There's a school of thought that subscribes to the notion that Charles Ives' New England Holidays Symphony is not really effective as a symphony. The pieces of its four movements were all written separately, and as such logic may dictate, these works are more effective singly than combined. Indeed, the traditional ordering of Washington's Birthday -- Decoration Day -- The Fourth of July -- Thanksgiving and Forefather's Day works to the disadvantage of the final, longest movement of the symphony. Decoration Day has more than ...
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There's a school of thought that subscribes to the notion that Charles Ives' New England Holidays Symphony is not really effective as a symphony. The pieces of its four movements were all written separately, and as such logic may dictate, these works are more effective singly than combined. Indeed, the traditional ordering of Washington's Birthday -- Decoration Day -- The Fourth of July -- Thanksgiving and Forefather's Day works to the disadvantage of the final, longest movement of the symphony. Decoration Day has more than earned its worth as a separate entity; Aaron Copland used to program it in his own concerts and once mentioned it among a short list of Ives works he felt were "among the finest works ever created by an American artist." However -- partly due to the many recordings the Holidays Symphony has enjoyed as a contiguous unit -- there are some who would never accept any version in which some part is separated from the whole. Therefore, some listeners probably won't much care for Naxos'...
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The American Classics series of Naxos offers the opportunity to hear much of the orchestral, piano, chamber, and vocal music of Charles Ives (1874 -- 1954), one of the great American composers. I heard and reviewed several of the Naxos CDs as they were released, but somehow this 2009 CD got by me. Upon reading Stephen Budiansky's new biography of Ives, "Mad Music: Charles Ives, the Nostalgic Rebel" Mad Music: Charles Ives, the Nostalgic Rebel , I fell in love again with Ives and needed to double back and hear this CD. It proved to be too good to miss. Budiansky portrays Ives as a composer who was in love with the New England of his childhood and tried to recapture his feelings about a passing America in his music, even in his most dissonant, challenging scores.
The renowned scholar-conductor of Ives, James Sinclair, leads the Malmo Symphony Orchestra of Sweden in performances of three of the four movements of Ives' "Holidays" Symphony together with four earlier works. The music receives zesty, inspired performances with a large degree of musical clarity. Jan Swafford, the author of an earlier biography of Ives, "Charles Ives: A Life with Music" , wrote the liner notes. In the notes, Swafford offers the following summary of Ives' music with a slighly different focus from Budiansky's: "Charles Ives was essentially a religious composer; his intentions not earthly or sectarian but transcendent."
The "New England Holidays" symphony consists of four movements each of which celebrates a major American holiday. Sinclair treats each movement as essentially a stand-alone piece as the first movement, "Washington's Birthday" appears on a separate Naxos CD (Ives: Symphony No. 3) while the three movements on this CD are on non-consecutive tracks. The CD opens with the most famous of the four movements, "Decoration Day" (or Memorial Day which commemorates the Civil War). Stravinsky used "Decoration Day" when asked to identify a musical masterpiece. When the New Symphony Orchestra of New York first read through the piece and the musicians were unable to keep up, an exasperated conductor told Ives that "there is a limit to musicianship". "Decoration Day" is a programmatic work in which the people of a small town walk solemnly to the cemetery in early morning to the accompaniment of hymns, hold a ceremony which includes the blowing of "Taps", and triumphally march home -- all masterfully captured by Ives in his score.
"The Fourth of July", the third movement of "New England Holidays" is a more unbuttoned celebration featuring exploding fireworks and town bands playing different march tunes and hymns -- not always together and not always in key. Ives wrote to his copyist about the piece: "Band stuff -- they didnt always play it right & together & it was good either way".
The longest movement of "New England Holidays" is "Thanksgiving and Forefathers Day", named in part after a New England Holiday celebrating the arrival of the Pilgrims, celebrated on December 22. The work has a long, slow, tonally difficult and ambiguous opening, followed at a climactic moment by a clear, simple rendition of a hymn, "Shining Shore". The music works to a large climax with a concluding choral section, "O God beneath thy Guiding Hand" to the following text (from Budiansky):
"God! Beneath Thy guiding hand,
Our exiled fathers crossed the sea,
And as they trod the wintry strand,
With prayer and praise they worshipped Thee."
The remaining four works on the program include Ives' short musical rendition of the "Yale-Princeton Football Game", a two-minute work replete with referee's whistles and the running for a touchdown of the Yale quarterback after receiving a kick. The "General Slocum" recorded for the first time on this CD, commemorates a New York pleasure ship which exploded in 1904, sending more than 1000 people to their deaths. The music captures the lighthearted quality of the dancing and singing on board the ship, followed by the cacaphony and tragedy of the sudden explosion. The "Overture in G minor" also recorded on this CD for the first time and the Postlude in F, are works of Ives' adolescence and college years which show the romantically-influenced character of some of his early music.
This CD and its companions are outstanding ways to get to hear the music of Charles Ives, both for new listeners and for listeners familiar with his work. I was glad to get to know this CD at last, following my reading of Budiansky's biography.
