Three Places in New England
Charles E. Ives (1874-1954)
Charles Ives was a man of paradoxes. Even in his youth, as biographer John Kirkpatrick points out, he was “irascible or very quiet, a normal athlete or pathologically shy, an Emersonian visionary but a hymn-singing enthusiast. . . .” Ives’ adult lifestyle was a constant paradox. By day, he was a successful insurance executive; by night and on weekends, he was an obscure, misunderstood composer. In his compositions, too, Ives was paradoxical. He was simultaneously an iconoclastic experimenter and a quoter of the most traditional hymns and patriotic American songs.
Ives’ orchestral trilogy, Three Places in New England, beautifully illustrates these tendencies as well as providing us with one of the finest works of a true American original. The composer began sketching the music in 1903, but he did not combine his sketches into this trilogy until 1912-14. In various versions, it was performed sporadically over the next 60 years, and not until 1972 was the original full-orchestra version revived and edited. Today, either this version or the theater/chamber orchestra version of 1935 is performed.
I. The “St. Gaudens” in Boston Common ( Co. Shaw and his Colored Regiment). Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907) was a famous sculptor. In Boston , a monument to Robert G. Shaw, colonel of a Negro regiment in the Civil War, was completed in 1897. In the score, Ives placed a text before each movement. For the first, Ives’ text runs:
Moving,—Marching—Faces of Souls!
Marked with generations of pain,
Part-freers of a Destiny,
Slowly, restlessly—swaying us on with you
Towards other Freedom!
The man on horseback, carved from
A native quarry of the world Liberty
And from what your country was made.
You images of a Divine Law
Carved in the shadow of a saddened heart—
Never light abandoned—
Of an age and of a nation.
Above and beyond that compelling mass
Rises the drum-beat of the common-heart
In the silence of a strange and
Sounding afterglow
Moving—Marching—Faces of Souls!
What to listen for: In this nostalgic mélange, listen for snippets from “Old Black Joe,” “The Battle Cry of Freedom” and “Marching through Georgia.”
II. Putnam’s Camp, Redding, Connecticut. About this place, Ives wrote:
Near Redding Center, Conn., is a small park preserved as a Revolutionary Memorial; for here General Israel Putnam’s soldiers had their winter quarters in 1778-1779. Long rows of stone camp fire-places still remain to stir a child’s imagination. The hardships which the soldiers endured and the agitation of a few hot-heads to break camp and march to the Hartford Assembly for relief, is part of Redding history.
Once upon a “4 th of July,” some time ago, so the story goes, a child went there on a picnic, held under the auspices of the First Church and the Village Cornet Band. Wandering away from the rest of the children past the camp ground into the woods, he hopes to catch a glimpse of some of the old soldiers. As he rests on the hillside of laurel and hickories, the tunes of the band and the songs of the children grow fainter and fainter; —when—“mirabile dictum”—over the trees on the crest of the hill he sees a tall woman standing. She reminds him of a picture he has of the Goddess of Liberty,—but the face is sorrowful—she is pleading with the soldiers not to forget their “cause” and the great sacrifices they have made for it. But they march out of camp with fife and drum to a popular tune of the day. Suddenly a new national note is heard. Putnam is coming over the hills from the center,—the soldiers turn back and cheer. The little boy awakes, he hears the children’s songs and runs down past the monument to “listen to the band” and join in the games and dances.
The repertoire of national airs at that time was meager. Most of them were of English origin. It is a curious fact that a tune very popular with the American soldiers was “The British Grenadiers.” A captain in one of Putnam’s regiments put it to words, which were sung for the first time in 1779 at a patriotic meeting in the Congregational Church in Redding Center; the text is both ardent and interesting.
What to listen for: “The British Grenadiers” and other Revolutionary War songs figure prominently, but Ives also alludes to “Marching through Georgia,” “Hail Columbia” and Sousa’s famous march “Semper Fidelis.” At one point the orchestra sounds like two bands playing two marches simultaneously in different keys and tempos.
III. from “The Housatonic at Stockbridge”. As a tribute to this famous river, Ives reprinted portions of the poem by Robert Underwood Johnson:
“Contented river! in thy dreamy realm—
The cloudy willow and the plumy elm. . .Thou hast grown human laboring with men
At wheel and spindle; sorrow thou dost ken; . . .Thou beautiful! From every dreamy hill
What eye but wanders with thee at thy will,
Imagining thy silver course unseen
Convoyed by two attendant streams of green. . . .Contented river! and yet over-shy
To mask thy beauty from the eager eye;
Hast thou a thought to hide from field and town?
In some deep current of the sunlit brown
Art thou disquieted—still uncontent
With praise from thy Homeric bard, who lent
The world the placidness thou gavest him?
Thee Bryant loved when life was at its brim; . . .Ah! there’s a restive ripple, and the swift
Red leaves—September’s firstlings—faster drift;Wouldst thou away! . . . . .
I also of much resting have a fear;
Let me thy companion be
By fall and shallow to the adventurous sea!”
What to listen for: Ives tells us, “This is to picture the colors one see, sounds one hears, feelings one has, of a summer day near a wide river — the leaves, waters, mists, etc., all interweaving in the picture, and a hymn singing in church across the river.”
