A brief note-
Anyone who has spent considerable time reading the articles posted at Renegade Tribune understands the tremendous effort that has gone into defending white interests. One perhaps underappreciated aspect of the content at Renegade is the focus on the Fine Arts. When we are confronted daily with the horrifying stories documenting the ongoing genocide of our people, it may seem frivolous to dwell on architecture, paintings, sculpture, literature, music and philosophy. But we must recognize that our people have been under cultural assault much longer than physical assault. I applaud and support this website for recognizing the importance of remembering our heritage. The artistic and cultural achievements of our people define who we are. We cannot afford to lose our cultural memory, for much of the same reason we cannot afford to lose our historical memory. Who can deny that each successive generation is losing the connection with our past?
With all that said, I would like to share the contributions of one of the most creative musical minds that white culture has produced. Undeniably most of our great musical heritage comes from the European continent and later from Russia. During the 19th and early 20th century, the American music establishment was completely dominated by the great European tradition. One composer chose to push in a totally new (and uniquely American) direction.
Charles Ives (1874-1954) was a remarkable composer who would only become well known to the contemporary music world shortly before his death. Ives compositions pioneered many if not most of the techniques that would subsequently be “rediscovered” by the big names in the modern music scene, particularly in the latter half of the 20th century. Some of these innovations include polytonality (writing in two or more keys simultaneously), not resolving dissonances, spatial redistribution of instrumental groups and soloists, metric modulation, homegrown forms of pitch organization and dense, massed blocks of clustered chords, quarter tones and many other techniques. The difficult idiom of many of his pieces has denied Ives the mass appeal of mainstream American composers such as Copland and Gershwin, and admittedly he can be an acquired taste. Yet Ives’ incorporation of American folk music, including well-known patriotic tunes, fragments of barn dance and hoedown music, as well as gospel hymns common in New England at the turn of the 20th century create a rich musical picture of life in his time.
The real tragedy of Ives’ musical genius was that he was never afforded a chance to hear his works performed. His compositions met complete critical rejection during most of his lifetime. The few musicians who were persuaded to try his music were openly hostile. An audience was out of the question, as Ives could not bring himself to play or write the kind of music that was “fashionable”. Ives instead made his fortune as a highly successful life insurance salesman, while continuing his work as a composer. Most of Ives’ major work was done from 1894 when he entered Yale to 1917. When his health began failing in the late 1920s, he stopped composing altogether. One cannot help but draw the conclusion that nearly 30 years of contempt from the music establishment was a contributing factor.
Although he was not creating anything new, the 1930s was the beginning of interest in Ives’ music. It was during this decade that Nicolas Slonimsky first performed Ives’ ‘Three Places in New England’, both in USA and Europe. His reputation was further established when in 1939, pianist John Kirkpatrick premiered his ‘Concord Sonata’ at the New York Town Hall. It led to favorable commentary in the major New York newspapers.
Ives’ obscurity began to lift a little in the 1940s, when he met Lou Harrison, a fan of his music who began to edit and promote it. Most notably he conducted the premiere of the Symphony No. 3 (1904) in 1946. The next year, this piece won Ives the Pulitzer Prize for Music, though Ives gave the prize money away, saying “…prizes are for boys and I’m all grown up.”
In 1966, twelve years after his death, Ives received the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for his ‘Symphony No. 4’, notable for its multilayered complexity. From 8notes.com:
Perhaps the most remarkable piece of orchestral music Ives ever completed was his Symphony No. 4 (1910–16). The list of forces required to perform the work alone is extraordinary; as well as a large symphony orchestra, the piece requires a massive percussion section, two pianos (one tuned a quarter tone apart from the other), an organ, an extra group of distant strings, a full chorus, three optional saxophones and finally an ‘ether organ’ (it is not clear what Ives meant by this, but a theremin or a synthesizer is usually used). The program of the work echoes that of The Unanswered Question — Ives said the piece was ‘a searching question of ‘What’ and ‘Why’ which the spirit of man asks of life.’ Use of quotation is again rife, especially in the first movement, and there is no shortage of novel effects. In the second movement, for example, a tremolando is heard throughout the entire orchestra. In the final movement, there is a sort of musical fight between discordant sounds and more traditional tonal music. Eventually a wordless chorus enters, the mood becomes calmer, and the piece ends quietly with just the percussion playing. The symphony did not have a complete performance until 1965, almost fifty years after the completion of the work, and eleven years after the composer’s death.
The following are a selection of short pieces or single movements from some of Ives’ compositions which I have selected to provide an overview of Ives’ work:
Three Places In New England, Movement II, “Putnam’s Camp, Redding Connecticut”
“Three Pieces in New England” is an orchestral set in three movements that depicts Ives’ memories of his life in Connecticut….the 2nd movement is a great example of his unorthodox ideas. At one point different sections of the orchestra are playing against each other, imitating what you would hear when two marching bands on parade approach the town square from different directions, resulting in a clash of sounds and rhythms.
Violin Sonata No. 2, Movement 2 “In The Barn”
Trio For Violin, Cello and Piano, Movement 2 “TSIAJ” (The Scherzo Is A Joke)
Hallowe’ en (From Three Outdoor Scenes -1911)
(I included this short 2 minute work because of seasonality, but also because it is a wonderful example of Ives’ innovations. As you watch the score of the work on the video, it is played 3 times, each time faster and louder. The first time through is with just the violin and cello, the second time with the entire string quartet and the third time adding piano. Note that all the instruments are playing in different keys–also note the non-coincident accents and rhythmic variation. The work was intended as a depiction of the building of the bonfire.)
Thanksgiving and Forefathers’ Day (4th movement from “A Symphony: New England Holidays”)
This is actually the first of the four movements that Ives composed that would be included in what was also called the “Holidays Symphony”. Ives started the work on this piece around 1903 and completed it in 1904. The work is based on two organ works that Ives had composed and played at Center Church in New Haven, Connecticut. The works, now partially lost, are “Prelude for a Thanksgiving Service” and “Postlude for a Thanksgiving Service.” Antál Doráti conducted the first performance of the work with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra on April 9, 1954–approximately one month before Ives died.
Sources and Bibliography
Record jacket notes “Charles Ives, Pieces For Chamber Orchestra and Songs” Cambridge CRS 1804
Record jacket notes “The Short Piano Pieces of Charles Ives” Folkways Records FM3348
Record jacket notes “The Four Symphonies of Charles Ives” Columbia Records D3S783