Charles Ives: Universe Symphony/Orchestral Set No. 2/The Unanswered Question (Centaur)
Probably purchased used at Jerry's Records
Like any self-respecting/self-loathing 61-year old urban liberal, much of my terrestrial radio listening time is devoted to the local NPR affiliate. In this case it's WESA, the former WDUQ. There's some jazz programming on the weekends (local and syndicated) but mostly their airwaves are taken up by various non-local news/news-talk shows.
Sometimes they feature spots and interviews with musicians. Generally it's a current "independent" (whatever that means these days) pop singer of some sort, very broadly defined.
I'll defer to my father, who commented to me that nearly all of the music featured on these shows is, I think the word he used was "terrible." I'm probably more sympathetic to some of them than he is, but I think he's by and large on the nose. They're almost always boring interviews, and I rarely hear anything featured that I believe to be especially interesting. Or even good.
So it was refreshing to hear a feature spot a week or two ago regarding Charles Ives. I forget which show, perhaps All Things Considered? Or 1A? It doesn't matter.
Part of the reason was due to the sesquicentennial of Ives' birth. They played a recording of him singing and playing piano (I think the host said "so-called singing"). There were the general facts about Ives, making his money in insurance, not getting most of his performances until after he retired from composing. I don't remember mention of his father, who is supposed to have taught Charles and his sister to do things like sing pieces in two different keys at once. Special mention was made of the Concord Sonata and its difficulties.
The story, the music excerpts, were far more interesting than anything more current I've heard featured on the same programming. In addition to his interest in Emerson and Thoreau, they referred to him as a good-old fashioned New England abolitionist, a fact I found to be very encouraging. (Supposedly he was not so tolerant of Henry Cowell's homosexuality. We're all of our times I guess, and if I'm wrong about that I will happily wipe out this text.) The story also mentioned that more attention is being paid in Europe to Ives' birth anniversary, something that doesn't surprise me in the least. There's far more money to be made in America for orchestras to play programs of video game music than anything by Ives.
Universe Symphony was Ives' last huge unfinished work. He was concerned enough with it to have left notes prior to his passing. The task was taken up by composer Larry Austin some two decades later, or more accurately that's whose reconstruction is recorded here. It's set for multiple orchestras, so the recording must be a pale experience compared to sitting in the middle of this sound created by Ives and his editors. It starts slowly, very slowly, for a good long while, with bubbles of activity popping up here and there. It's a continuous work defined by sections "about" past, present, and future. It's worth a listen, even if I can't be certain of how it compares to Ives' own vision of the work.
The first and third movements of Orchestral Set No. 2 are among favorites in the Ives canon. The first is a bit of an uneven dirge based on a minor third, with various familiar melodies interwoven. For example, I clearly recognized "Yes, Jesus Loves Me" in the mix. The third, "From Hanover Square North, at the End of a Tragic Day, the Voices of the People Again Arose". While that may seem needlessly wordy, the piece was inspired by a real life event witnessed by Ives: a train station of people raising their voices together in hymn upon hearing the news of the sinking of the Lusitania. It captures the feeling remarkably, and was supposed to have been one of Ives' favorites among his works.
Then of course the CD ends with that old favorite, "The Unanswered Question". It brings to mind for me the second-to-last paper I wrote as a graduate student, taking on the question of polymensural, polymetric, and polytemporal music. (It's the earliest example of the latter I could cite.)
I'm going to have to put on more Ives in the near future, including the LP box set that includes his singing that bothered that stuckup NPR host.
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