1 minute read
PROGRAM NOTES
Charles Ives Country Band March
Composer: born October 20, 1874, Danbury, CT; died May 19, 1954, New York City
Advertisement
Work composed: 1903
World premiere: 1974
As a boy, Charles Ives’ formative musical experiences were shaped in large part by his father George, who conducted the village marching band in Ives’ hometown of Danbury, CT. The sound of several bands warming up simultaneously on the village green before a parade made an indelible lifelong impression on Ives, and was an integral part of his own compositions.
One of the most innovative components of Ives’ music is the way he incorporated well-known melodies – marching songs, folk and popular melodies of the day, hymns, children’s songs – into a richly layered sonic landscape. The melodies are often simultaneous rather than sequential, which can result in a boisterous, hilarious cacophony. In just under five minutes, Ives’ Country Band March presents more than a dozen tunes, including “The Arkansas Traveler,” “The Battle Cry of Freedom,” “My Old Kentucky Home,” “London Bridge,” and “Yankee Doodle.”
In his biography of Ives, Jan Swafford wrote, “[Ives] and his father (also) appreciated that town bands integrated all levels of ability. If the notes and the beat got the worst of it in this democracy of competence, at least everyone was enjoying himself. Ives’s riotous Fourth of July features drunken cornet players falling off the beat and mixing up the crook attachments that changed the horns’ key, so some end up blaring away in the wrong key. Country Band March ends revealing a hapless saxophonist playing an extra couple of beats. ‘Bandstuff,’ Ives wrote to one of his longtime copyists; ‘they don’t always play right & together & it was as good either way.’”
Ives sketched out the Country Band March in 1903, revised it in 1905, put it aside for several years, and eventually incorporated it into several later works, including the “Hawthorne” movement from the second Piano Sonata, “Concord” (1911); “Putnam’s Camp” from Three Places in New England (1912); and the second movement of the Fourth Symphony (1916).
