# SS 28.03.15 - Ives #4



## realdealblues (Mar 3, 2010)

A continuation of the Saturday Symphonies Tradition:

Welcome to another weekend of symphonic listening!

For your listening pleasure this weekend:*

Charles Ives (1874 - 1954)*

Symphony No. 4, S. 4 (K. 1A4)

1. Prelude: Maestoso
2. Comedy: Allegretto
3. Fugue: Andante moderato con moto
4. Finale: Very slowly - Largo maestoso

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Post what recording you are going to listen to giving details of Orchestra / Conductor / Chorus / Soloists etc - Enjoy!


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## realdealblues (Mar 3, 2010)

I will admit I'm not exceptionally well versed in Charles Ives. I've heard all the recordings Leonard Bernstein made, but that's about it. Since Lenny never recorded this Symphony, I have not heard it. I picked up this CD a few weeks ago specifically for this weekend and am looking forward to giving it its first spin.

View attachment 67143


Michael Tilson Thomas/Chicago Symphony Orchestra & Chorus


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## Jeff W (Jan 20, 2014)

Yet another new one for me! No recordings of this one in my collection. Let me see what Youtube has.

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Chorus under Leonard Slatkin.


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

Hard choice! Either of or both:










New Philharmonia Orchestra u. Harold Farberman (Vanguard)










American Symphony Orchestra u. Leopold Stokowski (Columbia Masterwerks)

The Stokowski always put a smile on my face!

/ptr


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I daresay I'll end up listening to everything on this:


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

realdealblues said:


> Michael Tilson Thomas/Chicago Symphony Orchestra & Chorus


I have this one, but may try a different recording online just for a change of pace. Probably *Botstein/American Symphony Orch.*

This is just about my favorite symphony ever.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Dohnanyi/Cleveland Orchestra


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## D Smith (Sep 13, 2014)

We loves Ives at our house. And listening to Serebrier/LPO.


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## Haydn man (Jan 25, 2014)

New for me as well
So I will go for this version


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## Mika (Jul 24, 2009)

Litton & Dallas SO


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

D Smith said:


> We loves Ives at our house. And listening to Serebrier/LPO.


That is mine as well.


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## Alfacharger (Dec 6, 2013)

One of my favorite symphonies, I just listened to this recording.










I also have MTT with the Chicago band.










Along with Serebrier and the Londoners.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

I have this one, so I'll give it a rest: it's coming up in the random play of my collection 



Mahlerian said:


> Dohnanyi/Cleveland Orchestra





Jeff W said:


> The Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Chorus under Leonard Slatkin.


I'll give this one a try


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## donnie a (Jan 15, 2015)

I had no idea there were so many recordings of this work, actually. I've always loved the Stokowski, but it's the only one I'm really thoroughly familiar with.


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## JACE (Jul 18, 2014)

I'll listen to my favorite version:









MTT, Chicago SO & Chorus

And maybe spin Stokowski too.


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## JACE (Jul 18, 2014)

Some of MTT's thoughts regarding Ives' Fourth Symphony:

_...The Fourth is meant to answer a question. And the question is, "What is the meaning of existence?" Right at the front of the piece there is a bold and craggy theme in the double basses and the piano, quite aggressive, which is the most lengthy bit of original musical material in the symphony; and this question thunders out very defiantly--"What is the meaning of existence?" Or perhaps, as Whitman or Ruggles or even Ives himself might have said, "What the hell is all of this supposed to mean, anyway?" And then comes a series of answers.

In the first movement, just after the main theme is introduced, you have a group which Ives called the 'Star of Bethlehem.' ...And this is a group of musicians, violins and harps who are meant to play someplace suspended above the stage. They play the first hymn tune in the piece, "Nearer, My God, to Thee," which is, as you probably know, the hymn tune that the musicians on the Titanic were playing when they went down. A hymn of great significance because of its words: "Nearer my God to Thee, nearer, nearer to Thee, still all my soul shall be, nearer to my God to Thee." It's almost a mantra-like repetition of the Transcendentalist's ideal, to be nearer, to be at one with God...

The second movement offers another answer to the meaning of existence. "Well, it is all things as they appear to be." The second movement is saying that this is Maya, the material world. It is also the movement that Ives called a comedy, in the sense that some Hawthorne pieces, grotesque crowd-scene pieces, were identified as being comedy pieces. And it makes reference to everything that's happening in America, particularly the onslaught of mechanization, the noisy aspect of modern civilization. ...It's a parody of the hustle and bustle and overkill of noise in modern society, and a parody of the sort of music that's played at ladies' teas, when they have pink lemonade and listen to salon music. The salon music is made out of a hymn tune called "Beulah Land;" it's a very Mahler-like shape, but preposterously harmonized and so over the top. Instruments at the back of the orchestra, which Ives calls shadow instruments, continue to play in their odd meandering way, having nothing to do with the shape of the hymn tune in the foreground. It's just a big stewpot of everything in musical society at that time. ...The attitude [Ives] has toward all of this music is, well, it's just part of the human comedy. Sometimes it's rough, sometimes it's sentimental, sometimes it's mysterious, but it's all just something that's making a great to-do over nothing. ...Then in a moment, it's all blown away. It's as if the wind comes through and there's nothing left but a few violas desperately trying to play some rapid sixteenth notes that tail off to nothing....

