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May 28, 2009
Charles Ives, "Concord Sonata"
-- LINER NOTES --Produced by Leroy Perkins
Side 1
IVES: SECOND PIANO SONATA:
"Concord, Mass., 1840-60" (Beginning)
I-Emerson (13:35)
II-Hawthorne (10:02)
Side 2
SECOND PIANO SONATA:
"Concord, Mass. 1840-60" (Conclusion)
III-The Alcotts (4:40)
IV-Thoreau (9:38)
People often ask why this performance of Concord differs so from the published second edition. The only answer is to tell how the various versions grew.
It all started in 1904 when Ives sketched an Orchard House Overture (the Alcott house), of which only a half line survives, quoting Charles Zeuner's hymn Missionary Chant ("Ye Christian heralds, go proclaim..."). In 1907 Ives projected a series of Men of Literature overtures, the one on Emerson as a piano concerto--"the orchestra was the world and people hearing the piano...was Emerson." The overtures on Hawthorne (1909, for pianos) and on Thoreau (strings with flute and horn) were hardly more than imagined.
But in September 1911, "I got the idea of a Concord sonata, and...took the common themes from the Alcott overture and 'Fate knocking'" (the two themes common to all four movements: one Ives called "that human faith melody"--the other is a complex of Zeuner's hymn and Beethoven's Fifth Symphony). Hawthorne was finished that October, Emerson in 1912, and The Alcotts and Thoreau enough so that, later in 1912, "I played the whole sonata...though Thoreau I played partly from the sketch and with a few improvisations." By 1915 The Alcotts and Thoreau were also finished.
Parts of the sonata were simpler than the prototypes, and shorty after 1915 Ives made the beginning of Emerson into a separate piece more like the overture (the first of the Four Transcriptions From Emerson). In 1916 he used Hawthorne as the nucleus of the second movement of his Fourth Symphony and later reworked both into a piano fantasy, The Celestial Railroad.
In October 1918, Ives suffered his first heart attack, and during the long convalescence he wrote out the clear ink copy of Concord and finished the Essays Before a Sonata. No sooner were these privately printed, in 1919-20, than Ives again regretted some of his simplifications and excerpted three more transcriptions from Emerson. For many years he kept filling various copies of the first edition and of the transcriptions with pencil revisions. Every time he played any of it, he improvised new variants--"and I don't know as I ever shall write them out, as it may take away the daily pleasure of...seeing it grow."
In 1927 I saw a copy of Concord and was told to write Ives, and he sent me the sonata and the Essays. Penetration was gradual: In '32 I played The Alcotts, in '35 Emerson. Not having met Ives, I wrote him a questionnaire and he sent many explanations and photostats, saying "the printed movement is nearer Emerson...and I think you are right in keeping to that. The transcriptions seem to grow away from Emerson in some places...However, do whatever seems natural or best to you, though not necessarily the same way each time."
In '37 I finally met Ives, and while I could ask him things, I soon learned how he hated to be pinned down to a definite answer, preferring to make every thought a springboard. For instance, the one time I started to play Concord for him, hoping for criticism, all he wanted to do was to play me other pieces based on the same material--The Anti-Abolitionist Riots, bits of Hawthorne and The Celestial Railroad, etc.--and I never regained the piano stool.
By '38 I was playing the whole sonata, and Lawrence Gilman's review of '39--"the greatest music composed by an American"--helped to spread a contagious enthusiasm. Ives asked me to supervise the second edition, but being still mystified by many of his revisions, I procrastinated, and he did it all himself, helped by George Robert's clear copies of patches. After many proofs, it appeared in '47.
All this time I was understanding more and more of the revisions--Mrs. Ives had brought me an extra set of the third proofs--so that, whereas in the 30's I had modified the first edition with some of the revisions, by the 50's it was the other way around. Then when Ives died in '54, and it was my privilege to sort his manuscripts, the enormous extent of the source materials for Concord finally came to light. Every time I take it up again, some choices change.
Nearly all details of this performance that differ from the second edition are from one source or another--for instance: in Emerson, the fugato (pp.13-15) and the climax before the coda (bottom of p. 17) from the first edition; in Hawthorne, the hovering thirds above the second hymn (p. 34) from a sketch, the roll-off ending the march (p. 36) and the canon on "Three cheers for the Red, White and Blue" (p. 46) from the way I heard Ives play them; in Thoreau, the expanding wedge after the chords rolled inward (p. 65) from a patch, the omission of four beats two lines later from Ive's indication in several copies to do so, the flute passage as a fresh arrangement keeping the flute an octave higher (as Ives begins the piano solo version on p. 67). The march in Hawthorne (p. 35) has some naturals instead of flats which I once thought Ives might have meant that way (knowing how inconsistent his accidentals could be)--and even though the later proofs contradicted me, I still think Ives would have liked those naturals, as he liked the engraver's mistake in Thoreau (5th chord in the bottom staff of p. 61). He loved to surprise people, and it often struck his funnybone to be surprised himself.
An important distinction in the first edition became a footnote in the second: most of Emerson is labeled "(prose)" except the second theme (both times, p. 5 and p. 16) and the variations (pp. 8-11, corresponding to the scherzo movement of the overture), which are labeled "(verse)." Ives explained the prose as "not to be evenly played...the tempo is not precise"--and about Hawthorne, "it is not intended that the metrical relation 2:1 be held too literally." If this may seem to invite rhythmic chaos, it is more than offset by the way the rich logic of thematic transformation throughout the sonata requires a tightly organic integration. -- John Kirkpatrick
The cover photo of The Old Manse in Concord, Mass., is by Daniel and Juanita Farber. The house was built in 1769 by Ralph Waldo Emerson's grandfather, and Emerson wrote most of his first book there. In 1842, the house was leased to Nathaniel Hawthorne, who gave it its name and wrote much of his "Mosses From an Old Manse" there.
Engineering: Fred Plaut, Milt Cherin
Other recordings of the works of Charles Ives:
Three Places in New England (The Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, Conductor)...MS 6684
Symphony No. 3 ("The Camp Meeting"); Decoration Day; The Unanswered Question (New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, Conductor)...MS 6843
"Holidays" Symphony (New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, Conductor)...MS 7147
Sonata No. 1 for Piano (William Masselos)...Odyssey 32 18 0059
Originally from ANABlog, ReBlogged by newmusicrebloggers on May 28, 2009 at 05:12 AM