Meet Charles Ives

So did you ever just sat still for a while and quietly observe the workings of your mind? I mean, does it not just go anywhere and everywhere—on its own—right? Thoughts about the past; thoughts about the present; thoughts about the future… Inspired thoughts; thoughts you might be embarrassed to share with anyone… But no, this is a music blog, not a blog about meditation.

Now imagine that you can spontaneously write down all these thoughts—like James Joyce writing in what came to be called train of thought.

Further, imagine that these thoughts  you are thinking, observing, and writing down—these thoughts which are images and feelings—are being heard by you as music—as melodies, harmonies, and rhythms, and that your skill is such that you can orchestrate them in any way and any compositional style that please you.  Well, if you can imagine all that, then meet Charles Ives.

Charles Ives, the illustrious American composer, was born in Danbury, Connecticut in 1874, long before the age of computers, sampling, and digital recording techniques. He was the son of George Ives, a talented and far-thinking church organist, who encouraged his son to hear and play different melodies in different keys and different meters—all at the same time. It is told that George Ives even arranged for different bands to march around the Danbury town square playing different pieces of music so that his son could experience the effects of the changing relationships of the sound sources on his musical ear.

Add to this musical background the fact that Charles Ives considered himself a Transcendentalist in the fashion of the great American thinker and writer Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Transcendentalists shared many philosophical views with followers of the Masonic traditions of the time. These are the same teachings that inspired such great composers as Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. What did they believe? In this brief quote from an 1842 lecture at a Masonic Temple in Boston, Emerson said the following:

“The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx of light and power; he believes in inspiration, and in ecstasy. He wishes that the spiritual principle should be suffered to demonstrate itself to the end, in all possible applications to the state of man, without the admission of anything unspiritual; that is, anything positive, dogmatic, personal. Thus, the spiritual measure of inspiration is the depth of the thought, and never, who said it? And so he resists all attempts to palm other rules and measures on the spirit than its own.” – copied from the American Transcendentalism Web http://transcendentalism-legacy.tamu.edu/authors/emerson/essays/transcendentalist.html

The Transcendentalists set themselves apart from what they called the Materialists. Simply put, a Materialist believes in the supremacy of the material universe. To the Materialist, the material universe is reality—a reality that to the Transcendentalist proves itself to be passing, transitory, and ultimately inferior to the eternal realm of higher consciousness, inspiration, and ecstasy.

I speak of this transcendental perspective because I find it in the music of Charles Ives.
I am not satisfied with the idea that it just a description, or even an exploration, of life he experienced in his world of Danbury, Connecticut, or even  that world seen through the eyes of a modern classical composer exploring new musical realms and pushing old musical boundaries. I believe that Ives grappled with the tensions that exist between the consciousness of the Transcendentalist and the consciousness of the Materialist. I believe that this grappling can be heard to one degree or another in all of Ives’ music.

Familiar tunes, often spirituals and church hymns momentarily establish themselves only to fragment and ultimately drown in other tunes and harmonies. In other words, nothing lasts for very long in Ives’ music. Things come and go, sometimes many things come and go at once; is this not a valid description of life? Religious hymns and spirituals, popular songs, music quoted from other composers, all entwine, vie for one’s attention, and ultimately go—disappear— swallowed up—lost in time.

A most interesting piece of music by Charles Ives is his, The Unanswered Question. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkaOz48cq2g

I suggest this link because it shows the notation, but is a rather short version.  The one I most enjoy is the 7 plus minute version by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and chorus, Michael Tilson Thomas conducting. Please listen to the piece on the best sound system possible or, at least, through really good headphones.

There is a continuous backdrop of shifting consonant harmonies in the strings sounded sans regular rhythm and definitive phrases. The music just flows on like a gentle unimpeded stream. Does it represent the eternal, the transcendental?

At measure 16, a little over a minute into the piece, a five note motif is sounded by a horn against the strings.  Beginning with a descending diminished 7^th, the sound is dissonant and unsettled and lasts no more than a few seconds. Is this the question? What it is? And who is asking it?

The harmony of the strings—could it represent Pythagoras’ Harmony of the Spheres?—seems unmoved, unaffected by the question. The piece goes on like that. The constant strings, the persistent, sometimes disturbed, questioning of the horn, until in the end, the strings win out—or at least, are the last to be heard. Is the question resolved in the eternal harmony of the spheres? Or unlike the music by which Ives represents it, is there really any end to the ‘real’ Unanswered Question that Ives represents?—And what, if anything, does it all mean?