Charles Ives's Concord: Essays after a Sonata

by Kyle Gann

Overview

In 1921, insurance executive Charles Ives sent out copies of a piano sonata to two hundred strangers. Laden with dissonant chords, complex rhythm, and a seemingly chaotic structure, the so-called Concord Sonata confounded the recipients, as did the accompanying book, Essays before a Sonata . Kyle Gann merges exhaustive research with his own experience as a composer to reveal the Concord Sonata and the essays in full. Diffracting the twinned works into their essential aspects, Gann lays out the historical context that produced Ives's masterpiece and illuminates the arguments Ives himself explored in the Essays . Gann also provides a movement-by-movement analysis of the work's harmonic structure and compositional technique; connects the sonata to Ives works that share parts of its material; and compares the 1921 version of the Concord with its 1947 revision to reveal important aspects of Ives's creative process. A tour de force of critical, theoretical, and historical thought, Charles Ives's Concord provides nothing less than the first comprehensive consideration of a work at the heart of twentieth century American music.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252040856
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	05/16/2017
Series:	Music in American Life
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Kyle Gann is a composer and the Taylor Hawver and Frances Bortle Hawver Professor of Music at Bard College. He is the author of No Such Thing as Silence: John Cage's 4'33" and Robert Ashley.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Chapter 1 The Story of the Concord Sonata, 1911-1947 1

Chapter 2 The Programmatic Argument and Henry Sturt 27

Chapter 3 The Human Faith Theme and the Whole-Tone Hypothesis 40

Chapter 4 "Emerson": The Essay 57

Chapter 5 "Emerson": The Music 74

Chapter 6 The "Emerson" Concerto and Its Offshoots 111

Chapter 7 Hawthorne and The Celestial Railroad 135

Chapter 8 "Hawthorne" 157

Chapter 9 "The Alcotts" 210

Chapter 10 "Thoreau": The Essay 230

Chapter 11 "Thoreau": The Music 242

Chapter 12 A Harmony of Imperfections: The Epilogue 269

Chapter 13 The First Piano Sonata 300

Chapter 14 Editions (1920 versus 1947) and Performance Questions 345

Appendix A Correction of Misattributed Quotations in Essays before a Sonata 379

Appendix B Variants in Available Recordings of the Concord Sonata 382

Appendix C Must a Song Always Be a Song? Keynote Address to the 2009 Ives Vocal Marathon, Wesleyan University 384

Notes 397

Bibliography 423

Index 431

Editorial Reviews

"Gann's passionate survey of the Concord Sonata and its various offshoots and progeny is and should remain an indispensable contribution to Ives studies and twentieth-century keyboard literature."

American Music

"A treatise on past and future performance practice for the 'Concord' Sonata. This is an absolutely essential reading for performers interested in this work."

Notes

"In Charles Ives's Concord: Essays After a Sonata Gann's analysis takes the form of a kind of biblical exegesis, where canonical texts are pored over by ever-new generations. He achieves a balance between writing for Ives specialists and delivering a text that is compulsively readable. . . . This is a book to savor with headphones."

Times Literary Supplement

"Not only an important addition to the thinking about Ives, but a moving companion to the artist and the Concord."

Wire

"This is a book which no Ives scholar or enthusiast can be without. It is quite indispensable, a glowing and lasting monument to the forty years which Gann has spent loving and working on his subject."

Journal of Experimental Music Studies

"Goes far beyond any existing literature in this domain. It's possibly the best analytical writing about a major Ives composition that I've seen."—William Brooks, University of York

"It is refreshing to read such a passionate description of a major work of art which is so profoundly meaningful to the author. Practically every page is informative, or contains new insight into the work. By far the best work ever done on the subject."—Neely Bruce, Wesleyan University

From the Publisher

"A major work gets a major analysis: a masterpiece gets a masterpiece."

Do the M@th

"This is an interesting and important book. . . . Highly recommended."

Choice