This double-disc record celebrates the American composer Charles Ives on his 150th birthday, showing the full array of his special talent in songs and piano solos. Not just a brilliant modernist, Ives was quintessentially American in his music’s generous inclusivity, and diversity of style. The songs in particular might at first listen seem to come from many composers, until one recognizes Ives’s signature on them all. Equally grounded in the American past and a mystical contemporary present, with allusions to music from a huge number of sources, Ives’s work is ultimately about the act of listening itself, and the passion of musical devotion. For me, Ives was a gateway to new music in general, and his collage technique of composing, which juggles time and perception, justified my simultaneous love for, and distance from, the music that formed my early education. The accompanying episode of my podcast goes into analytical depth and gives some historical context of Ives the man.
SHARON HARMS, voice sharonharms.com
ANDREW MUNN, voice andrewrobertmunn.com
ALICE TEYSSIER, voice and flute aliceteyssier.com
DISC ONE
Watchman!
Watchman, tell us of the night,
what its signs of promise are:
Traveller, o'er yon mountain's height,
See that glory beaming star!
Watchman, aught of joy or hope?
Traveller, Yes! Traveller Yes!
Traveller yes; it brings the day,
Promised day of Israel.
Dost thou see its beauteous ray?
Traveller, See!
—Sir John Bowring
Varied Air and Variations
Protest from “box belles” when “man” comes
on stage.
[Theme] First play “line of rocks” alone in
three octaves apart.
Protest.
[Var. 1] Follow the stone wall around the
mountain (f), and the other notes (p) are
things and sounds in the distance.
Protest by a moan si[ssy].
[Var. 2 — mirror] March time or faster.
Protest.
[Var. 3 — canon] ad lib.
Protest.
[Var. 4] All right, Ladies, I’ll play the rock
line again and harmonize it nice and
proper.
Applause (non-protest).
[Var. 5] But [he] gets mad and starts to
throw things at them again.
Protest.
—Charles Ives
CHARLES IVES SONGS AND SOLOS (page best viewed on desktop)
Alas! for them their day is o'er,
No more, no more for them the wild deer bounds,
The plough is on their hunting grounds;
The pale man's axe rings through their woods,
The pale man's sail skims o'er their floods;
Beyond the mountains of the west
Their children go to die.
—Charles James Sprague
Tom Sails Away
Scenes from my childhood are with me,
I'm in the lot behind our house upon the hill,
A spring day's sun is setting,
Mother with Tom in her arms
Is coming towards the garden;
The lettuce rows are showing green.
Thinner grows the smoke o'er the town,
Stronger comes the breeze from the ridge,
'Tis after six, the whistles have blown,
The milk train's gone down the valley
Daddy is coming up the hill from the mill,
We run down the lane to meet him
But today! In freedom's cause Tom sailed away
For over there, over there!
Scenes from my childhood
Are floating before my eyes.
—Charles Ives
Spring Song
Across the hill of late, came spring
And stopped and looked into this wood
And called and called and called.
Now all the dry brown things are ans'wring,
With here a leaf and there a fair blown flow'r,
I only heard her not, and wait and wait.
—Harmony Twitchell
In the Alley
On my way to work one summer day,
Just off the main highway,
Through a window in an alley
Smiled a lass, her name was Sally,
O could it be!
O could it be she smiled on me!
All that day, before my eyes,
Amidst the busy whirl,
Came the image of that lovely Irish girl,
And hopes would seem to rise,
As the clouds rise in the skies,
When I thought of her and those beaming eyes.
So that evening, dressed up smart and neat,
I wandered down her street,
At the corner of the alley
Was another man with Sally,
And my eyes grew dim,
She smiles on him, only on him!
—Charles Ives
A Sea Dirge
Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Hark! now I hear them, - ding-dong bell.
—William Shakespeare, from The Tempest
Cradle Song
Hush thee, dear child to slumbers;
We will sing softest numbers;
Nought thy sleeping encumbers.
Summer is slowly dying;
Autumnal winds are sighing;
Faded leaflets are flying.
