The Music Plays On — Charles Ives Piano Sonata №2, Concord, Mass., 1840–60
Charles Ives was born on this day in 1874. Born to abolitionists and civic leaders, Mary Elizabeth and George Ives, in Danbury, Connecticut, Charles had what seemed a very traditional New England upbringing. He attended the Hopkins School and Yale University, was a very popular student who excelled in all sports — he played baseball and football for Yale — and went into the insurance business. He would eventually start his own insurance company and is widely considered the father of what is now known as estate planning. It is ironic that during his lifetime he was well-known in the insurance world and not known as a composer and, now, most know him as a composer without knowing his enormous contributions to the insurance business!
What was untraditional in Ives’ upbringing was his musical education. His father, George Ives, was a conductor of bands, choirs and orchestras, and during the Civil War was a U.S. Army bandleader. Ives taught his two sons, Charles and James, music and encouraged them to be inventive and experimental in composition. Charles’ penchant for writing bitonal and polyrhythmic music comes from these early lessons and would prove to be a seminal influence in practically all of Charles’ compositions.
Known as the Concord Sonata, Ives began writing his Piano Sonata №2, Concord, Mass., 1840–60 in 1904. Originally published in 1920, Ives extensively revised it, like his did all of his pieces, and the version that is now performed was published in 1947. It is a work dedicated and inspired by the transcendentalists associated with Concord, Massachusetts. In his 124-page Essays Before a Sonata, Ives writes that the work was his,
impression of the spirit of transcendentalism that is associated in the minds of many with Concord, Massachusetts of over a half century ago. This is undertaken in impressionistic pictures of Emerson and Thoreau, a sketch of the Alcotts, and a scherzo supposed to reflect a lighter quality which is often found in the fantastic side of Hawthorne.
The four movements are titled:
- “Emerson” (after Ralph Waldo Emerson)
- “Hawthorne” (after Nathaniel Hawthorne)
- “The Alcotts” (after Bronson Alcott and Louisa May Alcott)
