Charles Ives Symphony No. 4, BBC Symphony Orchestra/David Robertson, cond./Ralph van Raat, piano
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- Опубліковано 1 жов 2024
- www.ralphvanraa... Broadcast of the BBC Proms, 2007. Ralph van Raat plays the piano part of Ives' Symphony No.4 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Robertson in the Royal Albert Hall, London.
Stravinsky: “This fascinating composer was exploring the 1960s during the heyday of Strauss and Debussy. Polytonality; atonality; tone clusters; perspectivistic effects; chance; statistical composition; permutation; add-a-part, practical-joke, and improvisatory music: these were Ives’ discoveries a half-century ago as he quietly set about devouring the contemporary cake before the rest of us even found a seat at the same table.”
Not the only one: Varese, Villa-Lobos, Hauer, Antheil ...
@@Piflaser Even Max Reger... ;)
@Tim Johnson I know not so much music by Heitor Villa Lobos. Absolutley fascinating for me are his guitar solo works, his Bachianas Brasilieras (a collection a little bit like Hindemth's Kammermusik), his Choros and a few concertos and last not least String Quartets. This are all the works I know and there is nothing not worth to hear. It is a little bit like Ginastera and Milhaud in style but not in invention.
BRAVO IVES!
@Tim Johnson Let me recommend: 12 Guitar etudes and Bachianas Brasileiras
He was 100 years before his time, I think. He understood the information overload, loss of certainly, ideologies and people shoving for space, the sheer noise of his coming century. He'd have loved sampling and mixing. Like many, I started by thinking Ives was just a din: it was the entry of the quarter-tone strings at 4:23 in this symphony that changed my mind, an astonishing effect, like alien music from a parallel universe has just drifted in. I also love the tsunami-like accelerando that starts at 5:55 and the mad clarinets at 8:34. And the last movement is just beyond analysis....
I completely agree!
Keith Jarrett once said: "We live in Ives' era".
well put, mate
Agree almost completely...but not alien. Earthly in every sense, speaking clearly to humanity, as was always the case with Ives, digging deep into our souls to find and address our confusion while expressing life in its truest form.
Another reason to believe him when he came down those stairs and told his wife, "Nothing sounds right...". By the way, Havergal Brian was writing music like you describe in the 20's.
0:00 is a good place to start.
First time hearing any of his work, in fact, first time hearing Ives' name. All I can say is that it is wonderful, and as someone whose favourite works include Rite of Spring and the Miraculous Mandarin, I feel like Charles Ives Symphony No. 4 will also become one of my favourites.
Wow. Indeed, a fabulous performance of the piece. Mr van Raat is first rate. David Robertson and the orchestra really knock Ives out of the park...... The sonorities - so difficult to get consistently supple - are super energized, yet transparent. Remarkable acoustics. Nicely filmed, too. I'm really knocked sideways by this..... Gorgeous......
If people have problems with this just imagine you are in a fairground. Lots of music playing from different rides, the noise of the crowd etc. If you get that then you will see what Ives was conveying. Snapshots of reality. Crowd scenes, amateur brass bands giving it their best shot etc. He was a landscape artist.
Excellent analogy, it served to adjust my listening immediately. Thank you!
I like that way of describing the sensations and defining Ives as a landscape artist. I'll quote you on that one. It is a great synthesis. Makes me think of James Turrell and all he has done with light and now with Roden crater.
@@raymondwilcox1303 yes Alan Page's comments caught my eye too. Snapshots of reality is a good description.
That's great! Now it seems exactly like the chaotic sounds of a noisy fairground-pure genius! (Did you know,there are some idiots that go to the fair just for all the fun stuff,rather than to hear the racket the fun stuff makes! I know-preposterous isn't it!??).
@Russ Wollman Is that grounds for divorce? ;)
Is this the great American Symphony? I don't know of a better one.
No. You are right. There is no better one.
This is the GREAT AMERICAN symphony.
Barber has some good ones but Ives' 4th towers above, not as a perfect composition but as a miraculous one.
It sure is for me. Really my favorite of all.
Copland's 3rd rests right next to this Ives masterpiece in my heart. But Copland expressed himself in musical terms much more universal in their appeal.
Charles Ives’ Fourth Symphony is a work of cosmic transcendence. It is polytonal, polytemporal and polychromatic. It is 4 dimensional music in a 3 dimensional world. It takes past, present and future and casts them before the listener like precious stones. It is a celebration of life for all, be you “Christian, Jew, Pagan or Angel!” Or Sikh, Jainist, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Eckist, or any of the legions of religions that humans embrace. Gustav Mahler said, “A symphony must be a world.” Ives’ Fourth is a world, a nation, set in space-time and yet not of it. It is a map superimposed upon a map superimposed on yet another map, each layer revealing new strata of America’s history and its legacy. It is foursquare against chaos. It will be as relevant when we go to the stars as it is now. It is music for citizens of the universe. It is our birthright.
Thanks Jennifyr for the Mahler quote. It is fantastic. Plus I like what you say that the 4th is "set in space-time and yet not of it." I know exactly what you mean. I heard it live in Buenos Aires on the 28th October 2012 played by the Orquesta Filarmónica de Buenos Aires as part of Teatro Colón's cycle of contemporary music, "Ciclo de Conciertos de Musica Contemporánea.” It was directed by Alejo Perez with second conductor, Annunziata Tomaro. I was moved to tears especially by the impact of music coming from the sides, behind, and in all directions. It made it so dream like.
