Symphony No. 2 (Ives)
Encyclopedia
The Second Symphony was written by Charles Ives
between 1897 and 1901
. It consists of five movements
and lasts approximately 40 minutes.
, 2 flute
s, 2 clarinet
s, 2 oboe
s, 2 bassoon
s, contrabassoon
, 4 horn
s, 2 trumpet
s, 3 trombone
s, tuba
, timpani
, triangle
, snare drum
, bass drum
and strings
.
The piece departs from the conventional four-movement symphonic structure
, which has been modified by the insertion of the Lento maestoso as an introduction to the Allegro molto vivace. Unusually among the classics, Schumann's 'Rhenish' symphony
also has an "additional" slow movement in fourth place.
New York Philharmonic
concert conducted by Leonard Bernstein
. The symphony premiered to rapturous applause but Ives responded with ambivalence. Indeed, he did not even attend the concert in person but had to be dragged by family and friends to a neighbor's house to listen to the live radio broadcast. The public performance had been postponed for so long because Ives had been alienated from the American classical establishment. Ever since his training with Horatio Parker
at Yale
, Ives had suffered their disapproval of the mischievous unorthodoxy with which he radically pushed the boundaries of European classical structures to create soundscapes that recalled the vernacular music-making of his New England
upbringing.
Like Ives' other compositions which honor the European and American inheritances, the Second Symphony never makes verbatim quotation of popular American tunes such as "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean", "Camptown Races
", "Long, Long Ago
", and "America the Beautiful
", but reshapes and develops them into broad themes. There is a subdued version of the opening notes of Beethoven's fifth symphony and a rescoring of part of Brahms' first symphony, as well as a reference (early in the first movement) to the chorales of Johann Sebastian Bach
. The work is an interesting precedent to another significant piece of the 20th century, Luciano Berio
's Sinfonia
which was composed about 65 years later. Ives' 5th movement uses quotation
techniques comparable to Berio's in his 3rd movement.
Bernstein's premiere and subsequent interpretations were later widely criticized for taking extravagant liberties with the score
. Although the 1951 score itself contained about a thousand errors, Bernstein reportedly also made a substantial cut to the finale, ignored Ives' tempo indications, and prolonged the terminating "Bronx cheer" discord
. Many conductors and audiences, influenced by Bernstein's example, have enthusiastically considered the last of these practices one of the trademarks of the piece. In 2000, the Charles Ives Society prepared an official critical edition of the score and authorized a recording by Kenneth Schermerhorn
and the Nashville Symphony Orchestra
to adhere more closely to Ives' intentions.
with the Vienna Philharmonia Orchestra in February 1953. Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic recorded the work in stereo and mono versions for Columbia Records
on October 6, 1958. Eugene Ormandy
and the Philadelphia Orchestra
recorded the symphony for RCA Victor on February 7, 1973, in a multi-channel version later issued on CD with Dolby Surround Sound encoding.
Bernard Herrmann
, another long-time champion of Ives's music, recorded the work with the London Symphony Orchestra in Decca/London's 'Phase 4 Stereo' on 4 January 1972. He had given the UK Premiere of Ives's 2nd Symphony in a BBC radio broadcast with the same orchestra on 25 April 1956, a historic performance that has now been released on CD by Pristine Audio
.
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"...
between 1897 and 1901
1901 in music
-Events:*April 18 - Contralto Mariska Horvath marries politician J. Frank Aldrich.*October 27 – First complete performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2*November 25 – Premiėre of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No...
. It consists of five movements
Movement (music)
A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession...
and lasts approximately 40 minutes.
Scoring
The piece is scored for piccoloPiccolo
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...
, 2 flute
Flute
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 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, 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, 2 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, contrabassoon
Contrabassoon
The contrabassoon, also known as the double bassoon or double-bassoon, is a larger version of the bassoon, sounding an octave lower...
, 4 horn
Horn (instrument)
The horn is a brass instrument consisting of about of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. A musician who plays the horn is called a horn player ....
s, 2 trumpet
Trumpet
The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
s, 3 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, 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...
, 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...
, triangle
Triangle
A triangle is one of the basic shapes of geometry: a polygon with three corners or vertices and three sides or edges which are line segments. A triangle with vertices A, B, and C is denoted ....
, 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...
and strings
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...
.
- Andante moderato
- Allegro
- Adagio cantabileCantabileCantabile is a musical term meaning literally "singable" or "songlike" . It has several meanings in different contexts. In instrumental music, it indicates a particular style of playing designed to imitate the human voice. For 18th century composers, the term is often used synonymously with...
- Lento maestoso
- Allegro molto vivace
The piece departs from the conventional four-movement symphonic structure
Symphony
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...
, which has been modified by the insertion of the Lento maestoso as an introduction to the Allegro molto vivace. Unusually among the classics, Schumann's 'Rhenish' symphony
Symphony No. 3 (Schumann)
Composed from November 2 to December 9, 1850, the Symphony No. 3 “Rhenish” in E flat major, Op. 97, is the last symphony that Robert Schumann composed, although it was not the last symphony that he published...
also has an "additional" slow movement in fourth place.
History and Analysis
Although the work was composed during Ives' twenties, it was half a century before it premiered, in a 19511951 in music
-Events:*January 29 – Nilla Pizzi wins the first annual Sanremo Music Festival with "Grazie dei fiori".*February – The first complete performance of Charles Ives's Second Symphony is given in Carnegie Hall by the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leonard Bernstein.*March – Alan...
