Symphony No. 4 (Ives)
Encyclopedia
The Symphony No. 4, S. 4 (K. 1A4) by Charles Ives
(1874–1954) was written between the years of 1910 and 1916. The symphony is notable for its multi-layered complexity - usually necessitating two conductors in performance - and for its over-sized orchestra. Combining elements and techniques of Ives's previous compositional work, this has been called "one of his most definitive works"; Ives' biographer, Jan Swafford
, has called it "Ives's climactic masterpiece."
Although the symphony requires a large orchestra, the duration is only about half an hour.
, fortissimo bass line, immediately followed by a rising trumpet fanfare. A quiet passage follows. The movement ends with chorus singing the Epiphany
hymn Watchman ("Watchman, tell us of the night.") Unlike the bold beginning, the movement dies away, quadruple-pianissimo, at the end.
's story The Celestial Railroad. It is possibly his most extreme essay in overlapping of multiple thematic material, found also in his Holidays Symphony
. Tunes quoted include The Sweet By and By, Beulah Land
, Marching Through Georgia
, Ye Christian Heralds, Jesus, Lover of my Soul and Nearer, my God, to Thee
. The complexity of this movement means that at least one additional conductor is normally required. The music builds to several riotous climaxes before ebbing away.
, ending with a brief quotation of Joy to the World
. Ives called it "an expression of the reaction of life into formalism and ritualism." Paradoxically, because of its juxtaposition with the other three harmonically, tonally and rhythmically complex movements, Jan Swafford calls this most outwardly simple and conservative movement "in a way the most revolutionary movement of all."
The movement is an orchestration from the fugue in Ives's first string quartet
, which he wrote while still at Yale.
— Ives said the piece was "a searching question of 'What' and 'Why' which the spirit of man asks of life". Use of quotation is again rife, especially in the first movement, and there is no shortage of novel effects. In the second movement, for example, a tremolando is heard throughout the entire orchestra. In the final movement, there is a sort of musical fight between discordant sounds and more traditional tonal music. Eventually a wordless chorus enters, the mood becomes calmer, and the piece ends quietly with just the percussion playing.
s, 2 piccolo
s, 2 oboe
s, 3 clarinet
s, and 3 bassoon
s, with optional parts for alto, tenor and baritone saxophone
. The brass
section consists of 4 horns, 6 trumpets, 2 cornet
s, 4 trombone
s, and tuba
. The percussion and keyboard section consists of timpani
, snare drum
, bass drum
, tom-tom
, triangle
, cymbal
s, 2 gong
s, bell
s, glockenspiel
, harp
, celesta
, orchestral piano (4 hands), quarter tone
piano, solo piano, and organ
. In addition there is a part for a mixed chorus
, who perform a setting of the hymn
"Watchman, tell us of the Night" in the first movement and wordless lines in the last movement.
There is the usual string
section and a second distant group of 5 violins, 1 viola
and 2 harp
s. The score also has an optional part for an "ether organ" in the fourth movement. (It is not clear what Ives meant by this, but a theremin
or a synthesizer is usually used, if any.)
conducted it with the American Symphony Orchestra
at Carnegie Hall
on April 26, 1965, almost 50 years after the completion of the work, and 11 years after Ives' death.
It was soon recorded by the same forces for the first time for the Columbia label.
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original"...
(1874–1954) was written between the years of 1910 and 1916. The symphony is notable for its multi-layered complexity - usually necessitating two conductors in performance - and for its over-sized orchestra. Combining elements and techniques of Ives's previous compositional work, this has been called "one of his most definitive works"; Ives' biographer, Jan Swafford
Jan Swafford
Jan Swafford is an American composer and author who teaches composition, theory, and musicology at the Boston Conservatory and writing at Tufts University. He earned his B.A. from Harvard College and his M.M.A. and D.M.A. from the Yale School of Music...
, has called it "Ives's climactic masterpiece."
Structure
The symphony is in four movements:- Prelude: Maestoso
- Allegretto
- Fugue: Andante moderato con moto
- Very slowly - Largo maestoso
Although the symphony requires a large orchestra, the duration is only about half an hour.
First movement
This movement and the third movement were first performed in New York City on January 29, 1927. In contrast to Ives's other works for large orchestra, which begin in quiet and meditative moods, this symphony starts with a strong, maestosoMaestoso
Maestoso is an Italian musical term and is used to direct performers to play a certain passage of music in a stately, dignified and majestic fashion or, it is used to describe music as such. The term is commonly used in relatively slow pieces; however, there are numerous examples - such as the...
, fortissimo bass line, immediately followed by a rising trumpet fanfare. A quiet passage follows. The movement ends with chorus singing the Epiphany
Epiphany (Christian)
Epiphany, or Theophany, meaning "vision of God",...
hymn Watchman ("Watchman, tell us of the night.") Unlike the bold beginning, the movement dies away, quadruple-pianissimo, at the end.