The third movement takes up the answer of Congregationalism...[Ives] felt that there were important benefits to be obtained by going to an event where other people met together for the purposes of worship and contemplation ...The third movement is based on a hymn tune called "From Greenland's Icy Mountains." It is a fugue, and it is meant to go at a rather vigorous pace....

[In the fourth movement] Ives introduces a new group--the percussion ensemble, which represents the ticking of the universal clock. I have only recently had the chance to perform this piece with a truly subterranean percussion ensemble in San Francisco. ...It makes a tremendous difference. It is so remarkable that this man imagined these things and knew exactly what he was talking about. When you read the instructions in the score which say a "subterranean percussion ensemble," it sounds totally absurd. But if you actually do it, set it up so they can play in a space that would normally be given over to the pit beneath the stage, it sounds fantastic. So this ensemble begins playing this odd, rhythmic pattern which suggests the ticking of the universal clock. The theme is the same, the question of human existence. And this time the answer is a sort of procession, a mournful procession, the tune of which is one of Ives' most masterful combinations of several phrases from several different sources, melded together. It is an expressive and sad melody. And what an ensemble it is--the violins of the Star of Bethlehem group play along with one solo violin on stage and gradually more violins join in. ..."Nearer, My God to Thee" is brought in, with dark and tragic harmonization over a bass line which is at first that of processional, and then becomes increasingly more desperate, lashing and flailing away at these harmonic turns. The large forces of the orchestra--brass, winds, and percussion--come in, bringing various phrases to a glittering, obliterating climax, and then they disappear-one of Ives' favorite effects. This huge sound suddenly clears, and leaves the sound of the violin and quarter tone pianos far off in the distance playing a beautiful quarter tone harmonization of "Nearer, My God, to Thee."

It's these kinds of contrasts which shape the movement, leading to the biggest of climaxes where "Nearer, My God, to Thee" in the massed low brass is pitted against the swirling original combination hymn tune in the upper orchestra. And just at the moment when the happy ending should occur, it turns round this corner and into an absolutely Calvary-like passage, where sounds occur like souls being borne down through great travail by the immense power of the orchestra. ...It's typical for Ives to represent this most exalted moment of spiritual search in ever more dissonant and blaring sound. ...This to me has always suggested the Mount Sinai aspect of spiritual revelation. Man searches and searches as he gets too close to the divine it is more than he can bear, the sounds and the harmonies are just too much. This is exactly what happens in Ives' Fourth Symphony. It builds to such a point of intensity that it's as if we can bear no more, and it sweeps away. We have to turn away and a few little tendrils of singed nerve endings then lead to the beginnings of the long, luminous coda. The choir brings back, wordlessly, the last phrase of "Nearer, My God, to Thee"--"Still all my songs shall be nearer, my God, to Thee."...As the chorus reaches its last phrase we come to the raison d'être for this Symphony. In the original hymn tune, "Nearer, My God, to Thee," the chorus sang the raised seventh degree of the scale-C sharp. But the very last time Ives uses the tune in the symphony, he lowers the seventh degree to the scale of C natural. So now "Nearer to Thee" is a modal cadence rather than a diatonic cadence. By doing that, he takes this hymn from a small Congregational church in New England and changes it into concord with ancient music, with Asian music, with all the musical traditions of the world. And then, with all of this layering of tunes going on, the procession slowly retreats. It's as if all of the people on earth are singing, and then the planet itself, with all of its inhabitants singing, passes further away on its orbit, out of our view....

This, to me, is what is so extraordinary in Ives imagination: all the aspects of this piece--the Star of Bethlehem; the percussion ensembles; the quarter tones; the mixed wind ensembles playing in different meters and different rhythms; the different spatial representations of music within the orchestra; the incredible use of dynamics to suggest the shifting of the winds and changes of psychological concentration; the extraordinary complexity of the layering, the textures; the complex reharmonization of familiar tunes in ever new ways; the whole vastness of the expression. And the whole symphony is really about one thing, which is "Nearer, My God, to Thee."...To search for this closeness to God, and in searching for it discover that one's expression of it changes from being a comfortable little thing you know at home to something that does indeed connect with the great universal search of mankind. And Ives is able to focus all this simply by changing one note of the cadence of this familiar tune...._

(Quoted from Michael Tilson Thomas, _Viva Voce: Conversations with Edward Seckerson_, Faber and Faber, 1994, pp. 117-23.)


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

realdealblues said:


> I will admit I'm not exceptionally well versed in Charles Ives. I've heard all the recordings Leonard Bernstein made, but that's about it. Since Lenny never recorded this Symphony, I have not heard it. I picked up this CD a few weeks ago specifically for this weekend and am looking forward to giving it its first spin.
> 
> View attachment 67143
> 
> ...


