Charles Ives (1874-1954)Manner versus substance

“It wasn’t the music that did it, and it wasn’t the words that did it, and it wasn’t the sounds (whatever they were—transcendent, peculiar, bad, some beautifully unmusical)—but they were sung ‘like the rocks were grown.’ The singers weren’t singers, but they knew what they were doing—it all came from something felt, way down and way up.”

“ ‘How can you stand it to hear old John Bell (the best stone-mason in town) sing?’ Father said, ‘He is a supreme musician.’ the young man (nice and educated) was horrified—’Why he sings off the key, the wrong notes and everything—and that horrible, raucous voice—and he bellows out and hits notes no one else does—it’s awful!’ Father said, ‘Watch him closely and reverently, look into his face and hear the music of the ages. Don’t pay too much attention to the sounds—for if you do, you may miss the music.’”

Ives, The Circus Band, 1897

All summer long, we boysdreamed 'bout big circus joys!Down Main street, comes the band, Oh! "Ain't it a grand and glorious noise!"Horses are prancing, knights advancing;Helmets gleaming, pennants streaming,Cleopatra's on her throne!That golden hair is all her own.Where is the lady all in pink?Last year she waved to me I think,Can she have died? Can! that! rot!She is passing but she sees me not.

Ives, Serenity, 1919Text by John Greenleaf Whittier, from “The Brewing of Soma”

“A unison chant” to be sung “Very slowly, quietly and sustained with little or no change in tempo or volume throughout”

O, Sabbath rest of Galilee!O, calm of hills above,Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee,the silence of eternityInterpreted 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.

Ives, The Housatonic at Stockbridge, 1921Text by Robert Underwood Johnson

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 overshy

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;

Woulds’t 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!

Dorrnance hymn