Rhapsody in Blue
George Gershwin (1898-1937)
Toward the end of 1923, fashionable band leader Paul Whiteman told George Gershwin of his plans to mount a concert of jazz and jazz-inspired music early the next year. At the time, Gershwin may have casually mentioned an interest in composing a piece for piano and orchestra, but he was busy completing the song score to the musical Sweet Little Devil and gave the matter no further thought for the moment. So, it came as a surprise when the New YorkHerald Tribune of January 4, 1924 announced that the Whiteman concert (scheduled for February 12) would include a “jazz concerto” by Gershwin. Gershwin called Whiteman, who succeeded in convincing the composer to commit himself to the concert. The composer later stated:
There had been so much chatter about the limitations of jazz, not to speak of the manifest misunderstandings of its function. Jazz, they said, had to be in strict time. It had to cling to dance rhythms. I resolved, if possible, to kill that misconception with one sturdy blow. Inspired by this aim, I set to work composing with unwonted rapidity.
It was George Gershwin’s brother, Ira, who suggested the title Rhapsody in Blue. Gershwin finished the two-piano version of the Rhapsody in about three weeks. Because of his commitment to Sweet Little Devil and the short time before Whiteman’s concert, he turned the initial scoring job over to Ferde Grofé, Whiteman’s orchestrator. This first version was simply for jazz band and a few strings.
Finally, the night of the concert arrived with a full house and a star-studded audience, and the event began with words —
Mr. Whiteman intends to point out . . . the tremendous strides which have been made in popular music from the day of discordant Jazz, which sprang into existence about ten years ago from nowhere in particular, to the really melodious music of today.
(Hugh C. Ernst, introductory remarks to the audience)
— and that historical moment, playing the Rhapsody in Blue with Gershwin at the piano:
Somewhere in the middle of the score I began crying. When I came to myself I was eleven pages along, and until this day I cannot tell you how I conducted that far.
(Paul Whiteman)
The audience raved and so did most of the critics:
. . . It [the music] also revealed a genuine melodic gift and a piquant and individual harmonic sense to lend significance to its rhythmic ingenuity. . . . Mr. Gershwin will bear watching; he may yet bring jazz out of the kitchen.
(Deems Taylor)
The immediate and lasting popularity of Rhapsody in Blue was nothing less than phenomenal. Two years after its premiere, Gershwin reworked the score for symphony orchestra. That is the version we hear today, as writers continue their choruses of critical praise:
The Rhapsody in Blue is by no means a consistent or integrated masterwork. . . But the basic melodic and rhythmic material is so fresh and good, and is presented with such verve and spontaneity, that the work as a whole never loses its ability to excite the listener.
(David Ewen)
Variations on “I Got Rhythm”
George Gershwin (1898-1937)
The last 1920s-style, razzmatazz musical by George Gershwin and his lyricist-brother, Ira, was Girl Crazy (1930). Despite the show’s superficiality, it contained wonderful songs, including two great ballads: “Embraceable You” and “But Not for Me.”
Ginger Rogers starred in the show, but another cast member stole it. This was Ethel Merman, who made her Broadway debut in Girl Crazy. She introduced the world to Gershwin’s immortal song, “I Got Rhythm,” which became one of the composer’s personal favorites.
Gershwin’s piano variations on the famous song were composed mostly during a winter vacation in Florida in 1933. Ostensibly, this was also a trip to the South to collect local color to inspire the composer to begin composing Porgy and Bess. He spent three weeks at work on the Variations in Palm Beach, returning to New York early in January. There he quickly orchestrated his new piece in time for a tour beginning in mid-February. The final touch was the dedication, “To my brother Ira.”
When Gershwin later performed the Variations on the radio, he gave his listeners this brief but inimitable description of it:
After the introduction by the orchestra, the piano plays the theme rather simply. The first variation is a very complicated rhythmic pattern played by the piano while the orchestra takes the theme. The next variation is in waltz time. The third is a Chinese variation in which I imitate Chinese flutes played out of tune, as they always are. Next the piano plays the rhythmic variation in which the left hand plays the melody upside down and the right hand plays it straight, on the theory that you shouldn’t let one hand know what the other is doing. Then comes the finale.
Symphony No. 1
Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
In the years following his graduation from the Curtis Institute, Samuel Barber spent time traveling and composing in Europe under various stipends and grants. Between 1935 and 1937 he won the Prix de Rome and two Pulitzer Travel Scholarships. During his European residencies, Barber worked on the development of his orchestral style. The chief work of this period was his one-movement First Symphony, which he completed in Rome in February 1936.
On Barber’s return to the United States the following year, the symphony received its premiere from the Cleveland Orchestra. The reception of the first performances was generally good, with the New York Times critic even praising the slow section as being “rich in pathos and modulation . . . .” By 1943, Barber had done some revisions, notably the addition of a Scherzo section, completing the version in which we hear the work today.
What to listen for: The symphony is cast in one continuous movement but divided into four sections corresponding to the classical divisions of a symphonic work. Following the dramatic introduction, listen for three distinct themes that unfold over a span of time. These will become the building blocks of the entire opus. Barber goes to works right away, exploring their possibilities, but then he moves directly to the second section, a mercurial Scherzo. Listen to the main idea and relate it to the first theme, which you heard before. This springs from the string section, but soon there are comments from the flutes, clarinets and double-reeds. The intensity builds and then lightens to make way for the next section.
The nocturnal Andante tranquillo is remarkable for its overt but fitting romanticism. Over a “bed” of lush strings, a solo oboe spins a cantilena. Listen for the connection between this and the symphony’s second theme. As the section grows, new ideas and old mingle in a somewhat improvisatory way.
The finale section follows directly. Barber bases this on a repeating bass line (low strings). Notice that it is derived from the symphony’s first theme. Over this, new and old melodies unfold, and we soon recognize ideas from the third theme and others as well. Ultimately, a tense, emotion-laden final segment brings this broad-stroked symphonic drama to a close.
Program Notes by Michael Fink and Notes, Inc.
