Symphony No. 2, Symphony No. 3

Ives, Charles

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A Wild and Beautiful Imagining of America

Here, in audio form, is the American "melting pot" they talk about in grade school social studies. A patchwork quilt of not-quite-complementary sonorities, Charles Ives's five-movement Symphony No. 2 contains traces of the nineteenth-century patriotic march "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean" played by screeching brass, alongside bits of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "Turkey in the Straw." Sometimes these references occur in isolation, and sometimes all at once, boisterous collisions that seem to lampoon the very idea of "patriotic" music. In this piece and others by Ives, the impact comes not from the reconfigured themes themselves, but in the ways they're juxtaposed against each other—in a spectacular, not at all random but sometimes random-sounding cacophony.

As Leonard Bernstein once noted, Ives can be considered our "musical Mark Twain, Emerson, and Lincoln all rolled into one." At the same time, Ives (1874–1954) created music that looks ever forward: His startling collage approach became a guiding idea for the American avant-garde of the 1960s. (Less enamored observers have likened Ives to Grandma Moses, an expert at popularizing folk art rather than creating from whole cloth.)

Ives acquired his unusual notions about music as a child. He grew up in Danbury, Connecticut, and his early musical experiences include hearing his father, a local bandleader, playing two contrasting pieces on the family piano at the same time. This engendered a lifelong love for simultaneity and is one inspiration for the clashing sounds that define his signature works. Ives's schemes aren't always graceful, and at times the results have an unruly quality (especially compared with the work of another quintessentially "American" composer, Aaron Copland), but they are always entirely his.

The New York Philharmonic, with Bernstein at the helm, treats Ives as a visionary whose renegade jumbles signify something central to the American soul. Bernstein senses the danger in making too much of the familiar tunes of Symphony No. 2, and as the piece evolves he tends to emphasize its outsized contrasts, notably the trembling chord clusters Ives wrote for strings and the rollicking piano accompaniments, which require the performer to use fists and forearms. Also here is the more reserved Symphony No. 3. Writing for a string orchestra, Ives appropriates mostly hymns and religious songs, engendering a mood of reflection that's surprising given the uproars of Symphony No. 2. Those intrigued by the rattle and hum of Ives might seek the composer's most challenging piece, Symphony No. 4, next.

Genre: Classical
Released: 1958/1965, Sony Classical (Reissued 1998)
Key Tracks: Symphony No. 2: second and fifth movements. Symphony No. 3: second movement, "Children's Day."
Catalog Choice: Symphony No. 4, San Francisco Symphony (Michael Tilson Thomas, cond.)
Next Stop: Elliott Carter: Symphony No. 1, Piano Concerto, Mark Wait, Nashville Symphony (Kenneth Schermerhorn, cond.)
After That: John Corigliano: Of Rage and Remembrance: Symphony No. 1, National Symphony Orchestra (Leonard Slatkin, cond.)
Book Page: 383