[nec]shivaree: The Sonatas for Violin and Piano by Charles Ives

Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano (1902–9)

Autumn
     (on Autumn: “Mighty God, while angels bless thee”)
In the Barn
     (on fiddle tunes and The Battle Cry of Freedom)
Revival
     (on Nettleton: “Come thou fount of every blessing”)

Program note

Ives left no program note for the Second Sonata, probably thinking that the three titles were enough.  Autumn means the hymn-tune title rather than the season, though perhaps both.  The barn dance quotes Money Music, Sailor’s Hornpipe, The White Cockade, et….a jig-variation of Turkey ion the Straw, and a waltz-variation of the verse of The Battle Cry of Freedom, which then dominates the scene (to which Ives later added low piano clusters—“extra player as drum corps.”)  The Revival may suggest Shakers.  At the end, Ives’ retarding the repetitions is treated freely, the retard only in the violin, piano remaining fast and filling in with more “shakes.” 

Sonata No. 3 for Violin and Piano (1905–14)

First verse and refrain: Adagio
     Second verse and refrain: Andante – Con moto
     Third verse and refrain: Allegretto
     Fourth verse and refrain: Adagio
          (on Need, Beulah Land, and I Hear Thy Welcome Voice)
Allegro
     (on There’ll Be No Dark Valley and Happy Day)                                           
Adagio cantabile
    (on Need)

Program note

Ives’ program note:

“The sonata is an attempt to express the feeling and fervor—a fervor that was often more vociferous than religious—with which the hymns and revival tunes were sung at the Camp Meetings held extensively in New England in the ‘70s and ‘80s.  The tunes used or suggested are: Beulah Land, There’ll Be No More Sorrow, and Every Hour I Need Thee.  Common themes are used with or against the hymn tunes.
        The first movement is a kind of a magnified hymn of four different verses, all ending with the same refrain.  The second movement may represent a meeting where the feet and body, as well as the voice, add to the excitement.  The last movement is an experiment: the free fantasia is first; the working-out develops into the themes, rather than from them.  The coda consists of the themes for the first time in their entirety and in conjunction.
        As the tonality throughout is supposed to take care of itself, there are no key signatures."

By “common themes” Ives meant his own counterpoints or countersubjects to the hymn tunes.  The first refrain is the first piano solo.  Though Ives knew little Italian, and shared Mark Twain’s humorous approach to foreign language, much of his music suggests that he did know that “adagio” does not mean “slow” but “at ease.”
        Ives later regarded this sonata as a “weak sister” because in 1914 he had recomposed it, hoping to make it acceptable to average musical tastes, and forgoing way-out experiments (he destroyed the earlier sketches and copies).  But this relative plainness shows his melodic and structural individuality all the more clearly.
        The four verses of the first movement might be thought of as: fantasy, recitative and march, slow jog, meditation.  Early in the first verse a liberty is taken: Ives gave the first long-held high note to violin, the second one to piano (which has no way to prolong the sound) while the violin is idle—here violin sings both of them.  The rag, recomposed from an earlier rag of 1905, becomes a transcendental cakewalk celebrating the time when “there’ll be no more sorrow.”
        The third movement is based entirely on Need (using every phrase of it for a rich melodic variety) and on Ives’ counterpoint to it.  Among these sonatas, this is the only movement that seems to share Ives’ loftiest aims.  Its intimate tenderness and far-reaching horizons relate and combine in ways that recall the music he felt most happy to have written (last movements of the Fourth Symphony and Second Orchestral Set, and Psalm 90).  If one had told him this, it would have been like him to say that he owed it all to Lowry’s hymn.

INTERMISSION

Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano (1902–8)

Andante – Allegro vivace – Andante
     (on the end of Autumn, the Shining Shore and Bringing in the Sheaves)
Largo cantabile
     (on The Old Oaken Bucket and The Prisoner’s Hope)
Allegro
     (on Work Song and Watchman)

Program note

Ives’ program note:
“This sonata is a general impression…of the people’s outdoor gatherings in which men got up and said what they thought regardless of consequences—of holiday celebrations and camp meetings in the ‘80s and ‘90s—suggesting some of the songs, tunes, and hymns, together with some of the sounds of nature joining in from the mountains…The first movement may suggest something that nature and human nature would sing out to each other—sometimes.  The second movement a mood when The Old Oaken Bucket and Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys are Marching would come over the hills, trying to relive the sadness of the old Civil War days.  And the third movement the hymns and actions at the farmers’ camp meeting, inciting them to “work for the night is coming…”

