37 yNQl NO. 73~yg
TRANSCENDENTALISM AND INTERTEXTUALITY
IN CHARLES IVES'S WAR SONGS
OF 1917
THESIS
Presented to the Graduate Council of the
University of North Texas in Partial
Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of
MASTER OF MUSIC
By
R. Lynne Brandt, B.Mus.
Denton, Texas
December, 1998 Brandt, R. Lynne, Transcendentalism and Intertextuality in Charles Ws War
Master of Music (Musicology), December 1998, 96 pp., references, 80 titles.
This thesis examines a collection of three songs, "In Flanders Fields," "He Is There!," and "Tom Sails Away," written by Charles Ives in 1917, from primarily a literary perspective involving Transcendentalism and intertextuality.
Ives's aesthetic builds upon the principles of Transcendentalism. I examine these songs using the principles outlined by the nineteenth-century Transcendentalists, and Ives's interpretations of these beliefs.
Another characteristic of Ives's music is quotation. "Intertextuality" describes an interdependence of literary texts through quotation. I also examine these songs using the principles of intertextuality and Ives's uses of intertextual elements. Familiarity with the primary sources Ives quotes and the texts they suggest adds new meaning to his works. Transcendentalism and intertextuality create a greater understanding of Ives's conflicting views of the morality of war. 37 yNQl NO. 73~yg
TRANSCENDENTALISM AND INTERTEXTUALITY
IN CHARLES IVES'S WAR SONGS
OF 1917
THESIS
Presented to the Graduate Council of the
University of North Texas in Partial
Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of
MASTER OF MUSIC
By
R. Lynne Brandt, B.Mus.
Denton, Texas
December, 1998 Copyright by
R. Lynne Brandt
1998
hi TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION 1
Chapter
1. PERSONAL HISTORY AND INFLUENCES 4
2. IVES AND THE TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAL 13
3. IVES AND THE CONCEPT OF INTERTEXTUALITY 24
4. "IN FLANDERS FIELDS" 38
5. "HE IS THERE!" 55
6. "TOM SAILS AWAY" 73
EPILOGUE 87
BIBLIOGRAPHY 91
IV INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this study is to examine a collection of three songs, "In Flanders
Fields," "He Is There!," and "Tom Sails Away," written by Charles Ives in 1917, primarily
from a literary perspective. Ives's musical and personal aesthetic develops similarly
along two major literary movements: Transcendentalism and intertextuality.
Ives's aesthetic, outlined in his Essavs Before a Sonata in 1920, builds upon the
principles and beliefs of the Transcendentalists. Transcendentalism, both a literary
movement and a philosophical ideal, flourished from c. 1835-1860 in the United States.
Many publications have outlined the importance of Transcendentalism within the music
and aesthetic of Charles Ives. I examine these three songs, however, using first the
principles outlined in the philosophies of the nineteenth-century Transcendentalists, and then Ives's own interpretations of their beliefs. To do this, I have first presented a brief
history of Transcendentalism, both its literary foundations and Ives's incorporation of their beliefs. In the following chapters I begin by examining the text of the songs and
drawing references between the text and major Transcendentalist beliefs. Next, I examine the music and explain how Ives incorporates Transcendental ideals into his musical composition. Often, Ives uses rhythm or tempo to enhance the Transcendental textual elements further.
The majority of Ives's music possesses quotation. This technique appears in Ives's earliest known composition, the "Slow March" of 1887, and his last work, the 1942 song "They Are There!". While quotation itself is not new to musical composition, Ives's monumental reliance on quotation as an evolutionary basis for composition is unique. The study of quotation in literature, intertextuality, is a relatively new discipline. The term "intertextuality," coined by French linguist Julia Kristeva in 1966, describes an interdependence of literary texts through quotation. In this study, I have first given a brief history of the intertextual literary movement as well as Ives's own uses of intertextual elements. Ives's use of quotations within his compositions has also been the source of much published material within the last ten years. In my study of Ives's Three Songs of War, I have based my analysis upon the methods outlined by the many Ives scholars in the field, mainly J. Peter Burkholder. In addition, I have used a literary device described by Kristeva to extract meaning from the intertextual sources quoted by
Ives. Kristeva proposes that the significance of quoted material rests not only in the direct quotation of previously existent material, but also in the interpretation of meaning from primary source to secondary source. In my examination of these three songs, I show that familiarity with the primary sources Ives quotes, in particular the texts they suggest, adds a new level of meaning to the secondary source.