The first symphony is a lovely piece. I'm sure you'll enjoy it, if you find the 4th a little wild. I too have the Tilson Thomas recording.


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## techniquest (Aug 3, 2012)

Yep, MTT for me too from the Sony Essential Classics set.


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

Ambrosian Singers, New Philharmonia u Harold Faberman

Faberman does very well with Ives, this recording is unfortunately marred by the choir being mixed way to loudly, half the volume would be more then enough!

/ptr


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## donnie a (Jan 15, 2015)

JACE said:


> Some of MTT's thoughts regarding Ives' Fourth Symphony:
> 
> _...The Fourth is meant to answer a question. And the question is, "What is the meaning of existence?" Right at the front of the piece there is a bold and craggy theme in the double basses and the piano, quite aggressive, which is the most lengthy bit of original musical material in the symphony; and this question thunders out very defiantly--"What is the meaning of existence?" Or perhaps, as Whitman or Ruggles or even Ives himself might have said, "What the hell is all of this supposed to mean, anyway?" And then comes a series of answers.
> 
> ...


Most interesting! This is a brilliant examination of the meaning behind this fascinating work. Thanks for quoting it. Tilson Thomas has always had a deep affinity with and understanding of Ives, hasn't he? I'll definitely have to hear this recording.

P.S. I like your avatar. I've never seen a color photo of Mr. Charlie. I wonder if this one was a color film original or later colorized?


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Mika said:


> View attachment 67177
> 
> 
> Litton & Dallas SO


Perhaps not the best version, but the one I have.


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## donnie a (Jan 15, 2015)

starthrower said:


> The first symphony is a lovely piece. I'm sure you'll enjoy it, if you find the 4th a little wild. I too have the Tilson Thomas recording.


The first is one my very favorite pieces. I think it is highly underrated! I need to hear the Thomas Tilson of that, too. I've heard three or four recordings, none of which totally satisfy me all around, but my favorite at this point is still the Ormandy recording from the 60's.


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## JACE (Jul 18, 2014)

donnie a said:


> P.S. I like your avatar. I've never seen a color photo of Mr. Charlie. I wonder if this one was a color film original or later colorized?


I think the original was in color. If I'm not mistaken, the picture was taken in the early- or middle-1950s, not long before Ives died.


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## Kivimees (Feb 16, 2013)

I'm rapidly running out of Saturday here - and we change to daylight saving tonight - and I don't have this work in my meager collection so off to Naxos library again:









I'm listening now, so please consider this also a post in Current Listening.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

I just found an SACD with Andrew Litton conducting (Dallas, I think) on my shelves that I had forgotten about. I'll spin it after I start cooking the chicken mole.


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## Avey (Mar 5, 2013)

JACE said:


> The second movement offers another answer to the meaning of existence. "Well, it is all things as they appear to be." The second movement is saying that this is Maya, the material world. It is also the movement that Ives called a comedy, in the sense that some Hawthorne pieces, grotesque crowd-scene pieces, were identified as being comedy pieces. And it makes reference to everything that's happening in America, particularly the onslaught of mechanization, the noisy aspect of modern civilization. ...It's a parody of the hustle and bustle and overkill of noise in modern society, and a parody of the sort of music that's played at ladies' teas, when they have pink lemonade and listen to salon music. The salon music is made out of a hymn tune called "Beulah Land;" it's a very Mahler-like shape, but preposterously harmonized and so over the top.* Instruments at the back of the orchestra, which Ives calls shadow instruments, continue to play in their odd meandering way, having nothing to do with the shape of the hymn tune in the foreground. It's just a big stewpot of everything in musical society at that time.* ...The attitude [Ives] has toward all of this music is, well, it's just part of the human comedy. Sometimes it's rough, sometimes it's sentimental, sometimes it's mysterious, but *it's all just something that's making a great to-do over nothing. *


I contemplated writing up one of my typical sentimental, haphazard, (slightly) incoherent commentaries about *Ives*' Fourth, but many here have already made the appropriate and succinct impressions I would elaborate on in many, many more words. So I just put some +1s above.

Plus, this (fantastic) massive passage above gets at my whole obsession with this work (and Ives in general): the music means something. No note is written on mere formality. It all has purpose. Pardon the wording here, but the sounds just transcend simple tapping of the foot, nodding of the head, or aural, circadian rhythms. *Ives* put something serious together, and it was *always* worth listening to.


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## perdido34 (Mar 11, 2015)

My favorites are Ozawa/BSO and Dohnanyi/Cleveland, because they are fine performances and you can actually hear what's going on. Both of these have much better sound than the SACD with Litton, where the virtues of surround sound and hi-rez do nothing to clarify the mush. 

I'd love to see a reissue of the Serebrier on SACD or multi-channel BluRay; the original LP was a quadrophonic recording.


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