Faculty Recital: Stephen Drury, Piano: Complete Ives Piano Sonatas

Sonata No. 1 (1902-10)

Adagio con moto
Allegro moderato - "In the Inn"
Adagio
"not for the lilies lying back in soft dress-circle cushion to lap up pretty velvet sound with their soft ears:
     Allegro
Andante maestoso

Program note

First Sonata

What is it all about? – Dan S. asks. Mostly about the outdoor life in Conn. villages in the ‘80s & ‘90s – impressions, remembrances, & reflections of country farmers in Conn. farmland.

On page 14 back, Fred’s Daddy got so excited that he shouted when Fred hit a home run & the school won the baseball game. But Aunt Sarah was always humming Where Is My Wandering Boy, after Fred an’ John left for a job in Bridgeport. There was usually a sadness – but not at theBarn Dances, with their jigs, foot jumping, & reels, mostly on winter nights.

In the summer times, the hymns were sung outdoors. Folks sang (as Old Black Joe) - & the Bethel Band (quickstep street marches) - & the people like[d to say] things as they wanted to say, and to do things as they wanted to, in their own way – and many old times … there were feelings, and of spiritual fervency!

--Charles Ives

Three Page Sonata (1905)

INTERMISSION

Sonata No. 2, "Concord, Mass. 1840-1860"

Emerson
Hawthorne
The Alcotts
Thoreau

Program note

Sonata #2, “Concord, Mass., 1840-1860”

I. Emerson

It has seemed to the writer, that Emerson is greater—his identity more complete perhaps—in the realms of revelation—natural disclosure—than in those of poetry, philosophy, or prophecy…

We see him standing on a summit, at the door of the infinite where many men do not care to climb, peering into the mysteries of life, contemplating the eternities, hurling back whatever he discovers there, —now, thunderbolts for us to grasp, if we can, and translate—now placing quietly, even tenderly, in our hands, things that we may see without effort—if we won’t see them, so much the worse for us.

There is an “oracle” at the beginning of the Fifth Symphony—in those four notes lies one of Beethoven’s greatest messages. We would place its translation above the relentlessness of fate knocking at the door, above the greater human-message of destiny, and strive to bring it towards the spiritual message of Emerson’s revelations— even to the “common heart” of Concord —the Soul of humanity knocking at the door of the Divine mysteries, radiant in the faith that it will be opened—and the human become the Divine!

II. Hawthorne

[The] fundamental part of Hawthorne is not attempted in our music which is but an “extended fragment” trying to suggest some of his wilder, fantastical adventures into the half-childlike, half-fairylike phantasmal realms. It may have something to do with the children’s excitement on that “frosty Berkshire morning, and the frost imagery on the enchanted hall window” or something to do with “Feathertop,” the “Scarecrow,” and his “Looking Glass” and the little demons dancing around his pipe bowl; or something to do with the old hymn tune that haunts the church and sings only to those in the churchyard, to protect them from secular noises, as when the circus parade comes down Main Street;—not something that happens, but the way something happens; or something personal, which tries to be “national” suddenly at twilight, and universal suddenly at midnight; or something about the ghost of a man who never lived, or about something that never will happen, or something else that is not.

III. The Alcotts

We won’t try to reconcile the music sketch of the Alcotts with much besides the memory of that home under the elms—the Scotch songs and the family hymns that were sung at the end of each day—though there may be an attempt to catch something of that common sentiment (which we have tried to suggest above)—a strength of hope that never gives way to despair—a conviction in the power of the common soul which, when all is said and done, may be as typical as any theme of Concord and its transcendentalists.

IV. Thoreau

You, James Russell Lowells! You, Robert Louis Stevensons! You, Mark Van Dorens! With your literary perception, your power of illumination, your brilliancy of expression, yea, and with your love of sincerity, you know your Thoreau, but not my Thoreau—that reassuring and true friend, who stood by me one “low” day, when the sun had gone down, long, long before sunset. You may know something of the affection that heart yearned for but knew it a duty not to grasp; you may know something of the great human passions which stirred that soul —too deep for animate expression—you may know all of this, all there is to know about Thoreau, but you know him not, unless you love him!

And if there shall be a program for our music let
it follow his thought on an autumn day of Indian
summer at Walden—a shadow of a thought at first,
colored by the mist and haze over the pond …
but this is momentary; the beauty of the day moves
him to a certain restlessness—to aspirations more specific
—an eagerness for outward action, but through
it all he is conscious that it is not in keeping with the
mood for this “Day.” As the mists rise, there comes
a clearer thought more traditional than the first, a
meditation more calm.

At times the more definite personal
strivings for the ideal freedom, the former more
active speculations come over him, as if he would
trace a certain intensity even in his submission. “He
grew in those seasons like corn in the night and they
were better than any works of the hands. They
were not time subtracted from his life but so much
over and above the usual allowance.” “He realized
what the Orientals meant by contemplation and forsaking
of works.” “The day advanced as if to light
some work of his—it was morning and lo! now it is
evening and nothing memorable is accomplished …”

“The evening train has gone by,” and “all the restless
world with it. The fishes in the pond no longer feel
its rumbling and he is more alone than ever. ...”
His meditations are interrupted only by the faint
sound of the Concord bell—’tis prayer-meeting night
in the village—”a melody as it were, imported into
the wilderness. ...” “ At a distance over the woods
the sound acquires a certain vibratory hum as if the
pine needles in the horizon were the strings of a harp
which it swept. ... A vibration of the universal
lyre. . . . Just as the intervening atmosphere makes
a distant ridge of earth interesting to the eyes by the
azure tint it imparts.” . . .
It is darker, the poet’s flute is heard out over the pond and Walden
hears the swan song of that “Day” and faintly
echoes. ... Is it a transcendental tune of Concord?
T’is an evening when the “whole body is one sense,”
. . . and before ending his day he looks out over the
clear, crystalline water of the pond and catches a
glimpse of the shadow-thought he saw in the morning’s
mist and haze—he knows that by his final submission,
he possesses the “Freedom of the Night.”
He goes up the “pleasant hillside of pines, hickories,”
and moonlight to his cabin, “with a strange liberty
in Nature, a part of herself.”

Notes by Charles Ives, from Memos and Essays Before a Sonata