The combination of Transcendental aesthetics and intertextual messages brings a new level of meaning to these songs. Concurrently, this interpretation also yields particular insight into Ives's own conflicting views of the morality of war.
Upon examination of this study, similarities may be noted between the present work and the 1997 article '"Scarce Heard Amidst the Guns Below:' Intertextuality and
Meaning in Charles Ives's War Songs" by Alan Houtchens and Janis P. Stout.1 It is important to note that my research on this study commenced between 1995 and 1996, and the writing transpired from 1997-1998. While similarities exist between the two documents, the overall scope of our works remains different. This study examines these
1 Alan Houtchens and Janis P. Stout, "'Scarce Heard Amidst the Guns Below:' Intertextuality and Meaning in Charles Ives's War Songs," The Journal of Music,olopv 15/1 (Winter 1997), 66-97. songs from the premise of Transcendentalism as well as intertextuality where the
Houtchens and Stout article is focused from an intertextual axis. My intertextual study also differs from Houtchens and Stout for it examines the sources from the textual
"conversation" that results between primary and secondary sources. CHAPTER 1
PERSONAL HISTORY AND INFLUENCES
Charles Ives, born in Danbury, Connecticut, 1874, is perhaps one of the greatest enigmas inAmerican music. Virtually unknown as a composer during his lifetime, Ives was not heralded as a pioneer in the field of music until shortly after his death in 1954.
Charles Ives is remembered for his unique qualities that both pioneered and prophesied twentieth-century compositional techniques. His contribution has been "reinterpreted" many times throughout the twentieth century as that of a neglected artist, a "founder" of
American music, an unyielding rebel, a self-scrutinizing introvert, and a pluralist of both musical and literary means. Ives, however, spent most of his life in musical isolation from the outside world. He composed without influence, criticism, or regard for his twentieth-century audience.
Ives's music resists categorization into periods of influences, styles, and genres as has been doneerica with the music of Bach, Beethoven, and Stravinsky. His development draws from personal experiences, influences, and the development of his musical aesthetic. The compositional styles developed in Ives's music are not found exclusively in any one period of his life. Each of the styles, or characteristics of his compositions, is found in varying degrees of mastery throughout his lifetime. The growth of his compositional style was not evolutionary, but resulted more from the necessity to portray different musical ideals.
Influences from his childhood played the strongest formative role for Ives. Frank Rossiter remarks in the opening statement of his book on Ives: To a remarkable degree, Charles Ives's mind revolved throughout all his life in the orbit of his childhood. The music that he composed as an adult constantly reverted to the tunes and the experiences that would have been encountered by a boy growing up in a New England town in the nineteenth century.1
This New England environment Ives was born into was pertinent to his development as a composer. He undoubtedly felt the importance of the small town where his relatives had lived for nine generations since 1635.
The Ives's had a strong family tradition in Danbury with political, economical, and
social merits in the development of the town. A Yale education was also a part of the Ives family tradition, for Charles Edward Ives was one of many in his family to attend that prestigious university. Charles Ives's father, George Edward (1845-1894), however, did not attend the family alma mater. The youngest of his siblings, George Edward Ives watched the growing fervor over the new importance of band music with the outbreak of
Civil War in 1861. American music was being "pressed into service,"2 fulfilling an unprecedented need for bands. In fact, some say the "Civil War may well be the most musical war in world history."3 After the death of his father in 1862, George Ives enlisted in the Union army rather than attend Yale as his brothers had. Being only eighteen in
1863, he was the Union army's youngest bandmaster. He returned to Danbury in the autumn of 1865 still listless and searching for direction. He pursued a career in music, traveling between New York and Danbury. George Edward Ives married Mollie Parmelee on New Year's Day, 1874. Their first child, Charles Edward was born ten months later.
