Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of Charles Ives. He’s one of my favorite composers.
And, to me, there’s something of fall about his music. Maybe it’s the density of his sonic textures or the way he arranges contrasting melodies and rhythms that conjures autumn for me. Ives’s birthday is in October, and he did pay musical homage to this time of year. He wrote a lovely song titled Autumn. The words are most likely by his wife, Harmony. (How wonderful for a composer to have a partner named Harmony!)
Earth rests! Her work is done, her fields lie bare, and ‘ere the night of winter comes
to hush her song and close her tired eyes,
She turns her face for the sun to smile upon
and radiantly, radiantly, thro’ Fall’s bright glow, he smiles and brings the Peace of God!
Do those lyrics make you curious? Do you want to join me and dig into some Charles Ives? Allow me to suggest some pieces to get us started.
Ives’s Country Band March is a good place to begin. It’s a jovial march, but it holds some surprises. Listen to the way Ives combines several march rhythms at once, several march tunes, too. Imagine you’re in the center of a village square at the turn of the last century. It’s the Fourth of July and the high school band is practicing in the schoolyard for the parade later that day. Across the street, the Army Veteran’s band is tuning up for their parade march. And there’s a town band, too; they’re already playing in the gazebo in the park. And somebody is practicing their horn in the parlor at home. And just next door, someone’s playing a gramophone recording of patriotic tunes. The windows are open—it’s July after all—and the music floats out and joins all the other tunes and rhythms, striking your ears all at once as you stand in the little village square.
That’s one of the essences of Ives. Like the cubist painter, who captures many perspectives on one flat surface, Ives catches the multiple, simultaneous sounds of life and gives them form and structure.
Now listen to a much subtler mix: Central Park in the Dark. You’re on one of the paths that wind through the park, surrounded by the great city. You hear all the night-time sounds of nature and of humanity in layers, with a little of the music in your own head thrown in. What a mysterious, intriguing (and even slightly creepy) mosaic it is.
But Ives’s music isn’t all amalgamation. He knew how to write long, sweet melodies as well as stormy, passionate phrases. And his wry, ironic sense of humor peppers nearly every one of his compositions.
There are so many Ives pieces I’d love to recommend to you. Tone poems like The Unanswered Question and Calcium Light Night; more songs like the nostalgic Children’s Hour and the raucous Charlie Rutledge; his symphonies, particularly the second (especially in the Grammy-winning performance by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic) and the Holidays Symphony; Three Places in New England and the deliciously thorny Concord Sonata.
Some of it is challenging music for sure: decidedly not the stuff to do your Wordle by. But the payoff is such beautiful and engaging sound: rich, multicolored, deeply personal. Come on, let’s listen to Ives together while we watch the leaves make red and gold carpets at our feet. I swear you couldn’t spend a better time in autumn!
