San Marcos, 2016 —

The style that we now hear as the sound of America in the 20th century — where did it come from? Before Henry Cowell or Aaron Copland, before Lou Harrison or John Cage, it came from the bold, eccentric music of Charles Ives.

Ives not only created the musical sound of 20th-century America, he wrote about American life, literature, and places. His Piano Sonata No. 2, Concord, Mass., 1840–60 (1915)explores the ethos of New England writers in its four movements:

1. “Emerson” (after Ralph Waldo Emerson)
2. “Hawthorne” (after Nathaniel Hawthorne)
3. “The Alcotts” (after Bronson Alcott and Louisa May Alcott)
4. “Thoreau” (after Henry David Thoreau)

LISTEN ›

One of Ives’ most performed and well-known works is Three Places in New England (1914) for orchestra. Each “place” is a musical sketch of a place’s unique atmosphere, painting a picture of life at the dawn of 20th-century America. It epitomizes the unique style that established Ives as an icon of American music in the 20th century.

That style, which built what became the defining sound of American music, featured:

• sound masses of dissonant tone clusters
• chaotic layering of multiple simultaneous tunes
• huge, sudden contrasts of loudness and texture

The movement sketches are subtitled:

1. The “St. Gaudens” in Boston Common (Col. Shaw and his Colored Regiment)
2. Putnam’s Camp, Redding, Connecticut
3. The Housatonic at Stockbridge

LISTEN ›

Frost

If Charles Ives is the iconic composer of 20th-century America, Robert Frost is the iconic poet. I became an ardent admirer of Frost’s writing as early as 1966, reading his complete works by the time I was in grad school. Two poems had a profound early impact on my spirit and sense of artistic possibility. “Mending Wall” (1914) and “The Road not Taken” (1916). To me, the latter is wondering about looking into the uncertain future, expressed in a woodland metaphor typical of Frost that resonated with my rural Michigan youth. (That is probably why I quoted it in my very first public speech, my valedictory address at the 1967 Howell High School commencement ceremony.)

“THE ROAD NOT TAKEN” excerpt

Two roads diverged in a wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Fast forward to 2016, when my colleagues Ian Davidson, Ames Asbell, and Vanguel Tangarov at Texas State asked me to write an unaccompanied solo for each of their instruments, oboe, viola, and clarinet. As the Pleasant Street Players, they recorded what was to be a whole album of my music, including a duo, two quartets, and a quintet for their trio plus guest colleagues. The recording project was exciting and bore excellent musical results. But it slammed into the COVID epidemic and could never be finished and published.

Here is what its roster of 7 tracks would have been:

• HUKVALDY SKETCHES — oboe, clar., viola, marimba (11 min.) TC-80
• BEFORE I SLEEP — viola (6:20) TC-90
• SUR LA NEIGE — oboe, clarinet (8 min.) TC-101
• KARLůV MOST (Charles Bridge) — oboe, clar., viola, cello (7:30) TC-87
• BENDING BIRCHES — clarinet (5 min.) TC-89
• AUTUMN RAIN — English horn (9 min.) TC-85
• CLIMBING BLANíK — oboe, clar., viola, cello, marimba (7:10) TC-88

Snow and rain

Two memories of walking in the snow stand out in long-term memory. In about 1965, one recreation of a restless Michigan teenager on winter nights was to put on boots and parka and hike through snow-covered fields and forest in the moonlight. In 1992, my composer friend Arnošt Parsch led me on a walk into the logging forest above his Moravian village, Bílovice nad Svitavou. Through late-fall snowflakes, we retraced the steps of Janácek, passed the natural-spring well and the Sokol tavern up to a beautiful promontory view of the snow-covered village below.

Sur la Neige is a snow fantasy on three quoted musical ideas. The work begins with an obscure quote from Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat, elaborated and then transitioning into a quote from Debussy’s Prelude No. 6 in his Préludes, Book I, subtitled “de pas sur la neige.” Eventually, a small decorative figure from Janácek’s Sinfonietta appears and quickly disappears like a scurrying bystroušky (fox).

In each poem below, I will boldface some of the imagery that particularly inspired ideas for sounds, rhythms, and mood.

Frost’s first poem that I set to instrumental music in 1973 was his 1913 “My Noember Guest,” an exquisite expression of loss and sadness.

“MY NOVEMBER GUEST” excerpt

My sorrow, when she’s here with me,
     Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
     She walks the sodden pasture lane.

She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted grey
     Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
     The faded earth, the heavy sky,

In 1971 in Ann Arbor, I wrote Autumn Rain for oboe and piano. Much of its melodic material was incorporated into the solo English horn piece for Ian in 2016. Its four movements:

• “these dark days of autumn rain”
• “my sorrow” (remembering Lidice)
• “the bare, the withered tree”
• “the sodden pasture lane”

The second movement’s memorial to the atrocity of Lidice quotes the Czech national anthem Kde domov můj (“Where My Home Is”). Other musical material expressing darkness, death, and perseverence is a quote from the Lux aeterna of Mozart’s Requiem.

The solo clarinet piece was based on this Frost poem:

“BIRCHES” excerpt

I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.

Musical material quotes the beginning of Bartok’s powerful fugue in Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste. The fugue theme is scored for the orchestra’s viola section, but in Bending Birches I’ve placed in the beautifully dark chalumeau register of the clarinet.

The viola piece, Before I Sleep, began as a solo based on this 1922 poem:

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Some of the imagery (again boldfaced above) lends itself to ideas for sounds, rhythms, and mood. The solo viola piece is titled Before I Sleep.

Concord

If Charles Ives was unapologetically brash, his music could also be lyric and transcendent, a gentleness akin to the contemplative voice of Robert Frost. Back to Concord . . .

After the demise of the Pleasant Street album project, the three solo pieces began to come together, merging into a single piece for viola and strings. The result embodies the expressive and sonorous essence of the whole Frost stream of work from 1973 to now.

___________