1 Frank R. Rossiter, Charles Tves and His America, (New York: Liveright, 1975) 3 Stuart Feder, Charles Ives- "My Father's Song" (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 34. 3 Ibid.,34. As a bandmaster in the Union Army, Charles Ives's father was the most formative influence in his son's development. George Ives's views on ear training, acoustics, and microtonal relations greatly influenced his son. After the war, he held the position of director for a small village band in Danbury, Connecticut, a group of non-professionals, often without standard instrumentation. Charles Ives began to play the drums in his father's band at the age of twelve. Ives's playing in this ensemble gave him an extended knowledge of the possibilities of almost all of the acoustic instruments-later to be a valuable resource for the upcoming composer.
His father gave him a strong background in the "classical" music education including theory, ear training, counterpoint; but also did not fail to instill in Ives the importance of church and popular music. Ives's father encouraged him in musical experimentation that involved performing pieces in different keys simultaneously, and using extended instrumental and vocal techniques, as well as microtonal tunings. Ives recalls in his Memos:
Father was not against a reasonable amount of "boy's fooling," if it were done with some sense behind it.... Father used to say, "If you know how to write a fugue the right way, well, then I'm willing to have you try the wrong way-well. But you've got to know what [you're doing] and why you're doing it."4
Ives continued to credit his father throughout his life for his accomplishments in music. George Ives's influence on his son continued to make itself present in many other aspects of the composer's life.
4 John Kirkpatrick, ed., Charles E. Ives: Memos (New York: Norton, 1972), 47, 50. A second important source in Ives's life was the sacred and vernacular music of
the day. Ives grew up in an America torn between a sentimentality for the past and a
vigorous forward-looking attitude. He was a transcendentalist at heart, citing his hero as
Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was searching to portray the average American experience.
Ives found it most representative to depict the common life and the common person
through "small-town" America. The church hymns, marches, patriotic songs, and popular tunes of the small town of Danbury, Connecticut, in which Ives grew up were absorbed
and assimilated by the young composer. Ives believed that music was both a conscious and subconscious experience, the conscious part being the actual listening process; but it was the subconscious aspect of music that interested Ives most.5 It has been said that
Ives wrote for "children who are quite old," because Ives believed that quotations of sacred and vernacular music conjured up childhood images.6 To Ives, the traditional
American values were most often viewed through nostalgic childhood memories.7 These
"snapshot recollections" of a not-too-distant American past penetrated almost every composition written by Ives.8
By the age of fourteen, Ives's musical skills had become so advanced that he was the youngest salaried church organist in the state.9 Ives entered Yale University in 1894 where he studied with Horatio Parker, a composer and head of the Yale music department. It was not long, however, until Ives discovered that he and Parker shared a different perspective on the subject of musical composition. Parker was a strict
5 Rosaline Sandra Perry, Charles Ives and the American Mind (Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1974), 57. 6 Ibid., 71. 7 Ibid., xvii. 8 Robert P. Morgan. Twentieth Century Music (New York: Norton, 1991), 143. 9 John Kirkpatrick, "Charles Ives," The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 20 vols., Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1980) IX, 415. formalist, calling upon the European model as the supreme standard for musical
composition. Ives, a rebellious youth, was more experimental and open to new methods of organizing and evolving a musical idea. The clashes between student and professor continued during Ives's tenure at Yale, and Ives graduated with a slim D + average in
1898.10
During his days as a college student, Ives continued his boyhood career as a church organist. This was a position he would hold with various Protestant churches until the year 1902. Upon his graduation from Yale in 1898, Ives accepted a position as an actuary with his father's cousin's insurance company, Mutual Insurance. In 1899, Ives was transferred to the position of applications clerk. It was here that Ives met Julian
Myrick, with whom he would have a long and fruitful relationship-both professionally and personally.