It’s noise.
@@neoanderson367 And what noise it is!
Glorious "noise!"
Thanks for the multicultural claptrap. I'm sure Ives the accountant only spoke American.
Schoenberg and Stravinsky thought they were so cool, but Ives would trot out to the barn in his backyard and out compose the two of them
juspasenthru schoenberg outclassed ives as a composer from the start. Compare ives' early cantata "the celestial country" with schoenberg's early cantata "gurrelieder." There's no comparison. Ives wasnt anywhere in the same league as schoenberg in terms of craftmanship, command of musical structure, etc.
And yet Schoenberg admired Ives.
@@munyansebastien7127 Exactly. Art is a continuum and you wouldn't get one artist without the symbiotic relation with others. In 1944 Schoenberg said, “There is a great Man living in this Country - a composer. He has solved the problem how to preserve one's self-esteem and to learn. He responds to negligence by contempt. He is not forced to accept praise or blame. His name is Ives.” quoted in Henry & Sydney Cowell, Charles Ives and His Music (OUP, 1955)
Both Stravinsky and Schoenberg were lavish in their praise of Ives in their acknowledgment of him as their predecesor.
I'm sitting here absolutely stunned. I'd just finished listening to Leonard Slatkin's terrific version of the Fourth with the Detroit Symphony, and thought I'd try this one, and I find it just as good--but it has the advantage of the rich Albert Hall acoustics. This and the Slatkin I think are the best, most insightful, most moving performances of the Fourth I've ever heard. The best, in fact, since the splendid Stokowski original performance. Hearing this and the Slatkin reminded me of the day over thirty years ago that I happened to hear on the radio Michael Tilson Thomas's live performance of the Ives Holidays Symphony with Chicago and thought, "My god, they're playing it like Mozart." At that moment I felt Ives performance had come of age, and I feel the same about this and Slatkin's versions of the Fourth. That Tilson Thomas performance of Holidays gave me the idea of writing a biography of Ives. I hope this kind of performance will inspire future Ivesians. I think the Fourth is one of the towering artworks of the twentieth century, but with a grander ambition than most. The main theme of the Fourth is the hymn "Nearer, My God, to Thee." It's there from the first page and finally emerges to the surface in the mystical chorus of the end. That's where Ives wanted to take us, whether, as he put it, we are "Christian, Jew, Pagan, or Angel!" The Fourth Symphony is a work of universal religion. All its teeming voices are finding their own way up the mountain, to view the stars. --Jan Swafford
i enjoyed your biography. I also feel this is one of if not the best recording of the 4th. Sadly I cant find it for sale any where
I too wish to salute you for your fine work on Ives. Your biography of Brahms was similarly outstanding. It's no easy thing to write about music, to evoke something so subjective and non verbal in mere words. It's even harder to do it in a way that is intelligible to non-musicians. Ives may yet receive the credit he is due. Your book will no doubt help to achieve that end.
I agree. This is wonderful. I would like to thank you for your interesting book about Ives. I'm not sure you are interested but perhaps you will understand my excitement. It's not often you get an opportunity to hear Ives live when you live in a small town in Sweden, but tomorrow I will travel to Gothenburg to hear the symphonic orchestra of Gothenburg perform Three Places In New England. Most
people in my surroundings probably find it mad to travel for four hours (single journey) to listen to just under twenty minutes of music by a composer they have never heard of. I myself have looked forward to this for months. It will be the first time I hear Ives live. About twenty years ago I heard Ives for the first time. It was the last movement of Orchestral Set No 2 that was played on the radio. I was totally absorbed and have loved his music ever since.
@@skolrelaterat4113 Belated thanks. Always delighted to hear about a fervent Ives fan in Europe.
@@yumapoint I too would like to jump on the thanks-for-the-biography bandwagon. I started it a few days ago and can't put it down. I already somewhat knew how fascinating Charles was, but I had no idea about George. What a character! Learning about his experiments, his relationship with his son, and his early death has completely recontextualized Charles' music for me. I can hardly listen without getting choked up.
Charles Ives is to music what James Joyce is to literature.
Not Joyce...Flan O'Brian! It's got Dalkey Archive all over it.
Not familiar with Flann O'Brien's work except for The Third Policeman which I read years ago. Based on my memories of it, I agree with your assessment.
@@andrewwilliams9599 Third Policeman is brilliant. As all his work seems to be.
Another commentator made the case for John Dos Passos. I think that is an apt comparison as well.
Good comparison. All human life is there in Joyce too.
Prelude 0:00
Comedy 3:58
Fugue 16:20
Finale 25:20
The greatest music that I know of!
Same.
The best of all American-written symphonies. For this alone, Charles Ives shall live forever!
There’s the other three symphonies, string quartets, violin sonatas, two major piano sonatas, the second of which is already considered a great classic. There’s no question Ives was a truly great composer.
For sure the greatest American composer, by far. And thanks for those recs! I'll look them up. I know the symphonies and a few other works, but did not know about the sonatas.@@perry1559
Aaron Copland!! John Cage!!