Brightly the willows quiver;
Peacefully flows the river;
So shall love flow forever.
—A. L. Ives
Walt Whitman
Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, and
nude;
How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?
What is man anyhow? what am I? what are you?
All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your
own,
Else it were time lost a-listening to me.
—Walt Whitman
Voices live in every finite being,
Often undivined, near silence.
Hear them! Hear them in you! in others!
They sense truth deep in the Soul;
They know the things true Pilgrims stand for.
Stand out! Come to Him without the things the
world brings;
Come to Him! As a child and, as a poor man.
He had all. He gave all.
—Charles Ives
PERFORMERS
EDITIONS
Two Little Flowers
On sunny days in our backyard,
Two little flowers are seen,
One dressed, at times, in brightest pink
And one in green.
The marigold is radiant,
The rose passing fair;
The violet is ever dear,
The orchid, ever rare;
There's loveliness in wild flow'rs
Of field or wide savannah,
But fairest, rarest of them all
Are Edith and Susanna.
—Charles Ives
The Side Show
The See’r
An old man with a straw in his mouth
Sat all day long before the village
grocery store;
He liked to watch the funny things
a going, going, going by!
—Charles Ives
"Is that Mister Riley,
Who keeps the hotel?"
Is the tune that accomp'nies
The trotting-track bell;
An old horse unsound,
Turns the merry-go-round,
Making poor Mister Riley
Look a bit like a Russian dance,
Some speak of so highly,
As they do of Riley!
—Charles Ives, after P. Rooney
Romanzo (di Central Park)
Grove,
Rove,
Night,
Delight
Heart,
Impart,
Prove
Love,
Heart,
Impart,
Love,
Prove,
Prove
Love,
Kiss,
Bliss,
Kiss,
Bliss
Blest,
Rest,
Heart,
Impart,
Impart,
Impart,
Love.
—Leigh Hunt
Weil’ auf mir
Weil' auf mir, du dunkles Auge,
Übe deine ganze Macht,
Ernste, milde, träumerische,
Unergründlich süße Nacht!
Nimm mit deinem Zauberdunkel
Diese Welt von hinnen mir,
Daß du über meinem Leben
Einsam schwebest für und für.
Because of me, you dark eye,
Exercise all your power,
Serious, gentle, dreamy,
Unfathomably sweet night!
Take this world from me
with your magical darkness,
So that you may hover over my life
Lonely forever and ever.
—Nikolaus Lenau
His Exaltation
For the grandeur of Thy nature,
grand beyond a seraph's thought
For the wonders of Creation,
Works with skill and kindness wrought;
Through Thine Empires wide domain
Blessed be Thy gentle Reign.
—Robert Robinson
The Light that is Felt
A tender child of summers three, at night,
while seeking her little bed,
Paused on the dark stair timidly,
Oh, mother take my hand, said she,
And then the dark will be light...
We older children grope our way
from dark behind to dark before;
And only when our hands we lay
in Thine, O God! the night is day,
and there is darkness never more.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Study No. 20: March
This fitful piece is in arch form, with a procession of less-than-confident march episodes played in reverse after a central “Tri-OH!”, a frantic medley of popular songs. In the end, this march may not lead in any direction at all.
Swimmers
Then the swift plunge into the cool green
dark,
the windy waters rushing past me, through
me;
Filled with the sense of some heroic lark,
exulting in a vigor clean and roomy.
Swiftly I rose to meet the feline sea...
Pitting against a cold turbulent strife,
The feverish intensity of life...
Out of the foam I lurched and rode the wave
Swimming hand over hand, over hand,
against the wind;
I felt the sea's vain pounding, and I grinned
knowing I was its master, not its slave.
—Louis Untermeyer
Slow March
One evening just at sunset we laid him in the grave;
Although a humble animal his heart was true and brave.
All the family joined us, in solemn march and slow,
From the garden place beneath the trees and where the sunflowers grow.
— Charles Ives
Harpalus
Oh, Harpalus! (thus would he say)
Unhappiest under sunne!
