Breaking Time's Arrow: Experiment and Expression in the Music of Charles Ives
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Breaking Time's Arrow: Experiment and Expression in the Music of Charles Ives
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Overview
Charles Ives (1874–1954) moved traditional compositional practice in new directions by incorporating modern and innovative techniques with nostalgic borrowings of 19th century American popular music and Protestant hymns. Matthew McDonald argues that the influence of Emerson and Thoreau on Ives’s compositional style freed the composer from ordinary ideas of time and chronology, allowing him to recuperate the past as he reached for the musical unknown. McDonald links this concept of the multi-temporal in Ives’s works to Transcendentalist understandings of eternity. His approach to Ives opens new avenues for inquiry into the composer’s eclectic and complex style.
“A trenchant and intellectually expansive reading of Ives’s relationship to time by connecting several compositions, and indeed, the composer’s larger conceptualization of the past, present, and future?to the Emersonian concept of the “everlasting Now.” This book is a wonderfully written, important contribution to scholarship on the music of Charles Ives.” —Gayle Sherwood Magee, author of Charles Ives Reconsidered
“McDonald investigates both the temporal and spatial effects of multidirectional motion, as well as its ramifications for understanding some of the larger philosophical issues that are raised in Ives’s music.” —Music & Letters, May 2015
“McDonald brings together analytic and personal factors to sharpen the image of the composer in convincing ways. . . . This book . . . deserves a close reading. The bibliography provides a select list of scores and recordings as well as articles, books, catalogues, and unpublished commentaries. This book is recommended for college and university libraries and for readers with a music theory background.” —Music Reference Services Quarterly
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780253012760 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Indiana University Press |
| Publication date: | 12/22/2021 |
| Series: | Musical Meaning and Interpretation |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 292 |
| File size: | 8 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Matthew McDonald is Associate Professor of Music at Northeastern University.
Read an Excerpt
Breaking Time's Arrow
Experiment and Expression in the Music of Charles Ives
By Matthew McDonald
Indiana University Press
Copyright © 2014 Matthew McDonaldAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-253-01276-0
CHAPTER 1
God/Man: I Come to Thee and Psalm 14
I Come to Thee
In his aesthetic history of Ives, J. Peter Burkholder divided Ives's life and compositional career into six periods (1985: 43–44). These continue to provide a useful and influential means of thinking about Ives's artistic development. The music of the first two phases, "boyhood" (1874–94) and "apprenticeship" (1894–1902), was relatively traditional. As Burkholder described, Ives composed primarily "sentimental parlor songs, pieces for his father's band, and organ and chorus pieces" during his Danbury youth and "large romantic works in the mold of his teacher [Horatio] Parker" while at Yale and during his first years in New York (1985: 43). Seeking to serve justice to the eclecticism that characterized Ives's music from early on, however, Burkholder also stressed Ives's early experimentalism, inherited from his father. As Burkholder noted, the radical techniques that the young Ives was developing often found their way into pieces that are not generally considered experimental: "Ives later incorporated many of the ideas he had first developed in his 'memos in notes' into his music for public performance, first in his church music.... Yet in these pieces, the new techniques were often less rigorously handled than in the experimental works, for in his concert music Ives was concerned not with technique for its own sake but rather with musical and emotional effects" (1985: 49).
The notion that Ives, in his more conventional early works, employed experimental techniques in limited, strategic ways toward expressive ends is useful for making sense of the idiosyncratic blend of convention and experiment that often characterizes these pieces. It would be natural to understand this interplay between traditional and innovative compositional techniques as merely the byproduct of a composer developing his own distinctive musical voice, but, as Burkholder suggested, this aspect of Ives's development was more purposeful: from an early stage, and more and more throughout his career, Ives used the tension between tradition and innovation as a means of expression.
An excellent example is I Come to Thee, a short devotional piece for SATB choir which Ives composed around 1896–97, or possibly as early as 1889 (Sinclair 1999: 289–90). My analysis is based on Ives's pencil sketch and ink score (f5927–32); John Kirkpatrick's critical edition (Ives 1983) takes some problematic liberties with these sources, as I discuss below. The first page of the pencil sketch, which contains Ives's setting of the first two stanzas, is reproduced in Example 1.1.
The text derives from a hymn by Charlotte Elliott:
God of my life! Thy boundless grace
Chose, pardoned, and adopted me;
My rest, my home, my dwelling-place!
Father! I come to Thee.
Jesus, my hope, my rock, my shield!
Whose precious blood was shed for me,
Into Thy hands my soul I yield;
Saviour! I come to Thee.
