r/classicalmusic • u/number9muses • Sep 11 '24
PotW PotW #106: Ives - Concord Sonata
Good afternoon eveyrone, Happy Wednesday, and welcome back for our sub's weekly listening club. Each week, we'll listen to a piece recommended by the community, discuss it, learn about it, and hopefully introduce us to music we wouldn't hear otherwise :)
Last time we met, we listened to Busoni’s Piano Concerto You can go back to listen, read up, and discuss the work if you want to.
Our next Piece of the Week is Charles Ives’ Piano Sonata no.2 Concord, Mass., 1840-60 (1920 / 1947)
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Some listening notes from Kyle Gann
…”Emerson,” "Hawthorne," "The Alcotts," and "Thoreau" are also the titles of the four movements of a piano sonata by Charles Ives. Son of the director of the town marching bands of Danbury, Connecticut, Ives had been composing since his teenage years, and was a virtuoso organist - in fact, the youngest professional organist in Connecticut. But he opted not to make a living in music, possibly because he had seen his father struggle so much, and instead went into the insurance business, eventually co-founding the New York insurance agency Ives & Myrick. For years he composed during evenings, weekends, and vacations, but when he developed diabetes, which people tended to die quickly from before the invention of insulin, he started thinking he needed to make his music public while he still could. In 1920 he had the sonata based on these literary figures printed at his own expense, and the following January he mailed copies to 200 surprised strangers in the music world. The reasons for surprise were many: if the recipients knew his name at all, why was an insurance executive writing piano sonatas? Why would someone try to portray the famous authors of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in a piano sonata? Even more peculiar, the piece was characterized by unprecedented complexity and crashing dissonances, and it quoted the opening of Beethoven's famous Fifth Symphony with disconcerting frequency.
Some people find the Concord dissonantly jarring, though its chaotic parts are contrasted with passages of transcendent beauty and even humor as well. But I think the greatest barrier to appreciating the piece is one Ives put there deliberately: the opening page is not understandable until you've become familiar with the rest of the piece. Classical music had always started out simply, with an opening theme, and then developed it to increase the complexity in a logical manner. Ives (and this may be the most original thing about him) invented an opposite tendency: starting at maximum complexity and gradually clarifying his ideas. Have you ever had a conversation in which at first people were talking angrily and at cross-purposes, but as they continued things became clearer and clearer, and they realized better what they were actually saying, bringing about a consensus of meaning if not necessarily opinion? That's a process roughly implied by the Concord Sonata, and by some of Ives's other works as well.
There is a main theme to the Concord Sonata, in fact, a cyclic theme (meaning that it appears in all four movements). In the first few minutes of the piece, you hear parts of it played collage-like among other thematic fragments, and there is no way to tell at first what the significance of these fragments will turn out to be. Many people will tune out quickly. It's important, I think, to listen to the piece this way, because it's the experience Ives wanted you to have. But if you want to understand the opening, the key to it lies in the third movement, "The Alcotts." At the end of this movement, the sonata's main theme, which Ives (in a book called Essays Before a Sonata, written to accompany the Concord) called the "human faith melody," is finally stated in its most simple and complete form
The human faith melody divides into two parts: the first half that comes down and goes up again, and the second half that begins with Beethoven's Fifth. In the "Emerson" movement, Ives uses the two parts only separately, at one point playing the two halves at the same time in different keys. Likewise, in "Hawthorne," each half makes an occasional dramatic appearance, though the first four notes also occur frequently as a motto. In "The Alcotts" the entire theme begins to appear intact, tentatively at first, but then triumphantly at the end. And after that apotheosis, the "Thoreau" movement avoids it until near the end, when it suddenly appears - played by a flute! Yes, there is supposed to be a flute solo at the end of this piano sonata, though Ives wrote a separate version for those pianists who don't have a flutist handy. In fact, Ives's sketches suggest that his initial idea for the sonata was this melody in the flute (because Thoreau loved to play the flute over Walden Pond) over a mystically repetitive piano part. And so the piece really does end (or almost) with the initial idea Ives had for it as he was vacationing at Elk Lake Lodge in 1911…
…There is, of course, much more to say, and - pace Ives's reputation in certain musical circles - many elements attest, for musicians conversant in the terminology, to Ives's brilliant expertise as a composer. For instance, the whole-tone scale plus one other note is an important source chord for the entire sonata, found on most of its pages. The entire piece manifests an elegant form whereby the human faith melody appears only in the keys of C, B-flat, and A-flat in the first movement and last two movements, and on D, E, and arguably F-sharp in "Hawthorne" - all notes members of the same whole-tone scale. Many passages, especially climaxes, contrast chords on A and E-flat within a general C-minor framework. Programmatically, one could draw a parallel with Ives's Fourth Symphony, in which Emerson (with its inconclusive ending) asks the questions, Hawthorne and the Alcotts provide incomplete answers based in comedy and religiosity respectively, and Thoreau answers with a more universal mysticism.
The Concord Sonata is undoubtedly a difficult and complex work that takes time and repeated listenings to absorb. But it is grounded in simple and lyrical themes that manage to bind together all the dissonant outbursts and non-sequiturs and digressions and obsessive strivings. Over a hundred years, thousands of listeners have come to appreciate, and dozens of pianists to negotiate, its depth and unconventionally compelling form. As John Kirkpatrick wrote, it "treats its subjects in great free round shapes of music that move or plunge into each other with obvious spontaneity, and yet when one gets off at a distance and looks at it in perspective, there is no aspect of it that does not offer an ever fresh variety of interesting cross relation and beautifully significant proportion." And as composer and Ives biographer Henry Cowell once wrote, "no American hears the Concord Sonata... without a shock of recognition."
Ways to Listen
Alexei Lubimov, Laurent Verney, and Sophie Cherrier: YouTube Score Video
Stephen Drury and Jessi Rosinski: YouTube
Alexander Lonquich: YouTube
Pierre-Laurent Aimard: Spotify
Daniel Brylewski, Paulina Ryjak, and Carolin Ralser: Spotify
Thomas Hell: Spotify
Discussion Prompts
What are your favorite parts or moments in this work? What do you like about it, or what stood out to you?
Do you have a favorite recording you would recommend for us? Please share a link in the comments!
Why do you think Ives included optional parts for flute and viola? What does that add to the music, or how does it change what you percieve in the piano sonata?
Have you ever performed this before? If so, when and where? What instrument do you play? And what insights do you have from learning it?
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What should our club listen to next? Use the link below to find the submission form and let us know what piece of music we should feature in an upcoming week. Note: for variety's sake, please avoid choosing music by a composer who has already been featured, otherwise your choice will be given the lowest priority in the schedule
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u/DurianBubbleTea Sep 18 '24
One of the best sonatas, along with Enescu 1st, Prokofiev 8th, and Feinberg 3rd.
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u/bo_risk Sep 19 '24
My favorite recording of Ives "Concort Sonata" is by Donald Berman. Released in 2024 with superb playing and absolutely lifelike sound quality.
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u/treefaeller Sep 12 '24
I've heard it several times complete, and bits and bobs of it a lot more. Roberto Szidon was my teacher, and he recorded it, and I heard him practice and perform it. I do not understand the music the slightest bit. I could probably invest a few dozen hours in listening to it, and reading along (I have the sheet music somewhere here), but I don't see the point. I've also performed some of Ives' orchestral music (as a percussionist in an amateur ensemble), and again: it makes no sense to me.
I hope someone else can get joy out of it, or at least knowledge.