The cause of thine unhappy day,
By love was first begunne.
Thou wentest first by sute to seeke
A tigre to make tame,
That settes not by thy love a leeke;
But makes thy griefe her game.
As easy it were to convert
The forest into a flame;
As for to turne a frowarde hert,
Whom thou so faine wouldst frame.
Corin, he liveth carelesse:
He leapes among the leaves:
He eats the frutes of thy redresse:
Thou "reapst" he takes the sheaves.
—English folk song
(We are all sorry for Harpalus, notwithstanding
the music.)
Rough Wind
Rough wind that moanest loud
Grief too sad for song;
Wild wind, when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;
Sad storm whose tears are vain,
Bare woods, whose branches strain,
Deep caves and dreary main, --
Wail, for the world's wrong!
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Berceuse
O'er the mountain toward the west,
As the children go to rest,
Faintly comes a sound,
A song of nature hovers round,
'Tis the beauty of the night;
Sleep thee well till morning light.
—Charles Ives
Requiem
Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie;
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
Here may the winds about me blow,
Here the sea may come and go
Here lies peace forevermo'
And the heart for aye shall be still.
This be the verse you grave for me:
"Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill."
—Robert Louis Stevenson
“1, 2, 3”
Why doesn't one, two, three
Seem to appeal to a Yankee
As much as one, two!
—Charles Ives
Down East
Songs! Visions of my homeland,
Come with strains of childhood,
Come with tunes we sang in school days
And with songs from mother's heart;
Way down east in a village by the sea,
Stands an old, red farm house
That watches o'er the lea;
All that is best in me,
Lying deep in memory,
Draws my heart where I would be,
Nearer to thee.
Ev'ry Sunday morning,
When the chores were almost done,
From that little parlor
Sounds the old melodeon,
"Nearer my God to Thee, nearer to Thee,"
With those strains a stronger hope
Comes nearer to me.
—Charles Ives
Remembrance
A song of a distant horn,
O'er shadowed lake is born,
My father's song.
—Charles Ives
This Study stayed in Ives’s own piano repertoire until the 1940s, when he made a recording in a New York studio of excerpts from the piece. It is notable for Ives’s use of the tune “Hello My Baby” and a 5/8 section that incorporates music from the great chamber piece Scherzo: Over the Pavements.
The Innate
Study No. 23
This march, one of eight shorter ones by Ives for solo piano, was an early version of the song The Circus Band, with much of the same music.
Songs My Mother
Taught Me
Songs my mother taught me
in the days long vanished,
Seldom from her eyelids
were the tear drops banished.
Now I teach my children
each melodious measure;
Often tears are flowing
from my memory's treasure.
—Natalie McFarren, after Adolf Heyduk
Evening
Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray
Had in her sober livery all things clad;
Silence accompanied; for the beast and bird,
They to their grassy couch, these to their nests
Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;
She all night long her amorous descant sung;
Silence is pleased....
—John Milton, from Paradise Lost
The New River
Down the river comes a noise!
It is not the voice of rolling waters.
It's only the sound of man,
Dancing halls and tambourine;
Phonographs and gasoline,
Human beings gone machine;
Killed is the blare of the hunting horn
The River Gods are gone.
—Charles Ives
Tolerance
How can I turn from any fire,
On any man's hearthstone?
I know the wonder and desire
That went to build my own!
—Rudyard Kipling
Evidence
There comes o'er the valley a shadow,
the hilltops still are bright;
There comes o'er the hilltop a shadow,
the mountain's bathed in light;
There comes o'er the mountain a shadow,
but the sun ever shines thro' the night!
—Charles Ives
A Night Song
The young May moon is beaming; love,
The glow-worm's lamp is gleaming, love,
How sweet to rove
Through Morna's grove,
When the drowsy world is dreaming, love!
Then awake! The heavens look bright, my
dear,
'Tis never too late for delight,
And best of all ways
To lengthen days
Is to steal a few hours from the night, my
dear!
—Thomas Moore
A Christmas Carol
Little star of Bethlehem!
Do we see Thee now?
