4th Symphony (Ives)

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Charles Ives around 1913

The 4th Symphony by the American composer Charles Ives (1874–1954) was completed around 1925, but was not heard in full until 40 years later. It requires a large cast, including a choir, and places high demands on the performers, for example through the simultaneous layering of instrumental groups that make music in different meters and tempos .

Origin, cast and characterization

The fourth symphony was written from around 1910 to 1925 and thus falls into the late creative phase of Charles Ives. Characteristic elements are poly- and atonality , polymetrics and rhythms , clusters and collage processes, whereby quarter-tones and aleatorics are also experimented with.

The score requires a very extensive set of instruments including a choir (the 1st and 3rd movements are each smaller):

In addition to the large cast , the simultaneous musical processes , sometimes notated in completely independent meters , pose challenges that can hardly be mastered without one or two assistant conductors in addition to the main conductor.

The performance lasts about 30 minutes. The four movements of the symphony are headed as follows:

  1. Prelude: Maestoso
  2. Comedy: Allegretto
  3. Fugue: Andante moderato
  4. Finale: Very slowly - Largo maestoso

All four movements are based on earlier works by Charles Ives: the first on the finale of his 1st violin sonata with the song "Watchman", the second on the piano composition "The Celestial Railroad", the third movement on the first movement of the 1st string quartet, and the last on a lost Memorial March and the final section of the 2nd String Quartet. Each of these parts is based on quotations, primarily spiritual hymns . For his 4th symphony, however, Ives added new musical substance around and between existing passages, including many other hymn quotes, so that multi-layered textures, as are typical of Ives' collage technique, emerged.

In a program note for the partial premiere in 1927 (only the first two movements), Ives friend Henry Bellamann summarized the work's “aesthetic program” as “the searching questions of What? and Why? which the spirit of man asks of life. This is particularly the sense of the prelude. The three succeeding movements are the diverse answers in which existence replies " .

1 sentence

The first movement, which lasts just over three minutes, is in three parts and contrasts the large orchestra, including the choir, with a small long-distance ensemble of harp and solo strings. After a short, imperious and solemn introduction in fortissimo and unison of the low strings and piano, followed by a trumpet fanfare, the distant ensemble sounds softly, which also backs most of the movement with fragments from "Bethany" ("Nearer, My God, to Thee"). In the second part, a solo cello intones the beginning of the hymn “In the Sweet Bye-and-Bye”, which is spun on with other motifs from accompanying instruments. The third part is an adaptation of the song "Watchman, Tell Us of the Night" by Charles Ives based on a poem by Lowell Mason , sung by the choir in unison, accompanied by piano and strings. In the accompaniment of the distant ensemble and other instruments, fragments of further hymns appear. The movement fades away in fourfold pianissimo.

2nd movement

The second movement is an expanded orchestral form of the piano fantasy “Celestial Railroad” by Ives (approx. 1925), supplemented by insertions and additions of voices. The extra-musical basis is the allegorical story "The Celestial Railroad" by Nathaniel Hawthorne . In it, a man dreams of a railway passage into heaven, which is offered to him as an alternative to the arduous pilgrimage path, until he realizes that he is in truth on the way to hell. The sleeper wakes up to the sound of a brass band and realizes that there is no simple answer to the elementary questions raised in the first movement. In the music, imitated railway noises appear in a complex collage and partly asynchronous meters, alongside quotes from marches and hymns (such as "Beulah Land", "Marching Through Georgia", "In the Sweet Bye-and-Bye", "Turkey in the Straw") , " Yankee Doodle ", "Jesus, Lover of My Soul", " Nearer, My God, to Thee " and "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean"). According to Ives, the sentence is "not a scherzo in the usual sense, but a comedy ... The dream or fantasy ends with a break in reality - July 4th in Concord - brass, percussion, etc."

3rd movement

The clear diatonic third movement, a double fugue based on the hymns “From Greenland's Icy Mountains” and “All the Hail of the Power”, stands in sharp contrast to the preceding complex clusters of sound . The movement is smaller (a few wind instruments, strings, timpani and organ). Bach's “ Doric Fugue ”, which Ives played as an organist in his youth , is also quoted in one episode . At the end of the trumpet the Christmas carol " Joy to the World " sounds . According to Charles Ives, the double fugue symbolizes the "reaction of life to formalism and ritualism."

4th movement

In the finale, shortly after the beginning, fragments of “Nearer, My God, to Thee” appear in the lower strings and high in the distant ensemble of violins and harp. This hymn is - along with other hymn quotations - always present, slowly moving into the middle registers and gradually being put together from fragments until it is taken over by the wordless choir, accompanied by descending scales. In this movement, the composer uses a separate drum ensemble that has to play throughout at a tempo that is independent of the main orchestra. At the end the music gradually fades away, finally in the distant ensemble and separate percussion. According to Ives, the finale is "a glorification of the previous salary, in terms that have something to do with the reality of existence and its religious experience."

World premiere / reception

In 1926 the score of the 2nd movement was published in isolation by Henry Cowell . On January 29, 1927, the first two movements of the 4th Symphony were premiered under the direction of Eugène Goossens . In 1933 Bernard Herrmann conducted the 3rd movement, albeit with his own instrumentation. The first performance of the entire symphony took place on April 26, 1965 with the American Symphony Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski in New York's Carnegie Hall , eleven years after the composer's death. The following week she was recorded with the same forces for the Columbia Records label . It was first printed in 1965 by G. Schirmer (AMP), and a new edition was published in 2011 (Charles Ives Society Critical Edition).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ further details in Charles E. Ives: 4th Symphony, Charles Ives Society Performance Edition, Ed. Thomas M. Brodhead, AMP, 2011 , score with extensive practical performance information (English)
  2. ^ J. Peter Burkholder: All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives an the Uses of Musical Borrowing . Yale University Press, 1995, ISBN 978-0-300-10212-3 . P. 389
  3. ↑ cit. n. J. Peter Burkholder: All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives an the Uses of Musical Borrowing . Yale University Press, 1995, ISBN 978-0-300-10212-3 . P. 390
  4. ↑ These and other German-translated quotes in the following sections according to the LP byte by Uwe Kraemer on CBS 60502, Charles Ives: Robert Browning Overture / Symphony No. 4, L. Stokowski, American SO, 1967/1983
  5. ↑ Kurt Stone: Ives's fourth symphony: a review. The Music Quarterly, Vol. 52, No. 1, Jan. 1966, pp. 1-16

literature

  • J. Peter Burkholder: All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives an the Uses of Musical Borrowing . Yale University Press, 1995, ISBN 978-0-300-10212-3 . P. 389ff.
  • Trilingual LP text (English NN, German Uwe Kraemer, French Marc Vignal) for CBS 60502, Charles Ives: Robert Browning Overture / Symphony No. 4, L. Stokowski, American SO, 1967/1983

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