Breaking Time's Arrow

Matthew Mcdonald

Description

Transcendentalism in the music of Charles Ives

Charles Ives (1874–1954) moved traditional compositional practice in new directions by incorporating modern and innovative techniques with nostalgic borrowings of 19th century American popular music and Protestant hymns. Matthew McDonald argues that the influence of Emerson and Thoreau on Ives's compositional style freed the composer from ordinary ideas of time and chronology, allowing him to recuperate the past as he reached for the musical unknown. McDonald links this concept of the multi-temporal in Ives's works to Transcendentalist understandings of eternity. His approach to Ives opens new avenues for inquiry into the composer's eclectic and complex style.

Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Ives and Time
Part I: Three Dualities
1. God/Man: I Come to Thee and Psalm 14
2. Community/individual: Sonata No. 1 for Piano and String Quartet No. 2
3. Intuition/expression: "Nov. 2, 1920" and "Grantchester"
Part II: Contexts and Methodologies
4. Elements of Narrative: The Unanswered Question
5. Ives and the Now: "The Things Our Fathers Loved"
6. Cumulative Composition: Ives's Emerson Music
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Musique
• Histoire de la musique
• Technique musicale
• Technique musicale
• Techniques musicales
• MUSIC
• Multiple signal classification
• Criticism
• History of classical music traditions
• Theory
• Musicology
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 16 juin 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253012760
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Breaking Time s Arrow
MUSICAL MEANING AND INTERPRETATION
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MATTHEW McDONALD
Breaking Time s Arrow
Experiment and Expression in the Music of Charles Ives
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bloomington Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone [phone] Fax [phone]
2014 by Matthew McDonald All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McDonald, Matthew (Matthew James), author.
Breaking time s arrow : experiment and expression in the music of Charles Ives / Matthew McDonald.
pages cm - (Musical meaning and interpretation)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-01273-9 (cloth : alkaline paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-01276-0 (ebook) 1. Ives, Charles, 1874-1954-Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. II. Series: Musical meaning and interpretation.
ML410.I94M45 2014
780.92-dc23
2014012350
1 2 3 4 5 19 18 17 16 15 14
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Ives and Time
Part I: Three Dualities
1. God/Man: I Come to Thee and Psalm 14
2. Community/Individual: Sonata No. 1 for Piano and String Quartet No. 2
3. Intuition/Expression: Nov. 2, 1920 and Grantchester
Part II: Contexts and Methodologies
4. Elements of Narrative: The Unanswered Question
5. Ives and the Now: The Things Our Fathers Loved
6. Cumulative Composition: Ives s Emerson Music
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Preface
In 2001, I began researching the music of Charles Ives. I spent countless hours at the piano that summer, familiarizing myself with every score I could get my hands on. I particularly remember accompanying myself through the entire set of 114 Songs -quite a feat, as I m a pianist but no singer. Originally, I had outlined a thorough consideration of time and temporality in Ives s music, but, ultimately, a small portion of this outline ballooned into the entire project. After completing my thesis and converting one chapter into an article, I had no plans or desire to develop the material further, but after a few years, rejuvenated, I returned to the research as the partial foundation for a new book project. By this time, however, I had grown dissatisfied with much of my previous work and discarded it in favor of completely new material. I envisioned that this would be a definitive statement of my ideas about Ives s music, a culmination of my work over the previous several years. It eventually became clear, however, that I would never be fully satisfied with the book and could tinker with it forever; the printed version, inevitably, would always feel unfinished. Its fixed form belies the reality of my research, which would be better represented by the endless pages of notes and drafts on my desk and hard drive, many discarded or forgotten, their potential contribution to the whole left unclear or undetermined.
Around 1910, Charles Ives began work on what he referred to as an overture or concerto inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Originally, this was to be one in a set of several overtures devoted to great Men of Literature, but ultimately Ives made significant progress on only two. While composing the Emerson Overture, Ives developed some of its cadenzas as studies for solo piano, one of which he completed. After suspending work on the overture, Ives had no evident plans to develop the material further, but he later returned to it as the foundation for a new piece, the first movement of the Concord Sonata. For the Concord movement, however, Ives discarded much of the music of the overture and added a significant amount of new material. The first movement of the Concord, many believe, is the definitive musical expression of Ives s ideas about Emerson, and in 1920 Ives presented it to the musical community as the culmination of his work as a composer. Ives stated on many occasions, however, that he would likely never be fully satisfied with the music and could tinker with it forever; the Emerson music, inevitably, would remain unfinished. The fixed form of the Concord movement belies the reality of Ives s musical conception, which is better represented by the multiple versions and endless pages of sketches and emendations, many discarded or forgotten, their status unclear or undetermined.
At this point it may seem that I have been writing about Ives for so long that I can no longer separate my own creative process from his. But the parallels I have drawn are both genuine and unsurprising. Writing about music is in large part a creative act, and one that has much in common with writing music. Perhaps there are music scholars who produce essays like Mozart produced scores, but most of us, I suspect, follow the Beethovenian model. Academic writing, especially in the era of word processing, is largely a process of cutting and pasting, deletions and insertions. Like most pieces of music, the finished academic product presents itself confidently, with few traces of its convoluted genesis. But here is where the analogy with Ives s music ends. Ives s music is remarkable for the extent to which it bears the traces of its Frankensteinian construction. Pieces are often characterized by extreme fragmentation, stark juxtapositions of highly contrasting segments of music that are very often borrowed from other sources or from Ives s own body of work.
While studying Ives s compositional process, as when actually writing about it, I began to experience my scholarly work in parallel with Ives s compositional work. As I examined Ives s notoriously unruly manuscripts, the process of negotiating the photocopies (organized in folders within boxes), the manuscripts themselves (organized likewise), the printed scores, and the formidable catalogues of John Kirkpatrick and James Sinclair made me feel that I was being forced to channel Ives himself, to embody his peculiar sense of organization-or lack thereof-as I tried to keep these various documents, boxes, books, and other materials organized on the medium-sized desk assigned to me in the Yale music library and the growing number of trolleys at my side.
But channeling Ives is not an experience that holds much appeal. Ives is a fascinating and problematic figure. There is much to admire about his life and views, and much to be critical of as well. These topics require an even-handed approach, one that has too often been missing in studies of the composer and his music. Frank Rossiter drew attention to what he called the Ives Legend, brilliantly explicating the mythology through an eight-point dissection of an article by the critic R. D. Darrell (Rossiter 1975: 248-49). More recently, Gayle Sherwood Magee has pointed to the persistence of this legend and the advocacy role that shapes most scholarship and biography (2008: 2). Ives s musical output is exceptionally eclectic, which has always been a big part of its attraction for me. But although I love much of it, I ll freely admit that there are more than a few pieces I don t care for. And as for his ideas, they run the gamut from inspiring to repugnant.