Do we see Thee shining
O'er the tall trees?
Little Child of Bethlehem!
Do we hear thee in our hearts?
Hear the Angels singing:
Peace on earth, good will to men!
Noel!
O'er the cradle of a King,
Hear the Angels sing:
In Excelsis Gloria, Gloria!
From his Father's home on high,
Lo! for us He came to die;
Hear the Angels sing:
Venite adoremus Dominum.
—Charles Ives
Grantchester
Would I were in Grantchester, in
Grantchester!
Some, it may-be, can get in touch
With Nature there or Earth or such.
And clever modern men have seen
A Faun a-peeping through the green,
And felt the Classics were not dead,
To glimpse a Naiad's reedy head
Or hear the Goat foot piping low....
But these are things I do not know
I only know that you may lie
Day long and watch the Cambridge sky,
And, flower lulled in sleepy grass,
Hear the cool lapse of hours pass,
Until the centuries blend and blur
In Grantchester, in Grantchester.
—Rupert Brooke
“Thoreau” from Piano Sonata #2 (“Concord”)
The final movement of Ives’s best-known piano
piece is a meditation on the Transcendentalist
writer, finishing with an evocation of hearing
Thoreau himself play the flute from a distance, across Walden Pond.
DISC TWO
Ann Street
Quaint name, Ann street.
Width of same, ten feet.
Barnums mob - Ann street,
Far from obsolete.
Narrow, yes. Ann street,
But business, both feet.
(Nassau crosses Ann Street)
Sun just hits Ann street,
Then it quits - some greet!
Rather short, Ann street...
—Maurice Morris
The Indians
The Greatest Man
My teacher said us boys should write
about some great man,
so I thought last night
'n thought about heroes and men
that had done great things,
'n then I got to thinkin' 'bout my pa;
he ain't a hero 'r anything but pshaw! Say!
He can ride the wildest hoss
'n find minners near the moss
down by the creek; 'n he can swim 'n fish,
we ketched five new lights, me 'n him!
Dad's some hunter too - oh, my!
Miss Molly Cottontail sure does fly
when he tromps through the fields 'n brush!
(Dad won't kill a lark 'r thrush.)
Once when I was sick
'n though his hands were rough
he rubbed the pain right out. "That's the
stuff!"
he said when I winked back the tears. He
never cried
but once 'n that was when my mother died.
There're lots o' great men: George
Washinton 'n Lee,
but Dad's got 'em all beat holler,
seems to me!
—Anne Collins
The Rainbow
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
—William Wordsworth
Peaks
Quiet faces,
That look in faith
On distance,
I will come to you
And gaze upon that peace.
I cannot tell
If it be wind you see
Across the summer grains
Or the shaken agony
Of driven seas.
—Henry Bellamann
The Sea of Sleep
Good night, my care and my sorrow,
I'm launching on the deep -
And till the dawning morrow
Shall sail the sea of sleep.
Good night, my care and my sorrow,
Good night and maybe goodby -
For I may wake on the morrow
Beneath another sky.
—Charles Ives
Thoreau
He grew in those seasons like corn in the
night,
rapt in revery, on the Walden shore,
amidst the sumach, pines and hickories,
in undisturbed solitude.
—Charles Ives
Rosamunde
J'attends, hélas ! dans la douleur
Pleurant ta longue absence ;
Reviens, reviens: sans ta présence,
Pour moi plus de bonheur !
En vain fleurit le doux printemps
Tout fier de sa parure :
Rien ne me plaît dans la nature.
Mon Dieu ! que j'ai pleuré longtemps
Pourtant s'il ne doit plus venir ?
Mon Dieu ! toi que j'implore !
Eh bien ! la tombe peut encore
Au moins nous réunir.
I wait, alas! in pain
Mourning your long absence;
Come back, come back: without your presence,
No more happiness for me!
In vain the sweet spring blooms
Proud of its finery:
Nothing pleases me in nature.
My God! How long have I wept
Yet if he must not come again?
My God! you whom I implore!
Well! the grave can still
At least reunite us.
