Do I hear a clarinet?

Here, more or less, is where we're going to wind up
[I know I sometimes (or maybe often!) keep it to myself -- make it a little surprise! -- where we're headed, musically speaking, but not this time. -- Ken]

i. Allegro [no exposition repeat]
ii. Adagio [at 9:07]

Keith Puddy, clarinet; Gabrieli Quartet (Kenneth Sillito and Brendan O'Reilly (probably, but possibly Claire Simpson), violins; Ian Jewel, viola; Keith Harvey, cello). Classics for Pleasure-EMI, recorded in the U.K., released 1970

But this is where our story -- and there is a little story -- starts

Wait, the saxophone's a Woodwind Family member? Hmm . . . okay, sorta.

But really, at the moment it's just two Family members we're interested in.

Duo in C for Clarinet and Bassoon --
i. Allegretto
ii. Larghetto sostenuto [at 3:49]
iii. Rondo: Allegretto [at 5:58]

Members of the Melos Ensemble of London. EMI-Warner Classics, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, October 1969

by Ken

Yes, yes, Ives and all of that. I'm still trying to make the transition from "Ives the easy way" to "Ives the hard way," moving from the Second to the Third Symphony, with a dip into the violin-and-piano sonatas (and maybe the string quartets?); with the Fourth Symphony and the Concord Piano Sonata looming on the horizon. Though I've also been wondering whether we oughtn't to go back to the First Symphony, so often dismissed as merely Ives's "student" symphony.

Anyway, in some fashion yet to be worked out, that's all coming!

Meanwhile, there was this EMI "double fforte" double-CD set that somehow found its way to a sitting-around-doing-nothing situation. But before we continue with our "little story," a challenge: your best guess (unless you know, in which case it's not much of a challenge, is it?) at to whether --

the charming little clarinet-and-bassoon duo we just heard is by: (a) Haydn, (b) Mozart, (c) Beethoven, (d) Schubert, (e) Schumann, (f) Brahms, (g) somebody else.

SO, LET'S PROCEED WITH THE "LITTLE STORY" --

Afterpost: Gregg Smith & Co.show us that Ives's "bells-and-whistles" version really adds a dimension to "General William Booth Enters into Heaven"

Choral masterworker Gregg Smith (1931-2016)

Archie Drake, bass; Gregg Smith Singers, Columbia Chamber Orchestra, Gregg Smith, cond. Columbia-CBS, recorded in Legion Hall, Hollywood, May 4, 1966
[NOTE: We're going to hear the performance again, with printed vocal text.]

by Ken

My original plan was just to add what follows as an "afterthought" ("Some Afterthoughts on the Performances") to the post "'Jesus came from the courthouse door': 'General William Booth Enters into Heaven' and other, variously irresistible Ives songs," with a note like this:

I'm sure you're tired of hearing about how I don't have a chance to hear audio clips in their post places until a post is posted, and even then not till I can get past the exhaustion of birthing the post. That said, a couple of thoughts.

So I thought it would be better to spin those performances out into an "afterpost."

"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:

There's one major Ives work I've really loved for a long time, and we're going to hear it again, with a whopper of an introduction

[In our Ives journey we're really not quite ready for this, but at this point it's got pretty much all the elements I intended for it, and if it doesn't exactly add up to a post, exactly, I don't know whether it's worth the effort to neaten these elements into more proper form. -- Ed.]

Ah, good old KS 6155 -- still for me the basic Ives recording. (It's
been reissued in many forms, and shouldn't be hard to find on CD.)

"All the brave resolves in the world won't make good music. Nor will patriotic songs, or impudent shockers, or reverent gestures toward Bach and Beethoven. It's talent that counts in the end, and talent is what Ives had, and in such abundance that we must call it genius."

-- Leonard Bernstein, in a 1966 discussion of Ives
which we'll be hearing and reading

ARE WE READY FOR THIS? (IF NOT, NEVER FEAR:
MAESTRO BERNSTEIN IS ABOUT TO PREPARE US!)

"It is something to shout about, isn't it? Especially dating --
as it does -- from 1913." -- Maestro Bernstein
[Gotta know? This clip is also "Ex. 9" below. -- Ed.]

"LEONARD BERNSTEIN DISCUSSES CHARLES IVES" (1966)


Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in New York City, June 2, 1966
[no commercial use, and no copyright infringement intended]

Harken unto Chas Ives from the right angle(s) and behold a veritable musical magic-maker

[WELL, WE DIDN'T GET IT ALL DONE, BUT THIS
WILL HAVE TO BE "CLOSE ENOUGH" FOR NOW]

The Housatonic at Kent (Conn.)  [photo by the Housatonic Valley Association]

"The Housatonic at Stockbridge [1914] was inspired by a Sunday morning walk that Mrs. Ives and I took near Stockbridge [Mass.], the summer after we were married [1908]. We walked in the meadows along the river, and heard the distant singing from the church across the river. The mist had not entirely left the river bed, and the colors, the running water, the banks and elm trees were something that one would always remember. Robert Underwood Johnson, in his poem The Housatonic at Stockbridge, paints the scene beautifully."