There is lots of popular band and Americana music in a cacophany. Latter I hear a litany of fragments of Christian hymns. The symphony ends in a slightly eschew celestial rendition of "Nearer My God to Thee". I like this symphony.
Can you imagine he sold insurance? How unsexy. Therefore he wrote into the wee hours after work. What a great composer.
He put his money where his music was.
He never sold insurance. He was a partner in his own company and as such was the ideas man.
Ahhhh! At last, a contemporary performance of this unique and wondrous Symphony! I have been watching Leopold Stokowski's 1965 performance for years and loved it; this is a worthy companion which I will enjoy many, many times.
I have played Mr. Ives' childhood piano (tuned down a 5th from concert pitch, as if that should have surprised me), taken what I guess you'd call the "Ives Tour" of Danbury, Connecticut, which ends up at his gravesite, and have played a few excerpts from the "Concord" Sonata, including the fun little part from "Hawthorne" that appears in the 2nd movement here. I own a copy of the orchestral score (quite expensive for a paperback, $85.00 back in 2004) and can, at best, imagine having the kind of focus required to participate successfully in the realization of Music such as this.
I send my hearfelt congratulations on a job well done, and my equally sincere thanks for posting it.
Great post, Unmusica!~
Ives' Symphony #4: the greatest American symphony by the greatest American composer; along with Shostakovich's 5th, also the greatest symphony of the 20th century. Nice, full recording here by the BBC and company. Copland and Barber come close, but are too grounded in European models. Ives is an American original, perhaps too far out for some , but something altogether different from Europe.
The second movement is truly a testament of orchestral writing. How the gruesome train is depicted through music, it’s revelry and evil through so many combined hymns and songs... so ineffable and shocking.
Wonder if Villa Lobos as familiar with Ives?
i love how this symphony 'dissolves' at the end - one of the most beautiful endings in classical music
A genius. And a prophet. The listener can choose to hear either the exuberant chaos of the colossal war Ives' father endured, or a wistful dream image, a premonition of the greatness this country would one day outlive. I'm not sure I've ever heard it more perfectly realized, especially the final movement. When the Great Descent begins (at 29:50) with the most terrible sort of inevitability, it's as though a fog lifts, and there stands America. In all its grandeur and contradiction, its hope and sorrow. Wonderful that this music was presented to a British audience. Was there ever a more sublimely American music?
Your comment is equal to the performance.
I think it's the most important american composition ever, truly genius, chaotic and beautiful.
How kind of you.
No. I think it is even as great as the greatest works.
"All its grandeur and contradiction, its hope and sorrow", is a great synopsis. I know when I heard it live there was a sense of fog lifting and sunshine entering a space. Rarely have I burst into tears in a live concert.
This symphony is brilliant, complicated and simple in almost equal measure.
What a treat just to see and hear in this in performance! One of the most extraordinary works of the twentieth century and the greatest American symphony. Thank you so much for the video.
If Canetti thought of a crowd symbol for America, it would be the Fourth of July--not a single multitude gathered for a public event, but all those scattered bootleg fireworks down the street or across town, until 3 or 4 in the morning. Cacophonous, annoying, pathologically individualistic: that's part of what America is like.
I live in Boston, so I often think of the 54th Regiment and the St. Gaudens sculpture commemorated by Ives--as well as the Robert Lowell Poem ("For the Union Dead"). Even for those of us who are very secularized, church hymns and spirituals evoked by Ives are recognizable as foundations of American music, from ragtime to Hip-Hop. If I go to Walden Pond or Mt. Katahdin, Thoreau is with me, and so is the last movement of the "Concord Sonata." It doesn't matter that my ancestors in the US don't go back that far--though I did go to the same pubic high school as Ralph Waldo Emerson (commemorated in the first movement of the sonata) and Leonard Bernstein.
Ives had a profound connection to his father's military and musical experience in the civil war. His father also fostered a deep appreciation of grassroots musical expression that was inseparable from belief in an aspiration toward greatness that was universal.
By the time the St. Gaudens memorial was dedicated, in 1897, the America channeled by Ives was fading into the past. When I hear the 4th Symphony, I feel the composer's sense that something great--even awe-inspiring--is slipping away or vanishing, not unlike the wilderness described by Thoreau in "The Maine Woods." More than a century after the symphony was composed, even more history has gone by. We're confronted with a very different notion of greatness, which makes listening to this symphony all the more heartbreaking.
Charles, You have completely captured my feelings. Well stated my friend...well stated. We stand on a precipice we did not forsee.
From 24:10 until the end of the Fugue is some of the best music ever written. I know it. It isn't recorded perfectly in that hall, but still is wonderful.
My one regret is that the camera didn't home in on the clarinet; that obligato breaks my heart.
WOW - Every inch of the 20th century in 34 minutes
Wow, what an ACE comment; sums up the guy perfectly. I hate people who dismiss him, I mean, I'm not a George Gershwin fan but I'd never dismiss him, and anyone who says that Ives is just noise is, in my not-so-humble opinion, a total moron incapable of seeing (or hearing) something for what it actually is..