Second movement
Ives bases this "Comedy" movement on HawthorneNathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...
's story The Celestial Railroad. It is possibly his most extreme essay in overlapping of multiple thematic material, found also in his Holidays Symphony
A Symphony: New England Holidays
A Symphony: New England Holidays, also known as A New England Holiday Symphony or simply a Holiday Symphony, is a composition for orchestra written by Charles Ives. It took Ives from 1897 to 1913 to complete all four movements. The four movements in order are:*I. Washington’s Birthday*II....
. Tunes quoted include The Sweet By and By, Beulah Land
Beulah Land
Beulah Land is a well-known gospel hymn written by Edgar Page Stites in either 1875 or 1876. The hymn, Stites' most popular, is set to music written by John R. Sweney...
, Marching Through Georgia
Marching Through Georgia
"Marching Through Georgia" is a marching song written by Henry Clay Work at the end of the American Civil War in 1865. It refers to U.S. Maj. Gen...
, Ye Christian Heralds, Jesus, Lover of my Soul and Nearer, my God, to Thee
Nearer, My God, to Thee
"Nearer, My God, to Thee" is a 19th century Christian hymn by Sarah Flower Adams, based loosely on Genesis 28:11–19, the story of Jacob's dream. Genesis 28:11–12 can be translated as follows: "So he came to a certain place and stayed there all night, because the sun had set. And he took one of the...
. The complexity of this movement means that at least one additional conductor is normally required. The music builds to several riotous climaxes before ebbing away.
Third movement
First performed in New York on May 10, 1933 with the first movement, this is an apparently straight-forward, academic fugueFugue
In music, a fugue is a compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning in imitation and recurs frequently in the course of the composition....
, ending with a brief quotation of Joy to the World
Joy to the World
"Joy to the World" is a Christian Christmas carol.The words are by English hymn writer Isaac Watts, based on Psalm 98 in the Bible. The song was first published in 1719 in Watts' collection; The Psalms of David: Imitated in the language of the New Testament, and applied to the Christian state and...
. Ives called it "an expression of the reaction of life into formalism and ritualism." Paradoxically, because of its juxtaposition with the other three harmonically, tonally and rhythmically complex movements, Jan Swafford calls this most outwardly simple and conservative movement "in a way the most revolutionary movement of all."
The movement is an orchestration from the fugue in Ives's first string quartet
String quartet
A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...
, which he wrote while still at Yale.
Fourth movement
The symphony ends with what Ives called "an apotheosis of the preceding content, in terms that have something to do with the reality of existence and its religious experience."Composition
The program of the work echoes that of The Unanswered QuestionThe Unanswered Question
The Unanswered Question is a work by American composer Charles Ives. It was originally the first of "Two Contemplations" composed in 1906, paired with another piece called Central Park in the Dark. As with many of Ives' works, it was largely unknown until much later in his life, being first...
— Ives said the piece was "a searching question of 'What' and 'Why' which the spirit of man asks of life". Use of quotation is again rife, especially in the first movement, and there is no shortage of novel effects. In the second movement, for example, a tremolando is heard throughout the entire orchestra. In the final movement, there is a sort of musical fight between discordant sounds and more traditional tonal music. Eventually a wordless chorus enters, the mood becomes calmer, and the piece ends quietly with just the percussion playing.
Instrumentation
The symphony is scored for a romantic-size orchestra. The woodwind section consists of 3 fluteFlute
The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
s, 2 piccolo
Piccolo
The piccolo is a half-size flute, and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. The piccolo has the same fingerings as its larger sibling, the standard transverse flute, but the sound it produces is an octave higher than written...
s, 2 oboe
Oboe
The oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" , "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca...
s, 3 clarinet
Clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...
s, and 3 bassoon
Bassoon
The bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that typically plays music written in the bass and tenor registers, and occasionally higher. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band and chamber music literature...
s, with optional parts for alto, tenor and baritone saxophone
Saxophone
The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...
. The brass
Brass instrument
A brass instrument is a musical instrument whose sound is produced by sympathetic vibration of air in a tubular resonator in sympathy with the vibration of the player's lips...
section consists of 4 horns, 6 trumpets, 2 cornet
Cornet
The cornet is a brass instrument very similar to the trumpet, distinguished by its conical bore, compact shape, and mellower tone quality. The most common cornet is a transposing instrument in B. It is not related to the renaissance and early baroque cornett or cornetto.-History:The cornet was...
s, 4 trombone
Trombone
The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...
s, and tuba
Tuba
The tuba is the largest and lowest-pitched brass instrument. Sound is produced by vibrating or "buzzing" the lips into a large cupped mouthpiece. It is one of the most recent additions to the modern symphony orchestra, first appearing in the mid-19th century, when it largely replaced the...
