Program Notes: Beyond the Score: Ives' Symphony No. 2: Things Our Fathers Loved

ABOUT THE MUSIC

AMERICAN RIFFS AND RHAPSODIES - JANUARY 27 & 29 parallel” to Harlem, and listeners might think of it in much the same way they think of Gershwin’s An American in Paris: each is a musical portrait of a city its composer loved.

In his autobiography, Ellington left a brief description of Harlem: “We would like to take you on a tour of this place called Harlem…

It is Sunday morning. We are strolling from 110th Street up Seventh Avenue, heading north through the Spanish and West Indian neighborhood toward the 125th Street business area…You may hear a parade go by, or a funeral, or you may recognize the passage of those who are making Civil Rights demands.”

Ellington begins by having a trumpet say the word “Harlem” – that two-note motif will return throughout the piece – and Harlem, only about 14 minutes long, is structured around a series of brief, almost kaleidoscopic scenes. Ellington left a list of those 20 scenes:

The piece of music goes like this: (1) Pronouncing the word “Harlem,” itemizing its many facets – from downtown to uptown, true and false; (2) 110th Street, heading north through the Spanish neighborhood; (3) Intersection further uptown – cats shucking and stiffing; 4) Upbeat parade; (5) Jazz spoken in a thousand languages; (6) Floor show; (7) Girls out of step, but kicking like crazy; (8) Fanfare for Sunday; (9) On the way to church; (10) Church – we’re even represented in Congress by our man of the church; (11) The sermon; (12) Funeral; (13) Counterpoint of tears; (14) Chic chick; Stopping traffic; (16) After church promenade; (17) Agreement a capella; (18) Civil Rights demandments; (19) March onward and upward; (20) Summary – contributions coda.

PERFORMANCE HISTORY

by Dr. Melvin G. Goldzband, Symphony Archivist With the exception of the Barber Symphony No. 1, all the pieces presented at these concerts are premieres to San Diego's orchestra and audiences. That symphony by Samuel Barber had been played by the orchestra under Jahja Ling's direction during the 2010-11 season.

The remainder of the selections to be played at this concert, by Henry Cowell, Steven Stucky, Leonard Bernstein, Morton Gould and Duke Ellington, are being given their first San Diego hearings.

PROGRAM NOTES BY ERIC BROMBERGER

JANUARY 28 BEYOND THE SCORE®: IVES’ SYMPHONY NO. 2: THINGS OUR FATHERS LOVED SATURDAY January 28, 2017 – 8:00pm JACOBS MASTERWORKS CONCERT OUR AMERICAN MUSIC FESTIVAL

conductor James Gaffigan (See page 37 for bio) A production of The Chicago Symphony Orchestra creative director Gerard McBurney actor Jill Mueller actor Roger Mueller narrator Nuvi Mehta

chorus members of SACRA/PROFANA Performance at the Jacobs Music Center's Copley Symphony Hall

PROGRAM CHARLES IVES

Symphony No. 2

Andante moderato Allegro

Adagio cantabile

Lento maestoso

Allegro molto vivace

The approximate running time for this concert, including intermission, is two hours and ten minutes.

P 41 PE RFORMA NCES MAG A Z IN E

SAN DI E GO SYM P H O N Y O R C H E ST R A 2 016 - 17 S E AS ON J A NUAR Y 2017

ABOUT THE MUSIC

BEYOND THE SCORE®: IVES’ SYMPHONY NO. 2: THINGS OUR FATHERS LOVED - JANUARY 28 Symphony No. 2 C H A RL E S IVE S Born October 20, 1874, Danbury, CT Died May 19, 1954, New York City Charles Ives graduated from Yale in June 1898. He had devoted himself so completely to music at Yale that he graduated with a D+ average, but even as a young man Ives was shrewd enough to recognize that it would be foolish to try to make a career in music. And so he went into insurance, where he would eventually become a multi-millionaire. He took a job in New York City with Mutual Life and – with a group of other recent grads – moved into an apartment near Central Park.

Ives spent his weekdays at Mutual Life, but the rest of his time went to music: he took jobs as a church organist, and in the evenings he composed. (One of his roommates described the sound of Ives’ composing as the “resident disturbances” of their apartment.)

His first project was a new symphony. Ives had written his First Symphony under the supervision of his professors at Yale, and now he set out to write one on his own. Ives said that he composed the Second Symphony between 1897 and 1901, but it actually took him much longer: some of the material dates back to 1894, and he continued to revise it until about 1909. No one was interested in performing a symphony by a young insurance agent, and so the manuscript went onto the shelf.