Fantastic performance of what may well be the most difficult work to perform in the entire genre. Stokowski in his first performance and subsequent recording spent weeks, months, even years on it. As to the work being experimental I don't understand this at all. To me, it's pure mastery of the symphonic form, unconventional, formally, as it may be. But the true greatness of the work lies, far beyond and attempts at formal analysis in its capturing of what is sometimes called the American Spirit.
Our Charles Ives knew he couldn't make a living as a composer--even as a genius composer--so he supported his family as a great insurance executive. Its a tragedy really--how much more masterpieces could he have created before being forced to sell premiums?? But let us be greatful that another great American composer--Leonard Berstein--helped the myopic American musical public/critics make up for their terrible neglect of the great man. The performance of this symphony brought joy to ive's last years. A prophet is hardly ever appreciated in his own time!!!
may I also say, its nice to see the artistic current, for once, going other way--British band playing our American music--American symphonies need to program more American music--not just because its AMerican but because its GOOD MUSIC--most of it anyway.
Interesting parallel to Wallace Stevens. Both spent a good part of their lives in Connecticut, were Ivy League educated and had very successful careers in the insurance industry. Stevens, of course, pursued a different artistic endeavor (poetry), but was equally compelling in his craft.
I'm pretty sure that this symphony wasn't performed until some years after Ives died.
Ives actually became very wealthy as one of America's leading insurance executives . He pretty much founded the insurance industry as we know it today . There's a funny ironic story about a meeting of American insurance executives, and one of them supposedly said "Did you know that the great Charles Ives, the founder of American insurance, was also a composer ?"
I first heard Ives when Berstein did the last movement of Ives 2 on Young People's Concert. That was the start of my love of Ives's music.
One of the truly underrated composers. I wish that Ives will same get his just due. Sublime and magnificent performance.
To be honest, I wouldn’t say that he never got his just due. It may have taken a while but by the end of his life the world was starting to understand (as much as anybody other than Charles Ives himself could) his amazing music. And now he’s become an American legend. The only part of fame he never got was the money, but he was a very successful New York business man, so I’m sure he had he fair share of that, and if not then I don’t think he would have cared anyways. He once said musics was his love and life but as long as he had his wife and daughter’s support he was perfectly happy. He never cared about the fame, to him music was just a way to express himself, not a way to attract attention.
He won a Pulitzer Prize. Fame may not have been his goal, but he worked very hard to have his "personal expression" heard. He tirelessly sent his compositions around to leading figures in music.
Exactly so.@@korinnedutton8040
and the slow, limping, plodding piano throughout is icing on the cake. i couldn't stop laughing throughout this piece. i'm instantly in love with this Charles Ives person.
I've often thought sometimes laughter is the highest form of praise.
Violin sonàtas.
I witnessed a National Symphony Orchestra performance under Leonard Slatkin and especially during the Comedy movement (#2) I, too, burst out laughing during its performance--as did others around me. America is a beautiful country from Acadia National Park to The Big Sur....but, believe you me, it is indeed one cacophonous study in contrasts from "sea to shining sea" and this performance from our English brethren encapsulated them well. (Hey, let`s hear it for the cornet player! He couldn`t be heard, but he was there!)
@@jppitman1 I was there!
Omigod he's hilarious and a second later moves you to tears.
I'm pretty sure some of these art twits, who praise a messy splash of paint on a canvas, would block their ears and complain about the music of Ives; he's that far ahead of the game.
Incredible. He captures life. All the flux, confusion and joy.
This is a very good performance of Ives Symphony #4. I have heard 5 performances of this and this version is one of the best.
Agree. This is a great one. And you can clearly hear a lot of the hidden gem parts.
You are a lucky man Tom Stubbs to have heard five times this head spinning and moving work. I'm envious.
Has anyone ever uttered, whilst playing the second movement, “Oops, I missed that note. I need a re-do”?
@@docbailey3265 Ives would have gotten a kick out of the mistakes, he like chaos.
@@TeatroAcustico Serebrer's version is as good as Stokowski's and they differ quite a bit, especially with the use of two piano's tune a quarter tone apart.
A totally stunning symphony.
Agree!!
Fabulous to watch! Like most Ives fans, I started off with the Stokowski recording. Later I preferred the Seiji Ozawa recording, and the Tilson Thomas recording after that. This concert is special to me because of way Robertson finishes the 2nd movement. The abrupt end was (and still is) the way Ives wrote it. But I gather Stokowski didn't like it, because he wrote in a fermata... a much more normal way of ending a movement.
I noticed that,too. I prefer the abrupt ending--reminiscient of the dissonant chord that ends Ives's Second Symphony.
The only recording I've never liked at all was one issued by an Italian orchestra which I shall not name. They play it so slowly that what is a 32-minute symphony gets s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d to 1 hour. Underehearsed, and the conductor and orchestra clearly weren't up the task. I really hope that someone will issue Slatkin's live recording with the NSO in the 2000s as well as Robertson's. Deutsche Grammaphon, are you listening?
I saw its premier in 1965, Leopold Stokowski conducting, with the American Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. They had two sub-conductors. What a revelation!