Spirit of glory and of God!
Long hast Thou deigned my guide to be;
Now be Thy comfort sweet bestowed!
My God! I come to Thee.
I come to join that countless host
Who praise Thy name unceasingly;
Blest Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!
My God! I come to Thee.
Elliott's hymn adopts a similar theme as "In the Sweet Bye and Bye," the faithful anticipation of union with God in heaven, but from an individual rather than collective perspective. Each of the first three stanzas juxtaposes past and present tenses; the fourth uses only the latter. The implied trajectory is from the past (the persona was chosen, Jesus's blood was shed for her, etc.), to the present ("I come to Thee"), to the future (the imminent union) and, ultimately, eternity ("praise Thy name unceasingly").
The structure of the hymn implies a simple strophic setting: each stanza scans similarly and ends with the words of the title. Ives did not set out to compose a straightforward hymn, however, but instead to construct his own idiosyncratic form. Thus he was not wedded to the original text. Whereas he took few liberties with Stanzas 1, 3, and 4, Ives reordered and built upon the lines of Stanza 2, discarding the original rhyme scheme in the process. His version places greater weight on the stanza in relation to the others and emphasizes in particular the name of Jesus and his act of self-sacrifice:
Jesus, whose blood was shed for me,
Jesus, whose precious blood was shed for me,
Jesus, Jesus, my strength, my faith, my hope, my rock, my shield,
Into Thy hands my soul I yield, my life, my all,
I come to Thee, I come to Thee.
The adventurousness of Ives's musical setting of this stanza stands apart from the others as well. Overall, Ives's setting of the hymn rests fairly comfortably in the familiar chromatic tonal idiom of nineteenth-century Protestant hymns, with F major an unequivocal tonal center. But Ives's intention to depart from the associated musical conventions of such hymns is evident by the end of the first stanza. Rather than affirming F major with a tonic cadence at the end of the textual refrain, as one would expect in a traditional strophic setting, the titular words are set to a half cadence (m. 7), implying, perhaps, a consequent phrase. The music of the second stanza (mm. 8–27) then veers away from that of the first in its tonality and proportions. F major is temporarily abandoned in favor of harmonic ambiguity and unusual chromatic voice leading (mm. 8–16), and the duration of the entire stanza is about three times that of the first. But the music of Stanza 2 turns out to be an aberration: the remainder of the piece is stylistically consonant with the opening phrase. Stanza 3 (mm. 28–35) reprises the music of Stanza 1, and whereas the fourth stanza strays from F major, it is not marked by the harmonic and melodic eccentricities of the second and its proportions are extended only slightly. Figure 1.1 summarizes the overall form of the piece, giving a sense of its skewed proportions; passages that are essentially identical musically are shaded and aligned vertically.
From his early works onward, Ives's musical forms tended to be situational, determined less by preexisting musical conventions than by the form of the ideas or experiences he wished to express. This attitude shaped Ives's approach to text setting as well; his setting of I Come to Thee seems to have been informed not by the abstract form of the text itself, but rather by the meaning of the words. For instance, Ives clearly structured the piece around the arrival of the line "Blest Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!" in Stanza 4, where the members of the holy trinity, isolated in Stanzas 1–3, are brought together. This line is sung in mm. 39–41 and immediately repeated in mm. 41–44, where the piece reaches its registral apex (m. 42), as well as its highest dynamic (fff) and fastest harmonic rhythm (mm. 42–43). Mm. 8–16 hardly seem to belong in the same composition as this grandiose and gaudy climax. The passage is transcribed in Example 1.2, along with the subsequent transition back to F major in mm. 16–18. The horizontal slashes in most of the measures were Ives's means of notating the absence of one of the voice parts from the texture. In this passage, Ives seems to have been drawn to the fleeting reference to the crucifixion, featured prominently in his recasting of the text of Stanza 2, as shown above. The convoluted chromaticism evokes the passion, and the descending semitonal gestures of mm. 11–12 and 15–17 respond with cries of lament.
