1st Symphony (Ives)
Charles Ives wrote his Symphony No. 1 in D minor, JS 1 , between 1898 and 1901. It premiered on April 26, 1953 in Washington, DC . The four-movement work was written for Ives' final exam and has an approximate playing time of 37 minutes.
Romantic elements can be found in music as well as polytonality and polyrhythmics . The piece requires two flutes , two oboes , an English horn , two clarinets , two bassoons , four French horns , two trumpets , three trombones , a tuba , timpani and strings . There is also an optional playable voice for a third flute.
sentences
The symphony consists of the following movements:
- Allegro
- Adagio molto sostenuto
- Scherzo: Vivace
- Allegro molto
music
The work on the symphony was also subject to numerous interventions by Ives' composition teacher Horatio Parker . This is how Ives was supposed to rewrite the first and fourth movements, since they contained polytonal passages - a general characteristic of his early works. In the end he hid the harmonic frictions in the first movement, and in the fourth movement Ives was able to agree with Parker to keep the basic version, with the only condition that it should end in D minor. Furthermore, the symphony has clearly noticeable romantic features and the general style of the 19th century , which Parker incorporated into the score.
The second movement begins with a cor anglais solo, which refers to the place of the same instrument from the second movement of Dvořák's symphony "From the New World" . Furthermore, the two middle movements have many rhythmic "stumbling blocks". Because of this, Walter Damrosch failed in a rehearsal of the work in 1910, whereupon it was not performed. The premiere finally took place on April 26, 1953, a year before Ives' death.
literature
- Harenberg, cultural guide concert . Meyers Lexikonverlag, Mannheim 2006, ISBN 978-3-411-76161-6 .