+Bruce Frier - I missed that one (tho' I bought and enjoyed the resulting record shortly after). But sometime in the mid-1980s(?) I heard at Carnegie Hall José Serebrier conduct (the ASO again) a stupendous fourth, one of the two or three greatest concerts I in my experience, infinitely better than any recording. The sounds did some very large and strange things in the air of the hall (can't find better words to describe it).
+Van Howell : I'd have to say that the premier was also much more magical than the subsequent record, perhaps because the modulations were so much richer.
+Bruce Frier I heard it live again around 2004 at the Proms in Royal Albert Hall... There seemed to be nothing at all wrong with the performance (by Birmingham SO) but it was dead as a doornail to my ears. Perhaps the hall's acoustics are crucial; I'd heard it in NY before they spiffed up Carnegie Hall and snuffed out its magic. I just noticed the following comment (off coincidence); maybe the hall was fine and I just wasn't in the right frame of mind.
+Van Howell (typo above - off was supposed to be odd)
...two conductors are evident here, as well...
Ives doesn't seem so radical these days. In fact many of his works are quite entertaining. All the symphonies are worth a listen.
The ending of the second movement and the one of the 2nd symphony are unbelievably artistic
Yes! The "ether organ/theremin" part used a real theremin! Bless David Robertson!
As a first time listener I can only say that this must be the kind of music that appeals to people who have tried to listen to all others, and found them completely boring.
That!s an astute observation.
Not a poor assessment by you. This is interesting music composed at an expert level.
+Green Genes That is actually the way I first encountered Ives. I was bored to death with the constantly repeated classical warhorses on our local classical station, hated the 80s pop scene, and that left me with very little to listen to aside from jazz (I knew nothing of prog rock, punk, or any of the other more interesting forms of popular music, and had no way of getting to know of them because I was only ten years old at the time).
So I went to the classical section of the local library and grabbed the first record of someone I'd never heard of before at random. I picked an LP up because I liked the modern art on the cover, and it turned out to be William Masselos' recording of Charles Ives' 1st Piano Sonata in the Columbia Masterworks series. It took me a while to warm to it, but once I realized that Ives was stressing rhythm and timbre (although I naturally at that age didn't think of it in these technical terms) over conventional 19th century melody and harmony I fell in love with it. By the time I got to the end of side B, I flipped it over and listened to it straight through again.
After that revelatory experience, I got my hands on everything Ives that I could find, and used books on 20th century music to branch out to other composers. In the process, I fell in love with classical music all over again and gradually worked my way back to appreciating music from all eras. I never lost my love for Bach despite everything, so I worked my way forward from Bach to the present and from the present back to Bach and in that way renewed my fondness for the last 400-500 years of Western art music.
A fascinating journey@@Nullifidian I like the idea of "classical warhorses" constantly repeated. I find a similar reaction to those radio stations that only play the "nice" bits. After the initial joy, I started to feel as if I had taken valium and was going to drown in a field of swaying yellow corn. Ives is fantastic because he never settles. I feel there is more in every listening and had the rare experience of hearing this piece life - few times have a burst into tears in a concert.
@@Nullifidian Wonderful story, Null. Thanks for sharing.
One of the greatest symphony of all time. Thank for posting it
The Third Symphonies of both Roy Harris and Aaron Copland are among the greatest American symphonies (in my humble opinion), but this symphony is something else.
Incredibly powerful composition reaching ranges of emotions uncommon to music's effects. Thank you David Robertson full interpreting this.
I guess you can't accuse Ives of plagiarism.
I still find it disappointing that this Symphony isn't as widely respected, worshiped or publicised as The Rite Of Spring.
I think that this Symphony (alongside Webern Op 6) saw into the future even more than Le Sacre. Le Sacre IS important to me but, you get what I mean?
Anyone listening to both, one after the other, would be crazy to assume that this came first. For the time it was written it really was farther "ahead" than Rite of Spring. This comes from a fellow who thinks Rite is the best piece of music ever written.
Yes, for better or worse, it's "ahead" of the Rite.
If something is to authentically reflect America it must be ugly, I guess.
Probably because Ives was an amateur and could be dismissed as such. Also I think "Les Noces" kicks "Sacre" into a roadside ditch in terms of Stravinsky's language. But, again, criminally underated.
Find me a musician from somewhere other than the States who can't name a hundred composers better than Ives (five of whom they went to school with) and I'll show you someone who doesn't know music, etc...
Ives is the big drunk American who lumbers into every wedding party Gallway's ever had, and then at the end of it, after he's shown you his car and talked about the size of his house and his dick, you find out that he's actually a very warm-hearted and interesting chap
Ives is rubbish.
Whew. Your issues with "Americans" cloud your musical judgment. Go burn a flag or something. Don't take it out on Ives.
"For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying."--Rilke
The amount of musicians required for this is absurd. AND THEN A FUCKING THEREMIN.
Love it.
Hope you can ever see a performance of Ives' Universe Symphony (requiring several orchestras, choirs and 5 conductors). Ives never finished it, but it was reconstructed from fragments and notes and I attended the premiere in Warsaw, Poland. It was incredible.
@@voiceover2191 I hope to one day!
Please let me know when you have written your own symphony.
Utterly monumental work......What else is there to say???
It closes with - "Nearer My God To Thee" - underneath the chocophony. Huanting.
Haunting it the right word. I think there is live before and life after Ives' Four.