. The percussion and keyboard section consists of timpani
Timpani
Timpani, or kettledrums, are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum, they consist of a skin called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally made of copper. They are played by striking the head with a specialized drum stick called a timpani stick or timpani mallet...
, snare drum
Snare drum
The snare drum or side drum is a melodic percussion instrument with strands of snares made of curled metal wire, metal cable, plastic cable, or gut cords stretched across the drumhead, typically the bottom. Pipe and tabor and some military snare drums often have a second set of snares on the bottom...
, bass drum
Bass drum
Bass drums are percussion instruments that can vary in size and are used in several musical genres. Three major types of bass drums can be distinguished. The type usually seen or heard in orchestral, ensemble or concert band music is the orchestral, or concert bass drum . It is the largest drum of...
, tom-tom
Tom-tom drum
A tom-tom drum is a cylindrical drum with no snare.Although "tom-tom" is the British term for a child's toy drum, the name came originally from the Anglo-Indian and Sinhala; the tom-tom itself comes from Asian or Native American cultures...
, triangle
Triangle (instrument)
The triangle is an idiophone type of musical instrument in the percussion family. It is a bar of metal, usually steel but sometimes other metals like beryllium copper, bent into a triangle shape. The instrument is usually held by a loop of some form of thread or wire at the top curve...
, cymbal
Cymbal
Cymbals are a common percussion instrument. Cymbals consist of thin, normally round plates of various alloys; see cymbal making for a discussion of their manufacture. The greater majority of cymbals are of indefinite pitch, although small disc-shaped cymbals based on ancient designs sound a...
s, 2 gong
Gong
A gong is an East and South East Asian musical percussion instrument that takes the form of a flat metal disc which is hit with a mallet....
s, bell
Bell (instrument)
A bell is a simple sound-making device. The bell is a percussion instrument and an idiophone. Its form is usually a hollow, cup-shaped object, which resonates upon being struck...
s, glockenspiel
Glockenspiel
A glockenspiel is a percussion instrument composed of a set of tuned keys arranged in the fashion of the keyboard of a piano. In this way, it is similar to the xylophone; however, the xylophone's bars are made of wood, while the glockenspiel's are metal plates or tubes, and making it a metallophone...
, harp
Harp
The harp is a multi-stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicularly to the soundboard. Organologically, it is in the general category of chordophones and has its own sub category . All harps have a neck, resonator and strings...
, celesta
Celesta
The celesta or celeste is a struck idiophone operated by a keyboard. Its appearance is similar to that of an upright piano or of a large wooden music box . The keys are connected to hammers which strike a graduated set of metal plates suspended over wooden resonators...
, orchestral piano (4 hands), quarter tone
Quarter tone
A quarter tone , is a pitch halfway between the usual notes of a chromatic scale, an interval about half as wide as a semitone, which is half a whole tone....
piano, solo piano, and organ
Pipe organ
The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air through pipes selected via a keyboard. Because each organ pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre and volume throughout the keyboard compass...
. In addition there is a part for a mixed chorus
Choir
A choir, chorale or chorus is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform.A body of singers who perform together as a group is called a choir or chorus...
, who perform a setting of the hymn
Hymn
A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification...
"Watchman, tell us of the Night" in the first movement and wordless lines in the last movement.
There is the usual string
String instrument
A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...
section and a second distant group of 5 violins, 1 viola
Viola
The viola is a bowed string instrument. It is the middle voice of the violin family, between the violin and the cello.- Form :The viola is similar in material and construction to the violin. A full-size viola's body is between and longer than the body of a full-size violin , with an average...
and 2 harp
Harp
The harp is a multi-stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicularly to the soundboard. Organologically, it is in the general category of chordophones and has its own sub category . All harps have a neck, resonator and strings...
s. The score also has an optional part for an "ether organ" in the fourth movement. (It is not clear what Ives meant by this, but a theremin
Theremin
The theremin , originally known as the aetherphone/etherophone, thereminophone or termenvox/thereminvox is an early electronic musical instrument controlled without discernible physical contact from the player. It is named after its Russian inventor, Professor Léon Theremin, who patented the device...
or a synthesizer is usually used, if any.)
History and reception
The symphony did not have a complete performance until Leopold StokowskiLeopold Stokowski
Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British-born, naturalised American orchestral conductor, well known for his free-hand performing style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from many of the great orchestras he conducted.In America, Stokowski...
conducted it with the American Symphony Orchestra
American Symphony Orchestra
The American Symphony Orchestra is a New York-based American orchestra founded in 1962 by Leopold Stokowski, then aged 80. Following Maestro Stokowski's departure, Kazuyoshi Akiyama was appointed Music Director of the American Symphony Orchestra from 1973-1978. Music Directors during the early...
at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
on April 26, 1965, almost 50 years after the completion of the work, and 11 years after Ives' death.
It was soon recorded by the same forces for the first time for the Columbia label.