20th
Century pioneer composer Charles Ives
Audiences and critics’
opinions over time.
Kenneth Walton, a music
critic for The Scotsman, offered
a dual characterization of "the
eccentric American composer, Charles
Ives" (1874-1954), in a May 2004
article republished in the Andante.com
website. Walton noted that "Some
have labeled him [Ives] the ‘great Yankee
maverick’; others have simply dismissed
him as a crank".
By offering and not
resolving these alternatives but letting
his most positive alternative use the
not particularly complimentary word,
"maverick", I conclude that
Walton isn’t particularly fond of Ives.
Let me try to talk about why Walton’s
caution may say something about musical
correctness constraints on contemporary
critics.
After formal musical
training at Yale (1894-98) Charles Ives
increasingly pursued unorthodox experiments
in his compositions, until at length
his music almost completely alienated
him from contemporary players and audiences.
His active composing was cut short after
1926 – though his insurance business
and other activities kept him financially
comfortable until his death in 1954.
Ives’ experimentation, not his relatively
conventional early pieces, earn him
recognition as a musical pioneer and
praise from the overwhelming majority
of leading musicologists, music historians
and music writers. He’s commonly regarded
as a composer of great stature (see
examples, below).
The Britannica
Book of Music (1980) summarizes
Ives as "A significant U.S. composer
whose innovations anticipated most of
the later musical developments of the
20th Century.".
Block and Burkholder, 1996, in Charles
Ives and the Classical Tradition
cite Igor Stravinsky, who " . .
. in a rare moment of candor . . . conceded
that Charles Ives had been The Great
Anticipator"; and quoted Arnold
Schoenberg as saying of Ives: "There
is a great man living in this country
. . . ". Gilbert Chase’s America’s
Music (3rd Edition, 1992)
summarizes: " By the time the 4th
Symphony had its belated premiere, Ives
had achieved international recognition
as a greatly original, immensely creative
composer, who gave new dimensions to
the vast and varied heritage of America’s
music." Chase’s opinions carried
much authority. His book has been termed
"A landmark of American musical
historiography", and received a
special commendation from the Sonneck
Society for American Music.
Ives' music is the
subject of Ph.D. dissertations, long
and respectful treatments in the New
Grove Dictionary, commemorative
volumes, and festivals. It is frequently
performed, accompanied by reverent program
notes. Time magazine once called
Ives ‘America's most important composer’. Ives
became the first American composer to
have a society dedicated to him (1973).
In contrast to the
above, comments on Ives as a "crank"
or other negative appellations by modern
experts are hard to find. The first
sour note about Ives that I saw was
on the back of an LP record featuring
the work of the middle 20th
Century American composer, Samuel Barber.
Barber was quoted, referred to Ives
as "a hacker".
Most New York Times
music critics celebrated Ives. However,
the Times’ late, audience-friendly
music critic, Harold Schonberg, referred
to Ives's contempt for "pretty
sounds" and his looking forward to the
time "in some century to come, when
the school children will whistle popular
tunes in quarter tones, when the diatonic
scale will be as obsolete as the pentatonic
is now" (Facing the Music,
1981). Another New York
Times columnist who took anti-establishment
tacks at times, Donal Henahan, delivered
a blow to Ives's image when he revealed
research demonstrating that Ives apparently
cheated by backdating some of his compositions once
he perceived that he was beginning to
achieve a reputation as a musical pioneer.
The most clinical evaluation
of Ives is by Nicholas Tawa in American
Composers and their Public (1995).
It’s worth mentioning that Tawa delayed
the latter book until after his retirement
as a professor of music at the University
of Massachusetts in Boston -because
of its candid analysis of 20th
Century composers (personal communication,
1994). Tawa points out that the Second
Symphony was one of the few Ives
works that the general public liked.
"Charles Ives
had long been John the Baptist to
modern innovators when Leonard Bernstein
and the New York Philharmonic played
his Second Symphony on 22 February,
1951….Ives quoted and contemplated
the meaning of nineteenth-century
American hymns, popular tunes, dances,
and Columbia the Gem of the Ocean.
Nowhere was the experimentation
of his later works in evidence.
…. Without affectation, the symphony’s
five movements reveal affection
for and a firm belief in the America
he knew. Bernstein said it conveyed
the real measure of Ives’s greatness
though it relied on normal procedures,
simplicity, and easy listenability.
At the work’s conclusion, a frenzied
and lengthy ovation broke out. It
showed how greatly the audience
had enjoyed the music."
Tawa then goes on to
describe the almost universal disapproval
by critics of the Second Symphony,
e.g. referring to "primitive quaintness",
or suggesting that in this early work
Ives had kow-towed to his conservative
teacher at Yale, Horatio Parker. These
criticisms contrasted with their praise
for Ives’ more iconoclastic works.
To me some of the clearest
analytical notes on Ives’ compositions
are by Hitchcock and Gann (Music
in the United States, 4th
ed., 2000), partly quoted in the following
passage. The above authors point out
a philosophical underpinning for cacophony
in Ives’ compositions in the idea that
"musical texture [with] coexisting
disparate elements does not threaten
order any more than, say in a forest,
the coexistence of trees, rocks, mosses,
flowers, animals, and insects threaten
order". The authors are enthusiastic
admirers of Ives’ polytonal and polyrhythmic
compositions, e.g. those whose tonally
and rhythmically disconnected parts
"movingly bring us in touch with
his faith in the harmonious coexistence
of disparate elements". Hitchcock
and Gann did not praise Three Pieces
for Two Pianos (1923-24). In this
late work the two pianos are tuned a
quarter tone apart, producing excruciating
discomfort, even potential physiological
nerve damage if continued, to normal
human ears.
Continuing from Hitchcock
and Gann, while Ives approved of "wrong
notes and off-key playing by amateur
musicians as ‘substantial music’ ",
it should not be assumed that his compositions
did not contain carefully constructed,
technically complex structural detail.
In Hallowe’en, a "cacophonic
spoof" for string quartet, piano
and drum ad lib, the 18-measure work
"rushes by in a blur", with
each string instrument playing in a
different key, with an atonal piano
part. The "the rigorous contrapuntal
texture of the string parts" is
pointed out by Ives as canonic not only
in tones, but in phrases, accents, and
durations or spaces.
In summary, nowhere
more clearly than in Charles Ives’ compositions
is the fundamental split between the
reception of compositions by nonprofessional
musical audiences more clearly differentiated
from that by the majority of professional
musicologists, music critics and composers.
The more audaciously experimental the
composition, and the less contemporary
audiences liked or understood it, the
higher its status was among the professionals.
Walton’s reluctance
to be more positive about Ives’ total
production is thus a negation of prevailing
scholarly and professional opinion.
But Walton seems reluctant to come right
out and say what he really thinks. I
speculate that Walton, as a professional
critic, doesn’t want the "maverick"
label that he offered as a best-case
label for Ives to be assigned to him
as a critic. I also suggest that other
music critics who lean toward the audience
view still have to use veiled and cautious
ways to express their opinions.
I have conducted a
random survey of articles by contemporary
professional music reviewers. That survey
suggests that a small but increasing
number of writers not limited to more
audience-friendly media like The
Scotsman, are edging away from the
formal music establishment’s commitment
to the renowned revolutionary compositions
that broke with the 500-year old traditions
of music practice in the early 20th
Century. The general public did not
understand or like this music when it
first appeared more than 85 years ago,
and its opinion has not changed.
The
View from the Audience