In 1906, Ives and Myrick established their own insurance agency, called Ives &
Company, as an outgrowth of Washington Life Insurance Company. In 1908, Ives married Harmony Twichell. The music Ives composed during his courtship of Harmony,
(1905-1908), was some of the greatest of his career including The Unanswered Question
(1905), and Central Park in the Dark (1905). The same year Ives married (1908),
Washington Life was sold to Pittsburgh Life, thus ending the successful agency of Ives &
Company. Mutual Insurance, however, picked up Ives's agency, now known as Ives &
Myrick.11
Ives led a double life as insurance salesman by day and composer by night. It was a conscious decision for Ives not to pursue a professional career in music. Ives admitted that as a child he was slightly ashamed of his music, for when all of the neighborhood
10 Ibid.. 416. 11 Ibid.. 417. children were out playing, he was inside hard at work on the piano. In Ives' day, this type of behavior was stereotypically defined as "feminine." Although Ives said he realized this was the wrong attitude to have, he was still slightly ashamed of himself.12 It is a very human trait to love something, and yet at the same time to be ashamed of it, in fear of what others might think.
Yet another reason Ives chose not to pursue a career as a professional musician stemmed from his transcendental, humanitarian beliefs. Ives was a firm believer that music (in general) was public domain, and that no one person had a right to reserve it as his or her sacred own.13 It was probably for this reason that Ives left many of his works unfinished, seeing them as continuously evolving projects. Ives was against the idea of music as an exclusive art, and often offered alternative parts to be played or not to be played in his compositions. He even suggested of his unfinished Universe Symphony that "somebody [else] might like to work out the idea."14 As a result of Ives's strong convictions on the subject, he did not secure copyrights for most of his music until much later in his life when his health began to fail.
Perhaps the strongest reason why Charles Ives did not pursue a career in music came from the influence of his father. George Ives instilled the belief in his son that a man could "keep his music interest stronger, cleaner, bigger, and freer, if he didn't try to make a living at it."15 Ives explained further that if a man were unmarried, without children, and willing to live his life in the simplest of manners, then he was able to and
12 Kirkpatrick, op.cit.. 130. 13 Wallach Laurence, "Charles Ives." Dictionary of Contemporary Music CNew York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc.), 358. 14 Kirkpatrick, op.cit,, 131. Indeed, Larry Austin, retired professor of composition at the University of North Texas has done this. 15 Ibid. 10 should produce the type of music he felt compelled to compose; even if this music were not accepted by the general public. However, Charles Ives prophesized, if a man found himself married and with children, he faced an unsurpassable decision. As Ives said, a man cannot let his children "starve on his dissonances,"16 so he must lessen his skill, and produce music that is more accessible to the public to shelter and feed his family. Ives admitted that some argued the composition of "sellable music" only occasionally did not weaken their skill. Ives, however, believed that this in turn was detrimental to the whole art of music.17 Ives believed that without the progressive, forward-looking nature of the art of music, all music was doomed to fall into an unchanging void of surface sweetness, until it eventually procured its own extinction.18 It is primarily for this reason that Ives proceeded with his career in life insurance full-time, leaving his compositional career only for nights, weekends, and vacations. The financial stability provided by his insurance business enabled him to compose precisely as he wished, without regard for public opinion. Ives' compositions were written entirely for himself and for what he felt he needed to express. As a result, many of his works are of a personal nature. The universality of what Ives presents, however is remarkable.
