Charles Ives as a lyricist

Charles Ives as a lyricist

To understand the origins of Charles Ives' music and the creative processes involved in its evolution, one must first discard the usual distinction between program and abstract or "pure7' music. Ives (1874- 1954) neither merely records a narrative or scene with sounds, nor solely develops his music out of the mathematics of note structures and designs. In fact, the essence of his musical thought and experience represents a synthesis of these two appro ache. Ives uses discoveries from his or his father's abstract experiments with sound to express a programmatic element.

He received musical training from his father, graduated from Yale in 1898, and ran an insurance agency in New York until illness forced his retirement in 1930. From 1890 to 1921, he composed over 500 musical works, including four symphonies and more than 60 other scores for large ensembles. His New England background formed the largest source of inspiration for his works. He kept his compositions private until late in his life, and few of his pieces were performed before his death. His Symphony No. 3 received the Pulitzer prize in 1947. Ives has won widespread acclaim and is ranked among the leading US composers.

The See'r

Charles Ives' song "The See'r" (1913) is a strange little piece, even by the composer's standards. The music is plodding, unpredictable, angular, and usually at odds with the singer's seemingly haphazard lines. Fully half of the song's short length is devoted to banal repetitions: "He liked to watch the funny things a going by! Going by! Going by! Going by!" Still, one wonders if the poem intentionally gives the viewpoint of an ignorant observer; perhaps the lifeless old man is not just a spectator, but a true seer, his unassuming, lifeless facade disguising the persona of a visionary.

The Cage

“The Cage” was written in 1906, one of the first years of Ives's period of serious experimentation with different ways of organizing music. While many works, such as longer ones in more traditional genres, show considerable concern for numerous details, the shorter works were written simply to try out an organizational idea. “The Cage” falls in this category. In other shorter works from this time period Ives experimented with 12- tone music and other techniques. It reflects his concern for the mundaneness in the everyday lives of people who are unwilling to face intellectual or personal challenges, a concern related to his belief in Transcendentalism.

Static rhythm projects the mundaneness, as does the lack of intervallic variety in the wholetone scale. The text divides into five parts. Each uses a whole tone scale, which changes in each part. The five parts are arranged symmetrically in terms of scale, vocal range and tessitura. •! The first and last parts use the same whole-tone pentachord •! The second and fourth parts both use the “odd” whole tone scale, but section four transposes the tones a whole step higher and also goes out of the odd scale. Section three uses the same scale as ...