Ives - The Gong on the Hook and Ladder

Charles E. Ives The Gong on the Hook and Ladder or Fireman’s Parade on Main Street for Piano Quintet (or Piano and Strings with Optional Bell)

Charles Ives (1874-1954) often tried out his technical innovations in musical miniatures (called “cartoons”), often with amusing or atmospheric titles. Ives composed his The Gong on the Hook and Ladder or Firemen’s Parade on Main Street around 1912 (though it might have been first thought of as part of a Pre-Second String Quartet, S. 672, no longer extant). The only manuscript is a pencil sketch written in 4-6 staves, often using shorthand for repeating sections of the piano line. The scoring calls for piano and string quartet, with “+ Bass” added later only in the margin of the first measure. Ives notes that a gong, bell, or drum may be added, striking at the beginning of each measure (and, as seen in the orchestral version, also halfway through the 7/4 measure, m. 29). Around 1934 Ives reworked this music, altering some parts and arranging it for small orchestra (S. 38). In his Memos, Ives describes the piece as “another nice joke, which most everybody can see . . . The Annual Parade of the neighborhood Volunteer Fire Company was a slow marching affair—for the Hook and Ladder was heavy, and the Gong on the hind wheel ‘must ring steady-like’—and coming downhill and holding backward fast, and going uphill out of step, fast and slow, the Gong seemed sometimes out of step with the Band, and sometimes the Band out of step with the Gong--but the Gong usually got the best of it. Nobody always seemed to ‘keep step,’ but they got there just the same . . .” Technically, the work is an exercise in superimposing varying metric and rhythmic patterns: the gong sets a fixed durational rate; around it the bass line fluidly moves in a cyclical pattern of quickening and slackening rhythmic figures; and the angular melodic lines, entering imitatively, proceed in 7/8 meter. Ives gives the opening melodic motif, with its characteristic dotted-note rhythm and falling interval of a fourth, an amusing, wry twist by developing it into a recognizable snatch of “Oh my darling Clementine” (Vn1, mm. 13-15). Two other identifiable borrowings are a Psi Upsilon marching song (“Few Days”) from Yale (Vn1, mm. 20-27) and “Marching Through Georgia” (Vn2, mm. 27-28). Markings enclosed in square brackets and slurs with slashes are editorial, but based on Ives's own markings in the orchestral version. The work might best be conducted or thought of in two beats per bar. Given Ives's markings for the orchestral version, the starting tempo would be about q._x = 43-46, accelerating in mm. 20-21 to about 57 (thus at m. 29 the tempo is q = 100).

—James B. Sinclair

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