"Stand up and take this music like a man!"Attributed to Charles in response to someone hissing at his music.
That was Ives' response to someone hissing Henry Cowell's music.
Well,I'll give you this...,you stood up and told me I was wrong!(Where did you find out about this anecdote?)
Charles Ives and His Music (Henry and Sidney Cowell); Charles Ives and His World (Burkholder); America's Musical Life (Chase and Crawford); also classes with Gilbert Chase and Howard Boatwright. HTH!
You stood up...,great!But stop showing off!
Also I looked up what"HTH" meant:
"An acronym standing for "hope this helps", used sarcastically after answering a dumb question or pointing out an obvious oversight to a person of inferior mental qualities. Limited generally to message board posting."
Yer in trouble now,youse better sit down!
At least I've been to Danville,CT where Charlie lived,smarty-pants!!
I love how happy the lady is to be playing this at 21:30 :)
Omigod I didn't see that, Jess. you just made my day.
@@Chesterton7 And double bass man at 32:35.
"Charles Ives studied music at Yale but left the professional music world at 28 and soon after became a successful insurance executive. Since he did not have to compose for a salary and had no deadlines to meet or commissioners to please, he had freedom to experiment." - from today's New York Times article titled, 'Chaos Assembled, Beauty Emerges'.
It is not badly written. You just don't understand it.
Utterly remarkable!
Despite the audible "hack" early in the video repeated listenings are rewarding for admirers or detractors of the composer or the composition. Might be greatest piece of 20th century music regardless of genre.
Along with Mahlers 9th it is for me probably.
@@futuropasado Took the words out of my mouth
@@futuropasado: Mahler’s 9th is the greatest symphony ever written, but I love the Ives 4th. This performance lacks a lot of the punch and detail that I remember from the great Stokowski recording. Still, there are many lovely moments.
Here’s a link to the Columbia Masterworks recording with Stokowski from 1965. It still sounds great:
ua-cam.com/video/RTXZSQm9Dm8/v-deo.html
😎🎹
Could this be the best American work ever composed? One clear vote for maybe.
This is bare-breaking, extreme, dark! I feel like I am on constant edge, living through murder! The scores and utter darkness is MAGNIFICENT!
dark?
Its the opposite of dark! Perhaps this was your first hearing of a non-tonal music.
It's anything but dark. Get through your pretentions.
Recently discovering Ives, his music is the soundtrack to the current covid curse and the madness of our masked days. Hearing him gives me hope amid the collapse of all we love.
I've been inclined to think the same, regarding atonal as a misnomer when applied to Ives, who clearly did not eschew tonal practices altogether, and conspicuously layered sections in different keys -- hence "polytonal". However, after reading Alan Forte's essay, "Ives and Atonality" my view has changed. Specifically, Forte distinguishes between 12-tone serialism on the one hand and late tonality/post tonality on the other. Ives music is closer to the latter.
The greatest American composer. That second movement always chokes me up. I'm sure he was an influence on Copland.
Have you heard it live? I burst into tears when I heard it for the first time in a live concert. The sense of being coated and blanketed in music is so strong and intense.
Copland had a great respect for Charles Ives. No influence though.
Same.
Try and listen to Ives' Robert Browning Overture, it's like one long 4th symphony second movement.
It's rarely performed but I have an old radio live recording from Berlin Philharmonic with Chailly conducting and at the end is so great: half the audience gives an ovation and shouting and the other half is booing.
Definite proof you really wrote something interesting. I love the piece.
I like the 4 symphonies of Ives.Sam van der Zee
The Fugue always brings a tear to my eye. It's so beautiful.
Same. It's the unexpected lovely juxtaposition.
@@Chesterton7 Yes, it kind of clears the ears between the other 2 movements. And the lovely clarinet at 24:17
Goosebumps and tears as I listen to the final moments of the fourth movt. - and then the choir stands....... Bought the record of the first performance as an 18 yr old, by chance. part of my life ever since. Tho' I understood very little of it back then, Ithe bond was immediate.
Same.
You "understood" when you were 18 y/o else you'd not have bonded with it ! xx
That ending for me is like Ives’ “Ode to America”.
This is a great rendering of the work. This work is musical artistry at its apex.
This is truly a great performance of a masterpiece! Would have loved to have been there, but this is the next best thing. Wonderful!
This music is impossible, here's why
00:00 - stunning beginning, it gets no better than this.
01:22 - tonality comes in the form of a beautiful choral piece.
04:24 - how is this texture of layers of music even imaginable?
13:55 - and this beautiful ensemble? Why can I hear Rhapsody in Blue?
16:22 - after all the polytonality, polyrhythms, polytemporality and polycrhomatism, this beautiful fugue stands out in an indescribable manner.
25:24 - Fazıl Say's Universe Symphony, almost one century before? Also throughout the piece you can clearly hear the Concord Sonata in the background. And that enormous crescendo? Unreal.
31:46 - there it is, the so-called "ether organ". Never heard that so low-pitched, what a beautiful sensation it is. My God, and that chorus in the end? Everything vanishes, and it's the drums that have that duty.
I find it amusing that for such a deep, heavy work, there is a tremendous amount of smiling by the performers- especially that pretty blonde in the final chorus at 33 minutes!