Édouard Belanger
Study No. 6
This study is primarily to juxtapose rhythms of threes and fives, with the slower rhythms as a nostalgic melody in the foreground and the faster ones a winding, softer accompaniment in the background.
Slugging a Vampire
I closed and drew, but not a gun,
(the refuge of the weak),
I swung with the left and I swung with the right
And I landed on his beak.
He started to pull the same old stuff,
But I closed in hard and called his bluff
Yet his face is still a-stickin' in the yellow sheet
And on the billboard a-down the street.
—Charles Ives
Afterglow
At the quiet close of day,
Gently yet the willows sway;
When the sunset light is low,
Lingers still the afterglow;
Beauty tarries loth to die,
Every lightest fantasy
Lovelier grows in memory,
Where the truer beauties lie.
—James Fenimore Cooper
December
Last, for December, houses on the plain,
Ground floors to live on, logs heap'd mountain
high,
Carpets stretched and newest games to try,
Torches lit, and gifts from man to man,
(Your host, a drunkard and a Catalan;)
And whole dead pigs, and cunning cooks to ply
Each throat with tit-bits that satisfy;
And wine-butts of St. Galganu's brave span.
And be your coats well-lined and tightly bound,
And wrap yourselves in cloaks of strength and
weight,
With gallant hoods to put your faces through.
And make your game of abject vagabond,
Abandoned miserable reprobate
Misers; don't let them have a chance with you.
— Folgore da San Geminiano
The Cage
A leopard went around his cage
From one side back to the other side;
He stopped only when the keeper came
around with meat;
A boy who had been there three hours
Began to wonder, "Is life anything like that?"
—Charles Ives
West London
Crouch'd on the pavement, close by Belgrave
Square,
A tramp I saw, ill, moody, and tongue-tied.
A babe was in her arms, and at her side
A girl; their clothes were rags, their feet were
bare.
Some labouring men, whose work lay
somewhere there,
Pass'd opposite; She touch'd the girl, who hied
Across, and begg'd and came back satisfied.
The rich she had let pass with a frozen stare.
Thought I: Above her state this spirit towers;
She will not ask of Aliens, but of friends,
Of sharers in a common human fate.
She turns from the cold succour, which attends
The unknown little from the unknowing great,
And points us to a better time than ours.
—Matthew Arnold
The Children’s Hour
Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the days occupations,
That is known as Children's Hour.
I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet
The sound of a door that is opened
And voices soft and sweet.
From my study I see in the lamplight
Descending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice and laughing Allegra
And Edith with golden hair.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
March for Piano: The Circus Band
The One Way
Here are things you've heard before,
Turned out daily by the score,
Pretty rhymes you know
How gently on the ear
They bring a smile or bring a tear,
Do re mi fa mi re do.
When we go a-marching
Down thro' life and the Street,
O loud and free must the music be
With the tunes to match the feet.
Now a softer cadence,
Now we change the key,
Just to stage a comeback
To the main strain of our glee.
So if you'd go a-marching
To fortune or to Fame,
Perhaps the safest way's to play the same old,
same old game.
Tunes we've often heard before,
Snatches of a dozen more,
Jingles row on row,
When borne upon the ear,
They bring a smile or bring a blear,
Do re me fa me re do.
When we go a-marching
Down the aisle or the Street,
O nice and sweet must the music bleat,
With the time to match the feet.
Now a softer cadence,
Now we change the key,
Just to stage a comeback
To the nice key of our glee.
So if you'd go a-marching
To Fortune or to Fame,
The safest way's to play the same old,
same old game.
Hola! Huzza! Je ne sais pas!
