"Jesus came from the courthouse door": "General William Booth Enters into Heaven" and other, variously irresistible Ives songs

SUNDAY NOONISH UPDATE: Internet Archive seems to have recovered from its outage, so we're back in business.
MONDAY EVENING UPDATE: For "afterthoughts" on the performances
of "General William Smith Enters into Heaven," there's now an "afterpost."

Donald Gramm (1927-1983)  [photo by Christian Steiner]

. . . (Are you washed in the blood, in the blood of the Lamb,
in the blood of the Lamb, the Lamb, of the Lamb, the Lamb?)

Jesus came from the courthouse door,
stretched his hands above the passing poor.
Booth saw not, but led his queer ones,
round and round, round and round and round,
[or: "round and round the mighty courthouse square,"]
and round, and round and round, and round and round . . .

-- text from the Vachel Lindsay poem
"General William Booth Enters into Heaven"

Donald Gramm, bass-baritone; Richard Cumming, piano. Desto, recorded c1964

Donald Gramm, bass-baritone; Donald Hassard, piano. From their Town Hall (New York City) recital of Feb. 24, 1976

Nathan Gunn, baritone; Kevin Murphy, piano. EMI-Warner Classics, recorded in St. Mary's Church, Highgate, London, Mar. 31-Apr. 2, 1998

'I can see him shuffling down, to the barn or to the town': Memories were always close to the heart of Ives's sense of artistic purpose

[POST CONSTRUCTION ZONE -- HARD HATS RECOMMENDED --
OKAY, SO MAYBE WE JUST GO AHEAD AND CALL THIS A POST]

Roberta Alexander and indomitable accompanist Tan Crone

IVES: "Memories":

B, Rather Sad (Adagio)
From the street a strain on my ear doth fall,
a tune as threadbare as that “old red shawl.”
It is tattered, it is torn,
it shows signs of being worn,
it's the tune my Uncle hummed from early morn.
'Twas a common little thing and kind-a sweet,
but 'twas sad and seemed to slow up both his feet.
I can see him shuffling down,
to the barn or to the town,
a-hum-[drawn out]-ming. [Hums]

-- text by the composer

Roberta Alexander, soprano; Tan Crone, piano. Etcetera, recorded in the Netherlands, released 1984
The other performances we heard "highlighted" in the last post:

Jan DeGaetani, mezzo-soprano; Gilbert Kalish, piano. Nonesuch, released 1976

Susan Graham, mezzo-soprano; Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano. EMI-Warner Classics, recorded in the Grosser Saal of the Vienna Konzerthaus, Nov. 6-8, 2003
And these performances (which we've heard before) remind
us that this could be a nephew remembering his uncle:
Gerald Finley, bass-baritone; Julius Drake, piano. Hyperion, recorded in All Saints Church (Durham Road), East Finchley, London, Nov. 1-12, 2004

Jerry Hadley, tenor; Eric Dalheim, piano. Live performance from the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), Nov. 14, 2000

by Ken

For personal reasons it was kind of important to me to get some kind of post up, in particular one that advances toward the other end of this detour from the last detour from the previous detour and so on, which produced the post "About this Ives thing, we can do it the easy way, or the hard way; or maybe we have to do it both ways." One thing in particular nagged at me as that post was taking shape, and nagged me even worse once it was posted: that what I was describing as "the easy way" of coming to grips with the Ives legacy was represented only by those three clips of the same under-a-half-minute bit of a song-section that is itself only part of the two-part song "Memories."

I think it made for a darned fine half-minute of music, but in my head I kept hearing and yearning for the full "B" section of "Memories" -- and so here it is. In the process we have also answered the question I posed as to which of those three performances we were going to really focus on. And I hope there are folks who've been here and naturally assumed, noting that Jan DeGaetani was one of the contenders, that she would be the "winner."