In 1911, Ives began revising his Concord Sonata for piano, adding or adapting movements from previous material. In 1912, he finished his First Orchestral Set, also called Three Places in New England During this year, Ives and Harmony made Danbury their home once again. In 1915, the Ives's adopted a baby girl, Edith Osborne Ives (1914-
1956). In 1918, Ives experienced a second serious heart attack (the first in 1906) after which he took a one year sabbatical from the insurance business. During this time, Ives
16 Mi. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid.. 14. 11 began to complete and organize many of his musical compositions. His Concord Sonata and his Essays Before a Sonata were completed and published in 1920, and his compilation of 114 Songs was printed privately in 1922.
With his health in continuous decline, Ives's musical output seemed to be diminishing. In 1926, Ives told his wife "he couldn't compose any more-nothing went well-nothing sounded right."19 Ives retired permanently from the insurance business in
January 1930. By this time, however, his music was beginning to arouse the curiosity of the musical world. Several performances of his works are on record from 1925 to 1946.
Henry Cowell's attention was turned to Ives's music in 1925, with the publishing of the second movement of Ives's Fourth Symphony in his quarterly journal publication, New
Music. Cowell later convinced Nicholas Slonimsky to perform some of Ives's works with the Boston Chamber Orchestra. Slonimsky consented, performing Ives's Three Places in
New England, and The Fourth of July throughout Europe in 1931-1932. Lou Harrison's performance of Ives's Third Symphony (19461 won Ives the Pulitzer Prize in 1947.
During this same year, Henry and Sidney Cowell began writing the first biography of
Ives. In 1954, Ives suffered a fatal stroke following an operation. He died peacefully with his wife and daughter at his side.
In hindsight, Ives was perhaps one of the greatest musical pioneers in the history of Western music. It is intriguing to think of the effect upon the course of Western art music Ives could have produced, had his works only been known during his life.
Throughout the span of his musical career, Ives foretold many musical trends that we have witnessed during the twentieth century. In his works are found foreshadowings of techniques later developed by Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Hindemith, and even Cage. Ives'
l9Kirkpatrick, New Grove, op.cit.. 419. 12 pioneering instinct in music, however, stemmed not from his need to be idolized in the history of music. It stemmed from an internal need to convey a musical aesthetic that had not previously found a satisfactory outlet in music. CHAPTER 2
IVES AND THE TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAL
Ives was most influenced in his life by a nineteenth-century movement known as
Transcendentalism. Transcendentalism, flourishing from circa 1835 - 1860, was equally important as a literary movement and a philosophical ideal. Most of the personalities active in the Transcendental movement-poets Ralph Waldo Emerson and Christopher P.
Cranch, clergymen Theodore Parker and Orestes A. Brownson, philosopher George
Ripley, educator Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, literary critic and feminist Margaret Fuller, and writers Bronson Alcott and Henry David Thoreau—were educated at Harvard or
Harvard Divinity School, and many began as ministers in the Unitarian church.
From lofty beginnings to simple virtues, these were all young members of the
Unitarian church who eventually turned against their religion. Historically speaking, the
Unitarian church was the "most institutionalized form, [s.i.c.] in which rationalism,
'liberalism,' and the cult of social conformity rather than of emotional intensity, [was] established in America."1 Transcendentalism began as essentially a religious movement against the emotional starvation some of the members felt from their church fathers.
Living and being educated in a society known for its heavy rhetoric, these young insurgents searched for a medium through which to express their philosophical beliefs without being weighted by superfluous theological debates.
1 Perry Miller, The Transcendentalistsr an Anthology (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press," 1950), 7-8.
13 14
The Transcendentalists found the outlet of literature for their religious expressions. While not necessarily unified in creed or platform, they shared a disgust in what they perceived to be a rigid emotional sterility in religious and educational
institutions.2 Central to their belief was the innate goodness of mankind and an
instinctive knowledge of the moral principles of humanity. The underlying conviction of the Transcendental movement was that "within the nature of human beings there [is]
something that transcend[s] human experience-an intuitive and personal revelation."3
This is exemplified by a strong belief in often contradictory beliefs in self-reliance and in
the power of nature.
