Pantechnicon; Charles Ives

The Harvard Dictionary of Music defines the 12 tone technique as a novel system of composition devised mainly by Arnold Schoenberg in one thousand twenty one was looking for a new or musical expression a system that could express ideas not here and in the traditional major and minor scales. He chose the 12 tone row for all notes in the chromatic scale are considered equal without regard to a central key. There were other 12 tone experimenters before Schoenberg. Most notably the American composer Charles Ives whose centenary year is upon us and insurance executive from Connecticut I was wrote music at night and on weekends and though he was no less a master of composition than Schoenberg there independent development of the 12 tone row resulted from two entirely different needs. Gunther Schuller has edited many of our lives more visionary manuscripts including several 12 tone pieces. Schuller who was president of the New England Conservatory of Music spoke about OBS and Schoenberg and the different approaches to the 12 tone roll chamber grappled with this problem and made.

Intellectually First of all out of a need to organize the what was what is called the ad total musical material the total chromatic to organize that into some Samit systematic way that is part of his dramatic background and his whole training. With us. It was one of many many things that fascinated him and I was never one to dedicate himself single mindedly to one idea or to one principle or to one theory. You know as I said it could beat the idea of 12 tone one week and the next week it could be some entirely different subject matter. I mean like the echo pieces or it could be ragtime rhythms or or the or the or the different literary or textual subject matters that fascinated

him. And certainly it could be metric and rhythmic organization in which he was probably the single greatest innovator I think that fascinated him even more than pitch organization rhythmic organization. And of course we could do a 12 programs just on his innovations in the realm of rhythm and meter. But you see he would he would move from one or the one or the other these areas around it at a great rate sometimes combining all of them in a single piece as in the fourth symphony. But nevertheless he would never follow through. He didn't have that kind of intellectual. In fact he he was very proud of being very almost anti academic anti intellectual about such matters and he always scoffed at the academicians and this harks back to his days in Yale when you know for a show Parker didn't like his fugues and 4 keys and made fun of him and and he developed at that time a very healthy sort of

healthy suspicion of. Academic intellectual isn't in its in its worst sense because there's a good side to that too. But you know in any case he was not one to follow through on an idea like that and then postulate as as Stockhausen does in our time. You know whole theories universal theories which then everyone must follow. I was was a real Universalist yes but also a Democrat in the sense that you know he had a very humble very democratic notion of the basic simplicity and humility of men or that he should have towards his maker as he would call and towards nature and things like that. And he would never have considered spending twenty years taking chromatin mellow tune and extrapolating from that a whole theory which then the rest of the world should follow. This was very foreign to him I don't say that that Ives is a better man than Schoenberg or

Schoenberg is a better man than I is I'm just saying that different people just like Beethoven agonized over themes for five years and his sketchbooks Mozart never agonized over anything and one could not say that one is a better composer and the other just different types. Gunter Schuller on Charles this report came from Marc Klugman in Lawrence Kansas. In 1939 pianist John Kirkpatrick gave the premiere performance of The Complete Second Piano Sonata by Charles Ives until then. I was revolutionary music it received its only favorable attention from young American composers and musicians. Searching for a native musical heritage. But after hearing Kirkpatrick's performance the influential critic Laurence Gillman called i've second piano sonata the greatest music composed by an American. The work is also called the Concord Sonata. In it I was wrote impressionistic pictures of the major literary figures of Concord Massachusetts showing the Connecticut composer's great affinity

for the transcendental philosophy as evident in the forceful Emerson movement of the sonata. But Kirkpatrick had a difficult time urging us to talk about his musical ideas in the Emerson music recently. Kirkpatrick recall what I was reaction had been every time the pianist tried to pin him down even if he had a very quick mind a very agile and. Anything he didn't want to answer directly. He could always he could always slither out from under as it were. And then he had such a curious mind that when US to him a question he was apt to take your question as a springboard to go off on flights of fancy to a quite other aspects of the general subject.

I just didn't like to make definitive statements about his music. Rarely did he play a piece the same way twice. Especially the Emerson music of which there were several written versions while setting his autobiographical notes to paper I've hit upon an equitable compromise to satisfy both his question admirers and his own need for freedom. John Kirkpatrick reads from Ives memos. It is a peculiar experience and I must admit a stimulating in the agreeable one that I have had with this Emerson music. It may have something to do with the feeling I have about Emerson for every time I read him I seem to get a new angle of thought and feeling and experience from him. Some of the four transcriptions as I play them today especially the first and the third changed considerably from those in the photostat. And again I find that I don't play or feel like playing this music even now in the same way each time. Some of the passages now played have been written out and some are in the short piano pieces and studies and I don't know as I ever shall write them out as it may take away the daily pleasure of playing this

music and seeing it grow and feeling that it is not finished. I may always have the pleasure of not finishing it and I hope that it never will be although shortly I think I will make a record. Perhaps playing each movement two or three different ways this will be done more for my own satisfaction and study and also to save the trouble and eyesight of copying it all out after the record is made. Mr Henry Cavill Mr Nicholas loan or some other acoustical genius could write it down for me and probably better than I can. In 1933 Ives made a recording of that third transcription of the Emerson music not hesitating to throw in a variety of improvisations whenever he felt like it. This is what it sounded like. Yes. From.

Charles Ives and his Emerson music we heard the piece performed on an early recording by Charles Ives himself while earlier the composer was recalled by his friend John Kirkpatrick. This report came from Marc Klugman in Lawrence Kansas. And this is NPR National Public Radio.