LET'S BE PERFECTLY CLEAR: IN THIS GROUPING
OF PERFORMANCES, THERE WASN'T ANY "LOSER"

About this Ives thing, we can do it the easy way, or the hard way; or maybe we have to do it both ways

[MONDAY MORNING UPDATE: The post is more or less reconstructed (if you missed the earlier notice, I cleverly overwrote an essentially complete version of the post with an earlier file that contained just the opening), but I need some sleep before even attempting to read it. I should also find a link for the commentaries Ives included in the Concord score (which he had published himself, along with the volume of Essays Before a Sonata).
[MONDAY EVENING UPDATE: I've fixed some stuff and added some stuff, including a third Decoration Day recording (the Zinman). -- Ken]

(1) A taste of THE EASY WAY

Not quite half a minute from the "B" section, "Rather Sad," of Ives's song "Memories" -- from two performances we've heard and a third we haven't:


Jan DeGaetani, mezzo-soprano; Gilbert Kalish, piano. Nonesuch, released 1976

Roberta Alexander, soprano; Tan Crone, piano. Etcetera, recorded in the Netherlands, released 1984

Susan Graham, mezzo-soprano; Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano. EMI-Warner Classics, recorded in the Grosser Saal of the Vienna Konzerthaus, Nov. 6-8, 2003

and: (2) A taste of THE HARD WAY

Jeremy Denk plays "The Alcotts," the third -- and much the user-friendliest -- movement of Ives's Concord Sonata, apparently an encore at the 92nd Street Y, New York City, Dec. 3, 2011. (Watch it here - with applause!)

by Ken

We've got to get the Ives thing back on track. It's hard, but we'll just have to will our way through it.

As suggested above, we've already heard the complete performances of Ives's two-part song "Memories" from which the first two excerpts above are drawn, and of course we're going to hear all three performances complete, along with some others, though we'll be focusing on one in particular. Can you guess which? Maybe it'll be clearer when we hear their full "B" sections. For now, I don't think much more needs to be said about this almost excruciatingly beautiful half-minute of words set to music. Through the magic of the singer's memories, in just this bit of the song, I think we can see and hear her uncle, and understand his importance to her.

So that's our taste of the "easy" part of an Ives reckoning, and when we come back to it we're going to be sampling and resampling a number of Ives songs. Of the "hard" part, I've offered, in "The Alcotts" from Ives's massive (generally in the 45-50-minute range) Concord Sonata what seems to me the most painless sample of a problem I realize I run into a lot with Ives, as happened when I stacked Central Park in the Dark on top of a couple of other short orchestral works, Decoration Day (one of the components of the Holidays Symphony, which you'll recall the composer always thought of as potentially either free-standing or composite) and The Unanswered Question.

You remember them:

Of those "tunes of long ago," Ives sings to us: "I know not what are the words, but they sing in my soul of the things our Fathers loved"

I think there must be a place in the soul
all made of tunes, of tunes of long ago.
I hear the organ on the Main Street corner,
Aunt Sarah humming Gospels; summer evenings,
the village cornet band playing in the square.
The town’s Red, White and Blue,
all Red, White and Blue.
Now! Hear the songs!
I know not what are the words,
but they sing in my soul of the things our Fathers loved.

-- text by the composer

Donald Gramm, bass-baritone; Donald Hassard, piano. From their Town Hall recital of Feb. 24, 1976

Jan DeGaetani, mezzo-soprano; Gilbert Kalish, piano. Nonesuch, released 1976

Gerald Finley, bass-baritone; Julius Drake, piano. Hyperion, recorded in All Saints Church (Durham Road), East Finley, London, Nov. 10-12, 2004

by Ken

The idea this week is to finish up with our Ives detour, and to that end we start out with a song, actually a very special song, "The Things Our Fathers Loved," in three really lovely performances. (I had a not-so-lovely one I was going to throw out, but who needs that kind of tsuris on a hot summer day?)


WE'VE STILL GOT ONE MORE IVES SONG NOW . . .

And still more to come when we continue, like maybe tomorrow? What's more, with tomorrow one of the compositionally celebrated Ives "New England holidays," I thought we might take another shot at getting through the four-holiday Holidays Symphony.