The episode is not only musically anomalous but actually set off from the rest of the piece as though parenthetical. The A-major music at m. 8 shifts abruptly away from the F-major half cadence that ends m. 7, but a much more conventional continuation can be generated by simply eliminating mm. 8–18 and proceeding directly from m. 7 to m. 19, where F-major tonality returns. Numerous musical connections make this alternative version logical and satisfying. These are outlined in Example 1.3, which juxtaposes the final two measures of Stanza 1 (mm. 6–7) with mm. 19–20; a dotted barline indicates the hypothetical connection between these passages. As highlighted by numbered brackets on the example, the latter two measures take up the ascending stepwise bass of m. 7 (1), echo the ascending minor seventh C to B[??] in the soprano and the rhythm of "I come to Thee" (2), and echo the accented chromatic neighbor that decorates the arrival on the dominant in m. 7 (3). These connections are so prominent in the recomposed version that it is easy to conceive of this version as having actually existed at some earlier stage in Ives's compositional process. At this hypothetical stage, Ives would not have yet decided to alter the text of Stanza 2—it would begin with the words "Jesus, my hope, my rock ..." essentially as they appear in mm. 19–20—and the music of mm. 19–27 would provide a consequent phrase to balance that of mm. 1–7.
Embedded within the interpolation of mm. 8–18 is another, shorter interpolation, Ives's setting of the word "Jesus" in mm. 11–12. This particular utterance of Jesus's name is set off both melodically and harmonically. The soprano momentarily drops out, replaced by the bass, creating a void where the melody had been. Kirkpatrick, in his edition, felt it necessary to correct this oddity, adding a melody in an "implied" organ part. As he explained in his commentary, "The two sources have no organ notes at all, but in m. 11–12 and 15–18 the quartet clearly sings accompanying chords that require organ phrases, which probably varied the soprano phrase in 10–11" (1983: 3). The chords that Kirkpatrick refers to are as disorienting as the absence of the soprano line. As indicated in Example 1.2, they imply the key of D[??] major, a complete non sequitur in the A-major context established in mm. 8–11 and an apparent tonal dead-end. The pair of chords can be heard as a tonal displacement of a normative progression: transposing the pair of chords up a minor sixth would create a straightforward path to a reprise of m. 8 as a consequent phrase via a modified descending-fifths progression. Not only are the chords harmonically disruptive, but they are metrically disruptive as well, inserting four beats into a 3/4 scheme; in a normalized version of the passage, beat 2 of m. 11 would proceed directly to beat 3 of m. 12. Even the word "Jesus" is superfluous in this context: it could be omitted without sacrificing the coherence of the text.
The music reels after this disruption. The melodic motion immediately reverses course, slithering upward until returning to the same chord that had set the word "shed" in m. 10; see Ives's harmonization of "blood" in m. 13, an enharmonic respelling of the downbeat chords of mm. 9 and 10. The reversal can most easily be heard in the alto, in which the E–D–C#–B–B[??] motion of mm. 10–11 is followed by the B[??]–B–D[??]–E motion of mm. 12–13. This reversal can be heard as a retracing of steps or, more provocatively, as a reversal of musical time. In either interpretation, the effect is of a retreat and correction, an attempt to overcome the misstep of mm. 11–12 and to regain the tonal stability of A major. In the process, the two-chord progression of mm. 11–12 is sealed off as an aberration—harmonically, metrically, and textually.
These two interpolations, one embedded in the other, are important stages in an ongoing tonal drama that is a crucial expressive element in the piece. Abstractly, the drama centers around departures from the home key and subsequent returns, as tonal dramas inevitably do. The first stanza establishes F major as the tonic; this key is abandoned in mm. 8–16 and restored in mm. 17–18. The abandonment is sudden when A major arrives in m. 8, but a logical overall tonal plan supporting F major is still available at this point, with A positioned to function as an altered mediant. Mm. 11–12 seem to lurch in the opposite direction, however, gesturing toward D[??] major, a major third below F, which balances the previous move from F to A. An attempted return to A major follows in mm. 12–13 via the reversal of mm. 10–11, but the move is unsuccessful; the chromatic motion becomes more convoluted and the tonality veers off to G[??] major (mm. 12–15)—an extremely distant key in the overall context of F major—as though infected by the sudden shift to flat-side tonality in mm. 11–12. Kirkpatrick once again felt obliged to correct Ives's idiosyncrasies, "clarifying" the score such that mm. 11–15 (beat 2) are notated entirely without flats. But this alteration obscures the developing tonal drama: the enharmonic respelling of the music from m. 10 in m. 13 is a symptom of the failed return to A major. The tonality has gone quickly and perilously astray.
