Ives String Quartet no 2

 Day 188

Ives String Quartet no 2

Emerson Quartet

I’ve now reached the halfway point in this project and so far haven’t missed a day. When I started I didn’t have much idea of how I was going to organise things. The first few weeks’ pieces were chosen largely at random but then I started to think in terms of topics. I’ve tried to fit round my working schedule so that some days of the week have the space for longer works whereas on others I only have time for short pieces. I didn’t plan that each piece would be by a different composer but having got this far with a different composer every day I will try to continue to chose a new composer every day - I don’t think that there is any chance to running out of names.

My new topic is experimental music by American composers in the early part of the 20th century - something of which I have only a limited experience.  I start with Charles Ives. I know quite a few of his orchestral pieces but the only one I have played is the 3rd symphony, which is probably one of the most straightforward of his works.

I’d never heard either of the Ives string quartets. This second one is an intriguing piece. It starts out in a broadly Schoenberg-like idiom not sounding much like Ives but gradually some of Ives’ typical characteristics - polyrhythms and popular melodies - start to emerge out the texture. The three movements all have titles Discussions; Arguments; the Call of the Mountains. The middle movement is probably the most experimental. The instruments are pitched against each other in a loud aggressive argument with some very complex cross rhythms where the bar lines don’t coincide. This is extraordinary music for the early years of the 20th century. The movement ends with what is now one of my favourite musical expressions :Andante con scratchy (as tuning up)", followed by a final fff eruption marked "Allegro con fistiswatto (as a K.O.)".

The last movement is more lyrical though still highly rhythmically and harmonically complex. It ends with a really beautiful expressive passage - if there was ever any doubt that Ives could write ‘proper’ music this coda removes any such doubts. I can’t imagine that the work will be performed very often - it must be incredibly difficult to play. Ives is such an interesting composer - he seemed to anticipate so many later musical developments (though there are some theories that he added more modern touches to piece many years after they were written). He was in many ways the spiritual godfather of a whole group of American experimental composers - some of whom I will be exploring in the next few days.