In Ives’ Memos he recalled writing the first theme (a canon by augmentation between melody and bass, apparently derived from the last phrase of Autumn) “just the first Sunday after I gave up playing in church, June 8, 1902.”  In the second movement, nature is heard in the violin’s whisperings (often criticized as faulty balance), and in the third in the accompaniments to Watchman, tell us of the night… At the end, Ives’ love of puns, both verbal and musical, makes the final echoes of the Work Song turn slyly into The Union forever…(chorus of The Battle Cry of Freedom)

Sonata No. 4 for Violin and Piano “Children’s Day at the Camp Meeting” (1906–15)

Allegro
     (the boys marching around to Tell Me the Old Story infects Charley’s practicing of his father’s Fugue in B-flat Major)
Largo – Allegro con slugarocko – Largo
     (on Yes, Jesus Loves Me interrupted by boys throwing stones into the brook)
Allegro
     (on Shall We Gather at the River)

Program note

From Ives’ note:
“There was usually only one Children’s Day in these summer meetings, and the children made the most of it—often the best of it.  The first movement was suggested by an actual happening: the organ practice and the fast march got to joining in each others’ sounds, the loudest voices singing most of the wrong notes.  Most of the second movement moves around an old favorite hymn while the accompaniment reflects the outdoor sounds of nature on those summer days, the west wind in the pines and oaks, the running brook.  The third movement is the boys marching again to “gather at the river.”

In the first movement, Ives’ “rather fast march time” is often played in still faster “cut time,” although his time signature is 4/4, never 2/2, and the occasional dotted rhythm shows that he had “rather fast” quarter beats in mind.

Decoration Day, Mvt. II from Violin Sonata No. 5 “New England Holidays” (1909–11?)

(gathering flowers, decorating graves, “How firm a foundation,” “Taps”, marching back to town)     

Program note

Ives’ New England Holidays are well known as a symphony of four tone poems, but their first version, a projected sonata for violin and piano, is unknown, due to Ives’ acute sense of privacy about how his music grew.
        The only complete violin Holiday is Decoration Day.  The finished ink copy (which Ives labeled “arr. for Vio. & Piano from Orchestral Set”) bears all the later pencil sketchings toward the orchestration, showing clearly that it was “arranged” the other way around.
        Incomplete thougb this sonata remains, there is still quite enough to give the substance of Ives’ original idea of the ink copy of Decoration Day he called it “Sonata #5”, counting the so-called Pre-First Sonata (recomposed into the others) as “1,” and the present nos. 1-3 as “2-4” (the present fourth being then in the future).

Ives’ postface for the orchestral Holidays are equally applicable to the sonata.

“In the early morning the gardens and woods about the village are the meeting places of those who, with tender memories and devoted hands, gather the flowers for the Day’s Memorial.  During the forenoon as the people join each other on the Green, there is felt at times, a fervency and intensity—a shadow perhaps of the fanatical harshness—reflecting old Abolitionist days.  It is a day as Thoreau suggests, when there is a pervading consciousness of “Nature’s kinship with the lower order—man.”
     After the Town Hall is filled with the Spring’s harvest of lilacs, daisies, and peonies, the parade is slowly formed on Main Street.  First come the three Marshals on plough horses (going sideways), then the Warden and Burgesses “in carriages,” the Village Cornet Band, the G.A.R., two by two, the Militia (Company G.), while the volunteer Fire Brigade, drawing the decorated horse-cart with its jangling bells, brings up the rear—the inevitable swarm of small boys following.  The march to Wooster Cemetery is a thing a boy never forgets.  The roll of muffled drums and “Adeste Fideles” answer for the dirge.  A little girl on the fencepost waves to her father and wonders if he looked like that at Gettysburg.
     After the last grave is decorated, “Taps” sounds out through the pines and hickories, while a last hymn is sung.  Then the ranks are formed again and “we all march back to town” to a Yankee stimulant—Reeve’s inspiring “Second Regiment Quickstep”—though, to many a soldier, the somber thoughts of the day underline the tunes of the band.  The march stops—and in the silence the shadow of the early morning flower-song rises over the Town, and the sunset behind West Mountain breathes its benediction upon the Day.”