-- Ives, Memos, on no. 3 of his Three Places in New England

Eastman-Rochester Orchestra, Howard Hanson, cond. Mercury, rec. 1957

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, David Zinman, cond. Argo, recorded 1994
[Note: Eventually I'll say a bit about these differently terrific performances, Hanson's pulsing with life, Zinman's exploding with musical perception.]

OR, AS AN "ART SONG" -- WITHOUT ORCHESTRA, BUT
WITH ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON'S WORDS (1921)

Contented river! In thy dreamy realm
the cloudy willow and the plumy elm:
thou beautiful! From ev'ry dreamy hill
what eye but wanders with thee at thy will.

Contented river! And yet over-shy
to mask thy beauty from the eager eye;
hast thou a thought to hide from field and town?
In some deep current of the sunlit brown.

Ah! there's a restive ripple,
and the swift red leaves
September's firstlings faster drift.
Wouldst thou away, dear stream?
Come, whisper near!
I also of much resting have a fear:
Let me tomorrow thy companion be,
by fall and shallow to the adventurous sea!

-- text by R.U.J. ("by permission," the score tells us)

Jan DeGaetani (ms); Gilbert Kalish, piano. Nonesuch, released 1976

Gerald Finley (bs-b); Julius Drake, piano. Hyperion, recorded 2004
[Note: Wow! Not that they'll top these, but we're going to hear a couple more performances of the song which I think will add to our picture of it.]

Then again, not necessarily without orchestra --
Michael Tilson Thomas incorporated the text (sung chorally!) in his 1999 live-performance recording of Three Places in New England.


San Francisco Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, MTT, cond. RCA, 1999

AS WE KNOW, MEMORIES MATTER -- A LOT -- IN IVES'S MUSIC

In that spirit, here are parts of two Ives songs we've already heard, though not in these performances (which we will be hearing in full). Are there any you like especially -- or maybe not so much?

Wait, who is Timotheus, and why is he crying "Revenge! Revenge!"? (Oh yes, plus a morceau of Fauré, and some other stuff at the end)

No, the image isn't Dryden's Timotheus, per se. It's a vase depiction (proffered by Wikipedia) of 'an' aulos player, as 'our' Timotheus, a musician who had Alexander the Great's ear, happens to have been. Close enough!

"Revenge, revenge! Revenge, Timotheus cries!"


Forbes Robinson (bs); Philip Ledger, cond. (rec. London, 1966)

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (b); Hans Stadlmair, cond. (rec. Munich, 1977)

Bryn Terfel (bs-b); Sir Charles Mackerras, cond. (rec. Edinburgh, 1997)

by Ken

You know how suddenly you realize a snatch of music is playing in your head, and at least at first you can't think why? At first, in fact, for a bit -- or longer than a bit if you've reached a certain age -- you may not be able to puzzle out what the heck the music is? And even then you may be mystified as to what the heck it's doing in your head? Except that it must surely be connected, somehow!, to something (or things) in your immediate reality?

For me the other day it was a snatch of the above excerpt, a snatch containing just the words "Revenge, Timotheus cries" (or, more likely, "cried" is how my head was remembering it), and I couldn't even shake any other words loose. Until I recollected that for a goodly stretch there aren't any other words.

As to what the heck the snatch was doing in my head, it seemed somehow a good bet that it had something to do with thoughts of, you know, revenge. You'd figure that the context of the snatch would provide vital clues. Having tracked down the source of the snatch, I wasn't overly optimistic, since Handel's Alexander's Feast isn't a piece I've ever thought about (or listened to) much. In fact, my acquaintance with the air generally known as "Revenge, revenge, Timotheus cries" never had much to do with Handel's setting of Dryden's Alexander's Feast.

No, it was the number that popped out to me from the swell LP of Handel bass arias from which the Forbes Robinson performance comes -- a part of the substantial swelling of 1960s interest, following ground-laying pokings-at in the 1950s, in Handel's vast "beyond Messiah" catalog of dramatic works -- the oratorios as well as the operas, and a range of other large-scale vocal feasts, like Alexander's Feast, which is effectively "another" Ode for St. Cecilia's Day.

The Fischer-Dieskau recording, though from a later decade, reminds us that the 1960s produced not one but two fine stereo recordings of Handel's opera Julius Caesar, the earlier one notable for Beverly Sills's "breakthrough" role, Cleopatra, as well as Norman Treigle's Caesar; the later one featuring Fischer-Dieskau in the title role, partnered by Tatiana Troyanos. Whereas by Bryn Terfel's time, a mainstream opera singer recording a whole program of Handel arias seemed hardly a novelty.

