God) was pained when his children misbehaved. Nevertheless, his zeal is softened in what H. Whiley Hitchcock describes as a “gentle, slightly blurred tintype portrait.” In contrast, Hitchock describes “Thoreau” as “outwardly calm, inwardly instense,” and laiden with “magic.” Unusually for a sonata, we hear a lone, haunting flute melody in this movement—an instrument which Thoreau himself played. In the following (rare) programme note, Ives writes,

[Thoreau] seems to move with the slow, almost monotonous swaying beat of this autumnal day …. His meditations are interrupted only by the faint sound of the Concord bell …. The poet's flute is heard out over the pond and Concord hears the swan song of that Day.

The complicated interaction between Ives's duel interests in transcendentalist aesthetics (what he calls the “substance” of art) and modernist structure (the “manner” of art) is laid out in his 1920 Essays Before a Sonata. As Philip Lambert acknowledges, Ives's writings “easily suggest incompatible views on technique and artistry,” and Philip J. Burkholder sees these grand, convoluted designs as “exalted ideals and purposes for music that … became impossible for [Ives] to live up to.” Yet this should not detract from an appreciation of his music. Here we have a bold (if not at times brazen) idealist, a skilled worker of complex and new harmonies, and subsequently a beautifully poetic piece of music. As Ives's foreword to the essays reads: "these prefatory essays were written by the composer for those who can't stand his music—and the music for those who can't stand his essays; to those who can't stand either, the whole is respectfully dedicated."