But first, our second song --

A touch of Ives (featuring a bunch of questions -- not least: Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)

EARLY TUESDAY UPDATE, with (1) expanded post title; (2) added performance of "Serenity" by Donald Gramm (introduced by Aaron Copland); (3) extra-credit "Questions for Reflection" at the end; (4) smaller touches of assorted sorts here and there

IVES: "Serenity" (1919)

O, Sabbath rest of Galilee!
O, calm of hills above,
where Jesus knelt to share with Thee
the silence of eternity,
interpreted by love.
Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
till all our strivings cease:
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
and let our ordered lives confess,
the beauty of thy peace.

-- text by John Greenleaf Whittier

"Serenity" was arranged from a sketch of an ensemble "song" earlier than May 1911 and may well be connected to Ives's projected Whittier Overture, one of his "Men of Literature" series. He suggested this trance-like piece was best sung as a unison chant, over its repetitive chiming accompaniment figure.

-- Calum MacDonald, from his Hyperion booklet note

"Serenity" has a vocal line that hovers between just a few notes, following the natural speech rhythm of Whittier's poem in a very subtle and touching way. It's a truly inspired song. I use that word rarely, but I can use it in relation to "Serenity."

-- Aaron Copland, introducing Donald Gramm's TV performance

Jan DeGaetani, mezzo-soprano; Gilbert Kalish, piano. Nonesuch, recorded c1975

Gerald Finley, bass-baritone; Julius Drake, piano. Hyperion, recorded in All Saints Church (Durham Road), East Finchley, London, Nov. 10-12, 2004

[orch. John Adams] Thomas Hampson, baritone; members of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Michael Tilson Thomas, cond. RCA, from MTT's Charles Ives: An American Journey CD, recorded live in Davies Symphony Hall, Sept. 30-Oct. 3, 1999

JUST ADDED: Bonus performance, introduced by Aaron Copland

Donald Gramm, having finished with his part of "Serenity," listens as Richard Cumming sculpts the song's brief but haunting final phrases.

[introduction by Aaron Copland; song at 0:20] Donald Gramm, bass-baritone; Richard Cumming, piano. TV performance (you can watch here; perhaps from NBC, Nov. 29, 1964?)

by Ken

I know this has been a long time coming, and this may seem like a modest payoff, but "Serenity" is a special kind of song, and I think there's a lot to take in from our performers, who include our new budding favorite Gerald Finley, who I promised in the last post, "Some funny things happened on the way through Ives's Holidays," would be leading us into our confrontation with Charles Ives, and one of Sunday Classics' most beloved singers, Jan DeGaetani.


WONDER WHY JAN DeGAETANI IS SO TREASURED HERE?

Glad you wondered! It's a perfect excuse to take yet another listen to this jaw-droppingly radiant performance, with some pretty amazingly concentrated and songfully articulated piano-playing by her longtime piano partner, one of America's most distinguished pianists, Gil Kalish.

Do we need a reason to remember Jan DeGaetani? No, but today we do need her to sing a special song

Jan DeGaetani (1933-1989)

-- from the Center for American Music Library Web page "Stephen Foster Lyrics"

With Gilbert Kalish, piano. From the Nonesuch CD Songs of America, recorded Dec. 21-23, 1987



by Ken

No, this isn't the song we "need to hear Jan sing." No. It's just the song I usually think of first when I think of her. (No, to be clear, I didn't know her. I just call her "Jan" because, well, I think she might feel less formal, more comfortable that way.) I promised, in one of several earlier attempts at writing some sort of post, that we were going to hear this "uniquely cherishable" singer in "a perfect recording," and explained later that I couldn't say exactly what I meant by "a perfect recording" -- but that if you listen to  this breathtakingly beautiful performance of a song that Jan caused me to think of as astonishingly beautiful, as recorded with longtime friend and colleague (and, oh yes, excellent pianist) Gil Kalish, I invite you to tell me that this isn't a perfect recording.

"Beautiful Child of Song" comes from this CD recital, and pretty much all of these Songs of America are a heap more sophisticated than our little Stephen Foster ditty. But my goodness . . . well, you heard, right?


SO WHAT'S THE SONG WE NEED TO HEAR JAN SING?