29:30 I absolutely love how Ives transitions to the grand restatement of the main theme. It’s like the music is asking a question - only in this work, the question is answered!
Holy Wow!
Exactly what I thought.
I know, right?
The earlier symphonies seem like a preparation for this and having found his voice he couldn't write any more. I don't think he was ahead of his time but of it, defining it to some extent. The musical equivalent of Jon Dos Passos? I don't know. As an Englishman what do I know about America? I just love Ives' music, especially the chambre music.
I think the comparison to Dos Passos is especially apt. Both were using modern technology and what would be considered avant-garde methodology (overlapping dialogue, breaking the 4th wall, etc.) An even more apt comparison would be to James Joyce. Ulysses in many ways is the equivalent of Ives' Fourth. Both, in the end, had a spiritual message.
to the person coughing at 01:05, shut up. ives is on.
I'ves might have appreciated that.
Oh dang lol
At the world premiere in 1965, Harmony Ives (wife) and Julian Myrick (business partner) were in the audience. Just as Maestro Stokowski raised his arms to begin the symphony, Mr. Myrick let out a loud sneeze. Stokowski turned to the audience and said, to much laughter, "That's not in the score."
@@andrewpetersen5272 Yes, maybe he's in the score. "Tenor cough".
And I've always loved 29:55. It sounds apocalyptic to me.
29:55
The one time I heard it live, student performers in Bloomington, IN, I was struck by the way that the sound masses are built out of components each of which is quite simple in itself.
BBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA does justice to the immensity of the work. The symphony is beautiful, complex and a complete example of the composer's genius and ingenuity.
IVES is the seminal American composer. A Renaissance man as a collegiate undergraduate -- ran track well but sparingly at YALE -- and popular among his peers he had issues with the undergraduate music professors. Talk about missing the boat.
Composed music his entire life. Some prefer European composers a few centuries before IVES. I prefer IVES.
ah, that chorale fugue---sublime. Seems like it opens up vast spaces and distances, and the past...
In the slow movement he quotes Brahms and all fits in. An extraordently composer. I remember back in the early 60th we had a conducter, wich name I unfortunately forgot, he introduced us to this fabuolous music. I am still gratefull.
Great to see David in action. We miss him here in St. Louis, where he transformed our SLSO program over the 13 years he led it.
2:20 ooh this is pretty. I imagine a choir singing this in church while the apocalypse happens outside.
Cholera. To jest genialne.
Still is the greatest composer of the USA - Ives was way ahead of his time. This work voices such a unique Americanness.
Rather hard to apply those labels to nationality don't you think?
y'all are missing the point: this song is hilarious. Listen to 29:30 onward. it's clearly meant to be a humorous commentary on music. You can clearly hear the slow, sweeping, pompous build-up-to-the-end that is so common in old classical pieces. Except in this portion 3 different pieces are trying to drown each other out.
Listen at 32:20 onward - the accompaniment of the choir sounds absolutely demented in contrast with the angelic aaahs. It's almost like classical dada. It's excellent.
I think you are right GoldStandard - there is much wit and intelligence here. Ives has an ability to be ironic, witty, wise and human which is why we are all captivated by this work.
Yes! And as an example of comedy from a great composer, check out Mozart's D minor fantasy for piano. I insist that he is making fun of Italian opera conventions.
I don't know how well-attended the Proms are, but the Albert Hall here only seems to be at about 30% capacity. I wonder if interest in the work was that limited, because it's quite and undertaking to perform it.
Here’s the most important composition of the 20th century.
13:00 a few radio stations start overlapping :)
Wit; humor; damn good music. wonderfully realized! It must have been hell to rehearse, as players' ears yelled at them 'No, no! intonation wrong!' But it wasn't! That's how it's written.
Thank you so much for the upload.
The Fourth is wonderful.
This is a very good performance of a quite difficult work. I extend my regards to the orchestra and Mastro Robertson. I listen and try to inform myself more about Ives as a person....
Jan Swafford's bio of Ives is excellent. Great read.
As an American who loves Ives but doesn't rate him because he was just an "ear" and later added a "heart" and is like too many American artists in all arts: Flawed by lack of training but getting at something essential. I have always thought Ives was a pure extension of Brahmsian technique without even a hint of Wagner. And by the 4th, he is past Brahms. My favorite Ives is Unanswered Question. I hear it as the tonal equivalent of Webern's best works. (No that is not why the American soldier shot him. That was pre-Trump. Just stupidity without cupidity.)
This work (the 4th Symphony) that I am listening to as I write this has an emotional sense akin to Berg who was Wagner regressing to those 12 tone variations of Bach.
In America, we have to live with only a few great works by our early generations of classical music. But they do make a common core that we all know.
As for Rite, I heard that first with Robert Craft conducting and Stravinsky. In attendance was Frank Hudson (later director of the US Army Band Pacific) and we both got their autographs. We were both composers at 16-18. Me of songs set to poems and he of band works. He became a conductor and arranger.