But it rights itself with a quick sleight of hand. The progression of mm. 11–12, which evokes D[??] major, reemerges from Gt tonality in mm. 15–16 where it is less tonally disruptive. The first of the two chords, when immediately restated in m. 16, is reinterpreted as a dominant of F, allowing F major to be restored as abruptly as it was lost in m. 8. The remainder of the piece is relatively devoid of conflict. Stable F-major tonality is maintained through Stanza 3, and Stanza 4, rather than recapitulating the tonal problems of Stanza 2, recasts them on more secure footing. Like Stanza 2, it begins with A-major harmony (m. 36), but now grounded more solidly in root position. A harmonic sequence in mm. 36–39 leads, via an assortment of applied chords (mm. 39–43), to a reprise of the strong cadence in F that ended Stanza 2 (mm. 43–47). In short, A major has been transformed from problem to solution, supporting F major rather than leading away from it.
The real "problem," to move away now from the abstract drama of key relations, is separation from God (and Jesus, and Holy Ghost) and the longing it engenders. Ives fixed upon the line in the original hymn that alludes most strongly to this separation, the reference to the crucifixion, in which Jesus, in suffering, awaited his own union with God. As we have seen, Ives increased the line's prominence, moving it to the beginning of Stanza 2, extending it through repetition, and calling attention to it via musical contrast. The relatively extreme nature of this contrast evokes both Jesus's separation from God and the persona's separation from Jesus, to be overcome only through death and resurrection. Ives's setting of the first two stanzas establishes the physical and temporal divide. The stability and purity of F major is associated with heaven, the persona's "home, rest, and dwelling place" where she is united for eternity with the holy trinity. (Recall the connotations of this key in "Majority" and "Slow March"; it is also the key of the triumphant chorus of "From Hanover North.") The ascending melodic lines highlighted in Example 1.3 reinforce the idea of the soul's resurrection. In stark contrast, the music of the temporal, earthly realm of Jesus's sacrifice, from which the persona is transported, is unstable, tonally diffuse, and weighted downward melodically; it strives for eternal union, and achieves it only in the divine harmonic transformation of mm. 16–17. The fact that we can plausibly imagine Ives having composed the F-major passages first and interpolating mm. 8–18 later enhances the sense that the relationship between the music of F major and the passage it envelops signifies the way in which God's eternity encompasses all that is temporal.
Within the larger interpolation of mm. 8–18, the setting of "Jesus" in mm. 11–12 invites its own interpretations. The musical isolation of Jesus's name creates a sense of grammatical isolation, as though the persona is calling out to Jesus, desperately longing for and attempting to hasten the union to come, just as Jesus himself had called out to God from the cross, a moment evoked by the reference to bloodshed in the text. The absence of a soprano line here and the shift to flats, both "corrected" by Kirkpatrick, effectively evoke absence and separation, the persona's isolation from Jesus and Jesus's from God. As the persona contemplates Jesus's suffering, and as we behold its musical image, she seems to wish to undo it, as the music reverses its course in mm. 12–13. But she looks forward as well, and her cries for union with God, linked with those of Jesus across time, are answered in m. 17 when the reprise of the interpolation from mm. 11–12 brings about the return to F major. This moment carries double weight, integrating the short interpolation while closing off the larger excursus of mm. 8–16. In sum, I Come to Thee uses the arrangement of musical ideas in time to express the temporal relationships of its subject matter: Jesus's suffering in the past, the persona's praise of God in the present, her expectancy of union with God in the future, and God's existence above time. By encouraging us to hear not only its actual chronology but also to imagine its implied, reconfigured chronologies, the music grants us access to a higher spiritual realm, one Ives increasingly sought to represent.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Breaking Time's Arrow by Matthew McDonald. Copyright © 2014 Matthew McDonald. Excerpted by permission of Indiana University Press.
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Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Ives and Time
Part I: Three Dualities
1. God/Man: I Come to Thee and Psalm 14
2. Community/individual: Sonata No. 1 for Piano and String Quartet No. 2
3. Intuition/expression: "Nov. 2, 1920" and "Grantchester"
Part II: Contexts and Methodologies
4. Elements of Narrative: The Unanswered Question
5. Ives and the Now: "The Things Our Fathers Loved"
6. Cumulative Composition: Ives's Emerson Music
Notes
Bibliography
Index
What People are Saying About This
Matthew McDonald offers a trenchant and intellectually expansive reading of Ives's relationship to time by connecting several compositions—and indeed, the composer's larger conceptualization of the past, present, and future—to the Emersonian concept of the 'everlasting Now'. This book is a wonderfully written, important contribution to scholarship on the music of Charles Ives.
Matthew McDonald offers a trenchant and intellectually expansive reading of Ives's relationship to time by connecting several compositions—and indeed, the composer's larger conceptualization of the past, present, and future—to the Emersonian concept of the 'everlasting Now'. This book is a wonderfully written, important contribution to scholarship on the music of Charles Ives.