New York Philharmonic
New York Philharmonic
The New York Philharmonic is a symphony orchestra based in New York City in the United States. It is one of the American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five"...
concert conducted by Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
. The symphony premiered to rapturous applause but Ives responded with ambivalence. Indeed, he did not even attend the concert in person but had to be dragged by family and friends to a neighbor's house to listen to the live radio broadcast. The public performance had been postponed for so long because Ives had been alienated from the American classical establishment. Ever since his training with Horatio Parker
Horatio Parker
Horatio William Parker was an American composer, organist and teacher. He was a central figure in musical life in New Haven, Connecticut in the late 19th century, and is best remembered as the teacher of Charles Ives....
at Yale
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, Ives had suffered their disapproval of the mischievous unorthodoxy with which he radically pushed the boundaries of European classical structures to create soundscapes that recalled the vernacular music-making of his New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
upbringing.
Like Ives' other compositions which honor the European and American inheritances, the Second Symphony never makes verbatim quotation of popular American tunes such as "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean", "Camptown Races
Camptown Races
Gwine to Run All Night, or De Camptown Races is a minstrel song by Stephen Foster . It was probably composed in Cincinnati in 1849, according to Richard Jackson, and published by F. D. Benteen of Baltimore, Maryland, in February 1850...
", "Long, Long Ago
Long, Long Ago
Long, Long Ago is a song dealing with nostalgia, written in 1833 by English composer Thomas Haynes Bayly. Originally named The Long Ago, its name was apparently changed by the editor Rufus Wilmot Griswold when it was first published, posthumously, in a Philadelphia magazine, along with a...
", and "America the Beautiful
America the Beautiful
"America the Beautiful" is an American patriotic song. The lyrics were written by Katharine Lee Bates and the music composed by church organist and choirmaster Samuel A. Ward....
", but reshapes and develops them into broad themes. There is a subdued version of the opening notes of Beethoven's fifth symphony and a rescoring of part of Brahms' first symphony, as well as a reference (early in the first movement) to the chorales of Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
. The work is an interesting precedent to another significant piece of the 20th century, Luciano Berio
Luciano Berio
Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian composer. He is noted for his experimental work and also for his pioneering work in electronic music.-Biography:Berio was born at Oneglia Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (October 24, 1925 – May 27, 2003) was an Italian...
's Sinfonia
Sinfonia (Berio)
Sinfonia is a composition by the Italian composer Luciano Berio which was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for its 125th anniversary...
which was composed about 65 years later. Ives' 5th movement uses quotation
Quotation
A quotation or quote is the repetition of one expression as part of another one, particularly when the quoted expression is well-known or explicitly attributed by citation to its original source, and it is indicated by quotation marks.A quotation can also refer to the repeated use of units of any...
techniques comparable to Berio's in his 3rd movement.
Bernstein's premiere and subsequent interpretations were later widely criticized for taking extravagant liberties with the score
Sheet music
Sheet music is a hand-written or printed form of music notation that uses modern musical symbols; like its analogs—books, pamphlets, etc.—the medium of sheet music typically is paper , although the access to musical notation in recent years includes also presentation on computer screens...
. Although the 1951 score itself contained about a thousand errors, Bernstein reportedly also made a substantial cut to the finale, ignored Ives' tempo indications, and prolonged the terminating "Bronx cheer" discord
Consonance and dissonance
In music, a consonance is a harmony, chord, or interval considered stable, as opposed to a dissonance , which is considered to be unstable...
. Many conductors and audiences, influenced by Bernstein's example, have enthusiastically considered the last of these practices one of the trademarks of the piece. In 2000, the Charles Ives Society prepared an official critical edition of the score and authorized a recording by Kenneth Schermerhorn
Kenneth Schermerhorn
Kenneth Dewitt Schermerhorn was an American composer and orchestra conductor, most notably for the Nashville Symphony.-Biography:Schermerhorn was born in Schenectady, New York, where he studied clarinet, violin, and trumpet in school. At age 14, he forged a baptismal certificate to appear older so...
and the Nashville Symphony Orchestra
Nashville Symphony Orchestra
The Nashville Symphony is an American symphony orchestra, based in Nashville, Tennessee. The orchestra performs 140 concerts annually.-History:...
to adhere more closely to Ives' intentions.
Recordings
Although the world premiere performance was later issued on CD, the first studio recording was made by F. Charles AdlerFrederick Charles Adler
Frederick Charles Adler was an English-German conductor....
with the Vienna Philharmonia Orchestra in February 1953. Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic recorded the work in stereo and mono versions for Columbia Records
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
on October 6, 1958. Eugene Ormandy
Eugene Ormandy
Eugene Ormandy was a Hungarian-born conductor and violinist.-Early life:Born Jenő Blau in Budapest, Hungary, Ormandy began studying violin at the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music at the age of five...
and the Philadelphia Orchestra
Philadelphia Orchestra
The Philadelphia Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. One of the "Big Five" American orchestras, it was founded in 1900...
recorded the symphony for RCA Victor on February 7, 1973, in a multi-channel version later issued on CD with Dolby Surround Sound encoding.
Bernard Herrmann
Bernard Herrmann
Bernard Herrmann was an American composer noted for his work in motion pictures.An Academy Award-winner , Herrmann is particularly known for his collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock, most famously Psycho, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo...
, another long-time champion of Ives's music, recorded the work with the London Symphony Orchestra in Decca/London's 'Phase 4 Stereo' on 4 January 1972. He had given the UK Premiere of Ives's 2nd Symphony in a BBC radio broadcast with the same orchestra on 25 April 1956, a historic performance that has now been released on CD by Pristine Audio
Pristine Audio
Pristine Audio was founded in 2002 by Andrew Rose, then a BBC Radio sound engineer, as an audio transfer and restoration business.Following its relocation from the United Kingdom to France in 2004, the company began to concentrate on the restoration and remastering of historic classical music...
.