Many years later, in response to a request for information about his Second Symphony, Ives wrote: “There is not much to say about the symphony. It expresses the musical feelings of the Connecticut country around here (Redding and Danbury) in the 1890s, the music of the country folk. It is full of the tunes they sang and played then…” Yet this description is not entirely accurate; the Second Symphony is not simply an anthology of folk-tunes from late nineteenth-century America. Europe makes itself felt very firmly in this symphony as well; listeners will hear quotations from Beethoven, Brahms, Dvořák, Wagner and others. Ives builds his Second Symphony on the materials of American musical life at the turn of the twentieth century, both folk-music and art-music. The result is a symphony that is (by design) not entirely original, but which is charming: part of the fun of Ives’ Second Symphony is recognizing the many quotations and in the process returning to a more innocent time in this country’s history.

The symphony is in five movements, but rather than opening with a dramatic

P 42 PE RFORMA NCES MAGA Z IN E

sonata-form movement, Ives instead begins with a moderately-paced prelude for strings.

(Ives adapted this from an organ sonata he had composed for church use some years earlier.)

Along the way we hear a whiff of “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean” in the French horns – this will return. An oboe recitative on the movement’s opening idea prepares us for the second movement, marked Allegro, and Ives proceeds into this without pause. Along the way here we encounter more quotations, the first phrase of the hymn-tune “Bringing in the Sheaves” and a whiff of Brahms’ Third Symphony among them. The “trio” section is a relaxed duet for oboes and then flutes based on the old Dartmouth song “Where, O Where, Are the Pea-Green Freshman?”

At the center of the symphony is its expressive slow movement, Adagio cantabile, which grew out of another of Ives’ early organ pieces. The tempo moves ahead slightly at the Andante, where we encounter an example of Ives’ lifelong fascination with the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony; that famous rhythm (three shorts and a long) permeates this movement, along with more Brahms, “American the Beautiful” and others.

The final two movements may be considered together, since they are often played without pause and since the fourth – marked Lento maestoso – functions as an introduction to the fifth, the true finale. A pair of horns opens the Lento maestoso with a blazing memory of the very beginning of the symphony.

Along the way, “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean” puts in another appearance as the music gathers speeds and drives straight into the finale, marked Allegro molto vivace. This movement – full of country fiddling – is also a whirlpool of cultural references: in the midst of all its shining energy, Europe and America spin together dizzily. Stephen Foster tunes like “Camptown Races” and “Turkey in the Straw” bump into Tristan und Isolde, “Joy to the World” rubs elbows with the New World Symphony, and Brahms symphonies collide with “It’s a Grand Old Flag.” Finally, trombones stamp out “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean” in all its glory, and the symphony races to its memorable close – a bit of “Columbia” is violated by a trumpet shouting out “Reveille,” and the symphony ends on an ear-piercing dissonance. It was an old American tradition that barn dances would end when the players let loose with this kind of dissonance to tell the dancers that they were done for the night: “That’s all, folks!” Perhaps in the aftermath of this blast, we might expect Brahms and

Stephen Foster and Wagner and all the others who have taken part in this fun to shake hands and head off into the night.

TWO NOTES: That last chord is the most famous part of Ives’ Second Symphony, but there is evidence that he did not made it so dissonant until many years after he had composed the symphony: he came back and changed what had been a “normal” ending into this very unusual one. Also, in Ives’ manuscript that last note is only an eighth-note – a quick blast and then done – but beginning with Leonard Bernstein, conductors have usually held onto it for some time, enjoying that juicy dissonance in all its nose-thumbing glory.

Ives could not find anyone interested in performing this music, so it sat on his shelf for half a century before Leonard Bernstein led the premiere with the New York Philharmonic on February 22, 1951. Bernstein invited Ives to attend that performance, but Ives – old, frail and frightened at the prospect of hearing this music of his youth – did not feel up to it.

When the symphony was repeated two weeks later, though, the 76-year-old composer went over to his neighbors’ house and listened to the broadcast on their radio. Ives’ biographer Jan Swafford records what happened: “As the cheers broke out at the end everybody in the room looked his way. Ives got up, spat in the fireplace, and walked into the kitchen without a word. Nobody could figure out whether he was too disgusted or too moved to talk. Likely it was the latter.”

PROGRAM NOTES BY ERIC BROMBERGER

PERFORMANCE HISTORY

by Dr. Melvin G. Goldzband, Symphony Archivist The often beautiful, sometimes uproarious Second Symphony by Charles Ives was given its first San Diego Symphony performance when Earl Bernard Murray conducted it during the 1960-61 season. More recently, Jahja Ling conducted a performance of the work with the orchestra during the 2004-05 season.

SAN DI E GO SYM P H O N Y O R C H E ST R A 2 016 - 17 S E AS ON J A NUAR Y 2017