Fischer-Dieskau's'60s recording life, by the way, was bracketed by Giulio Cesare -- not just finishing in April 1969 with the complete recording, in Munich, conducted by Karl Richter, but beginning in April 1960 with an LP's worth of "Arias and Scenes of Cleopatra and Caesar," partnered with Irmgard Seefried, in Berlin with that noted baroque stylist Karl Böhm.


OKAY, BUT WE STILL WANT TO HEAR THE CONTEXT OF
"REVENGE, REVENGE, TIMOTHEUS CRIES," DON'T WE?

Sure, we can do that. Why not?

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 --

Last week I noted: "I think we'll be spending more time with the Ives songs." Amazingly, this prediction has come true!

YES, OUR NEW OLD FRIEND GERALD FINLEY IS BACK,
AND HE'S ABOUT TO BLOW THE ROOF OFF THE JOINT

IVES: "They are there! (Fighting for the people's new free world)" (1942-43, solo version)

Gerald Finley, bass-baritone; Magnus Johnston, violin; Julius Drake, piano. Hyperion, recorded Feb. 16-20, 2007

by Ken

In last week's post, "A touch of Ives (featuring a bunch of questions -- not least: Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)," I concluded a batch of quick hits on the Ives songworld with the unassuming note: "NOTE: I think we'll be spending more time with the Ives songs." Which I thought would be safe, because I had a number of threads I wanted to pursue, starting as usual with several that had failed to make it into the current post. What I didn't anticipate, even after plugging away at the material all week, was that I would never quite figure out --

HOW DO WE REJOIN OUR LISTEN-TO OF SELECT IVES SONGS?

What I came up with, sort of, was a quick version -- no multiple performances, no printed song texts -- of the new material that would go above the byline, which would then be repeated in more typical, more discursive Sunday Classics form. And I stuck to this seemingly simple agenda long after it became clear that it wasn't going to work. Even pursuing only a couple of the threads I anticipated from last week, that "above the byline" run-through was stretching out to the horizon.

Unfortunately, "Plan B" turned out to be a cheat version of "Plan A": The so-called quick run-through was dragged down below the byline, where it no longer needed to be quite so compact, and from it a single performance was plucked out and made the post opener. The picture of Gerald Finley -- like the picture of Sam Ramey we're going to see in a bit -- was already ready, from a still-earlier conception of this post that had long since gone by the wayside. (I just had to find them, among the several versions-in-progress of this continuation post that had already sprouted.

So here we are, basically pursuing that rickety, largely discredited Plan B, which continues with several proposed options for rejoining our listen-to of select Ives songs.

(1) We heard Donald Gramm sing "Serenity" with an Aaron Copland intro; we could hear the other two songs from that TV group

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.

Some funny things happened on the way through Ives's Holidays

Among which the nicest thing was that
we ran into bass-baritone Gerald Finley

In recital at New York City's Alice Tully Hall, 2012

[photo by Richard Termine/New York Times]

Gerald Finley, bass-baritone; London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra. LSO Live, recorded live in the Barbican, Apr. 29-30, 2005

by Ken

So there we were ("Decoration Day greetings -- with 'old New England'-style memories provided for us by Charles Ives"), making typically (for this operation) unsteady one-step-forward, several-steps sideways progress toward Schumann's Humoreske, the final step in our Radu Lupu remembrance ("We're still targeting Radu Lupu's Schumann Humoreske, but first we're going to detour . . ."). Really, could we let another Decoration Day (probably better known lo this past half-century as Memorial Day) pass without taking note of Charles Ives's holiday musical reminiscence? From which it seemed only natural once and for all to retrace and then complete our circuit of the four remembrance pieces that make up Ives's Holidays Symphony.

It was while I was laboring on that detour down Ives alley that things started going haywire, with one thing leading to another and then another, until by happy chance we were arranging to hear first one and then two Ives songs sung by Canada's Gerald Finley, from the 61 he's recorded on his not one but two Ives song CDs. A fresh encounter with Gerald F seemed an altogether pleasanter prospect than the piling-up Ives craziness, or for that matter the hard-to-penetrate Schumann-piano perplex.

While Sunday Classics can hardly claim Gerald F as an "old friend" of Sunday Classics, we have heard him in some choice musical situations. For example, back when we were remembering conductor Bernard Haitink, and dipped into his 1980 and 2005 live recordings of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, Gerald F was the 2005 bass soloist, and so we've already heard the magical moment I've pulled out above: when the symphony discovered that it could sing!


WE HEARD GERALD F. IN ANOTHER COLLEGIAL SETTING