—Charles Ives
Soprano SHARON HARMS is celebrated for her vibrant voice and fearless artistry, delivering "luscious-toned," "extraordinarily precise and expressive" performances (The New York Times). Her dedication to contemporary vocal music has made her a vital collaborator and sought-after interpreter of works by living composers. She has premiered numerous works with leading chamber ensembles, including the Talea Ensemble, Argento Ensemble, eighth blackbird, International Contemporary Ensemble, Lyris Quartet, Ensemble Signal, Third Coast Percussion, and the MET Opera Chamber Orchestra. Her performances have also beenfeatured at the American Academy in Rome and the Resonant Bodies Festival. Harms was a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, where she premiered Charles Wuorinen’s cantata It Happens Like This, which she later sang for her Carnegie Hall debut. She has been a visiting artist at East Carolina University, a faculty member at New Music on the Point, and serves as soprano with the conference ensemble for the Composer’s Conference at Avaloch Farm Music Institute. Committed to expanding the vocal repertoire, she is currently working on new song cycles by Christopher Trapani and Chris Castro, alongside recording projects featuring Milton Babbitt and Aaron Helgeson. She has recorded for the Albany, Bridge, and Innova labels.
ANDREW MUNN is a bass and collaborative artist. He trained at The Juilliard School, Bard College, and University of Michigan, with Sanford Sylvan, Dawn Upshaw, Stephen West, and George Shirley. As an associated artist of the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, he was mentored by José van Dam. He was a fellow of the Aspen Summer Music Festival and School (2006, 2014, 2015) and Tanglewood Music Center (2017). From 2008 to 2014, Andrew lived in central Appalachia working as a leading organizer in a constellation of resistance to mountaintop removal coal mining. His work on civil disobedience, land reform, and economic transition in coal-dependent areas was published and analyzed in the Journal of Appalachian Studies and Applied Anthropology; books published by Punctum, AK, Virginia Tech, and Atlantic Monthly Presses; and featured in documentaries including The Last Mountain and Battle for Blair Mountain on CNN. He has given world premieres and sung principal roles at Carnegie Hall, Deutsche Oper Berlin, and München Biennale. Drawn to the intimacy of art song, Andrew has presented recitals across North America, Europe, and the Middle East. In 2023 he was an invited artist of Berlin Akademie der Künste and Haus für Poesie's series Re-Imagining the Lied.
ALICE TEYSSIER is Clinical Associate Professor of Music at New York University. As a flutist and soprano, she holds B.M. and M.M. degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory, a Specialization Diploma from the Conservatoire de Strasbourg in France, and a DMA from the University of California, San Diego. Teyssier's performance specialties include contemporary music and experimental practices as well as early and Baroque music. She is a founding member of the ensembles La Perla Bizzarra and The Atelier, and a core member of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). She is particularly interested in the experimental practice of performance as a ritual of progressive self-transformation and how deep corporeal experiences through newness impact the performer's body. She served as Co-Director of OpenICE, ICE's initiative for engaged creation and commissioning of new music, presented free of charge and open to all. Since 2018, much of Alice's creative life has been fueled by her transformed role as a mother. Through her Thresholds project, she composes, devises and collaborates around themes of life transitions. In 2021, she joined forces with several other artist mothers in founding MATRICALIS, a project and community hub that reflects on the impact of motherhood on individual musicians, providing them with resources, open forums and advocacy.
Eleven Songs & Two Harmonizations, John Kirkpatrick, ed. Associated Music Publishers, Inc., distributed by Hal Leonard, 1968.
Forty Earlier Songs, John Kirkpatrick, ed. Peer International, Theodore Presser, 1993.
129 Songs. H. Wiley Hitchcock, ed. Music of the United States of America, 12; Recent Researches in American Music, 46. Middleton, Wisc.: A-R
Editions, Inc, 2004.
114 Songs, reprinted by Associated Music Publishers, Peer International, Theodore Presser. Originally published 1922.
Piano Sonata No. 2, Concord, Mass., 1840–60, Second Edition (1947), Associated Music Publishers, distributed by Hal Leonard.
Piano Studies and Piano Marches: Ives Society Critical Edition, vols. 1 and 2, Donald Berman and James B. Sinclair, ed. Peer Music, distributed by Hal
Leonard, 2015 and 2021.
Varied Air and Variations (Study No. 2 for Ears or Aural and Mental Exercise!!!): John Kirkpatrick and Garry Clarke, ed. Theodore Presser, 1971.