I was a writer who learned to speak to computers and now a writer again. Composer's know how to write so that if people do it perfectly it is perfect. Something writers never get to experience while young and rarely while old. But Computers always do exactly what you say even if it destroys them. I hear those computers hum in Philip Glass. I heard those souls cry out in Holst's exotic (non-western pieces), Varese and John Cage's 4:33. And I hear that cry rising up again after years of academicism. And this Symphony -- all ear and heart like his Climbing Jacob's Ladder -- should be "heard" again and again in 2018.
Back to the Rite. The Rite was about Rhythm (all of them -- harmonic, tonal centers, lines and counterlines, beats and counter beats but not "the Beat." It's hypothetical story set among the Scythians was actually Russian dress to the Tarantella. The only place he & Diaghelev could go was the proto-surrealism of Petrushka. I also love "Soldiers Tale." You can hear what Surrealistic Dada sounds like. And Dada was so brief it is the only popular and enduring record I know of that movement in the Upper Rhine. Stravinsky only needed to make one statement like the Rite. As he made a single statement in Petrushka and Soldiers Tale. I Zimbra by the Talking Heads is the only statement I know that matches those acts of cutural and aesthetic understanding.
What is interesting is that he who could speak freely (Stravinsky) seemed lost after such statements were no longer heard while he who could never speak (Shastakovich) saved the very best for the last String Quartet and last Symphony; they were his Unanswered Question.
Pompous indeed!
Disjointed? Muddled? Well, it seems to me that Stolowski said in his discussion for the NET broadcast that there were several problems score, that could not be fixed without making changes to the score, which he was unwilling to do without the composers permission. So, inevitably, each conductor is going to have to make several of his choices of his own. Therefore, there will be marked differences from one performance to the next. Remember, that it was only with Rockefeller Foundation support that Stokowski got 10 rehearsals. My guess is that they did not have that luxury for this performance. Still, I think all involved are to be commended for performing this work. And overall, I found it quite satisfying, particularly the way the whole thing built to the climax in the middle of the final movement. I think this conductor was able to do that perhaps better than any other performance I have heard. And giving the complexity of the score, that is no small feat.
Patrick Crosby In terms of the difficulty in performing this work live and in terms of the earnest and sincere effort given by the performers, I agree with you. I should have considered the live nature of the recording before I critiqued it.
My only problem with Stokowski's interpretation was his insistance of the use of a fermata at the end of the 2nd movement. Ives I am sure would have preferred an abrupt ending, and indeed most conductors (including Jose Serebrier, who was one of Stokowski's two assistant conductors) have used the abrupt ending--the musical equivalent of a quick fade to black.
I'm not trying to get you to change your mind. You just don't understand what Ives was trying to portray here. He doesn't care so much about the "sound" of music. Ives wrote, "Beauty in music is too often confused with something that lets the ears lie back in an easy chair." He was being experimental and liked an unfinished quality to his work. Nothing Ives wrote was "wrong."
"Art is not supposed to be easier! There are a lot of things in life that are supposed to be easier. Ridding the world of heart attacks, making the roads smoother, making old people more comfortable in the winter, but not Art. Art should always be tough. Art should demand something of you. Art should involve foot-pounds of energy being expended. It's not supposed to be easier, and those who want it easier should not be artists. They should be out selling public relations copy."--Harlan Ellison
BTW, Harlan Ellison was a great admirer of Ives, having been introduced to his music by fellow writer James Blish.
"All the wrong notes are right."--Charles Ives to his copyist.
Well, this instrument is called: Theremin or: Thereminvox, Thereminovox, Termenvox, ursprünglich Aetherophone. It was created by the Russian Lew Termen. More infos you may find on wikipedia.
The fugue is as beautiful as any of Beethoven's slow movements, and all the more so for the chaos that immediately preceded it.
It was very nice of Bob Odenkirk to take a break from acting to become a conductor for this symphony
Oh happy days!
I waited on a dead torrent for more than a year, just for a low bit-rate audio of this, and it never completed yet. Here's the full broadcast, both audio and video! Today is a Very Good Day. Thank you so much
Mvt 2: taking shrooms before the state championship game was a bad idea!!!
I actually don't agree with you. Ives didn't care about the research of a simple melody to immediately satisfy a simple public, but getting the correct sound and the right timbre from the orchestra, as his father taught him, was fundamental.
이 음악엔 혼돈속에 정화로움이 있고 시벨리우스의 그것도 있습니다...❤
아침을 깨워 주셔서 감사 합니다...😊
Nicely done ! Brings a neglected masterpiece to life.
Exactly.
Charles Ives' music was such demented genius. This is some of the darkest music I've ever heard. Metal bands, rather than listening to other metal bands, should listen to Charles Ives.
Go hear it live and it will blow your mind R.P.
@@TeatroAcustico I did in the early 2000s when the National Symphony Orchestra performed it with Leonard Slatkin conducting. I was a bit put off by Slatkin repeatedly using the word 'weird' in his spoken introduction to the performance, but I understand now that was verbal shorthand for folks less familiar with Ives' work.The performance was...spectacular.
@@TeatroAcustico You're so right.
Gosh, I just love this so much. I tend to listen to it every quarter just to hear new elements that manifest. It's like a favourite pie in some respects; you could quite happily eat it over and over again, but you'd rather limit yourself just so you can enjoy it as much each time 🙂
14:56 i love that the brass just has a march of their own, completely disconnected from the rest 😂