Nature, to the Transcendentalism was the Divine personified. Nature was the
shadow of the Divine. The Transcendentalists saw the universe as a "spiritual language
spoken by its creator."4 Spiritual knowledge was to be discovered in nature, for God
existed within man and nature. Through this connection, mankind was to unite with God
in nature whereby the "genius of the mind will descend, and unite with the genius of the
rivers, the lakes, and the woods. Thoughts fall to the earth with power, and make a
language out of nature."5 Spiritual truth and revelation were not, in the minds of the
Transcendentalists, limited to devout Sunday church worshipers within the walls of the
church, but could be and should be experienced and revered within the "walls" of Nature.
2 Ibid., 8. 3 C Hugh Holman and William Harmon. A Handbook to Literature (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1986), 509. 4 William Anson Call, A Study of Transcendental Aesthetic Theories of John S. Dwight and Charles R. Ives and the Relationship of these Theories to their Respective Work as Music Critic and Composer. DMA diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1971 (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1971), 23. 5 Miller, op.cit.. 52. 15
The Transcendentalists also shared a belief in a universal soul that permeated all living things. Ralph Waldo Emerson coined the term "over-soul" for this phenomenon.
This universal soul strengthened the intimate bond between man and nature, for now they both shared a spiritual truth-that of Divine creation. For if God were the cause, the universe was the effect, and "God is as inseparable from the universe as the cause is inseparable from the effect."6 So not only was Nature a source of divine inspiration to the Transcendentalists, but they also shared an essential bond with and respect for
Nature; for "let him [man] respect the smallest blade which grows, and permit it to speak for itself. There may be a poetry, which may not be written, perhaps, but which may be felt as a part of our being."7
For Emerson, the purpose of art was to recreate nature, for nature was a metaphor of the human mind.8 The standard by which art was to be judged was in its ability to present unity and universality while representing a subject of high moral sentiment. The duty of art was not to discuss or clarify moral truths, but to have the truth enhance its natural beauty.9 For the Transcendentalists, the art form most suited to this type of expression was poetiy. Since the Transcendentalists viewed nature as a symbol of the
Divine, the symbolic language of poetry became the highest of art forms. Just as language itself was full of figurative symbols that are associated with various phenomena, so the natural imagery of poetry became the outlet for the mind to reveal inner meanings about our external spiritual world. The natural world became a revered
6 Ibid.,112. 7 Sampson Reed, "Observations on the Growth of the Mind," The Transcendentalists. an Anthology, ed. Perry Miller (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1950), 57. 8 Call, loc.cit. 23. 9 Ibid, 27. 16 subject for these Transcendental poets as seen in two of the most famous works of the era, Emerson's Nature, and Whitman's Leaves of Grass.
To the Transcendentalists, the success of any work depended upon an accurate representation of nature without superimposing a distinct order or unity of scene.
Emerson expresses this best in his Nature:
The charming landscape which 1 saw this morning is indubitably made up of some 20 or 30 farms... .But none of them [the farms(ers)] owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.10
Nature, to the true poet, was a union of diversities indescribable by logical analysis; therefore, "nature is a language which is poetry rather than prose"11
Henry David Thoreau was the Transcendentalist who linked the Transcendental philosophies into the realm of music. Thoreau believed music was not a maze of symbols to be found on a page nor was music the embodiment of technique, skill, and theoretical conquests. Music was the "symbolic and poetic implications of the word."12
For Thoreau, music served as a vehicle for revealing moral truths about the world and as a means for spiritual enlightenment. For Thoreau, music was also useful as a means of escapism from the growing industrial world in which he lived. To the
Transcendentalists, Nature was the richest source for escape and spiritual revelation.
10 Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Nature," The Literature of the United States. Walter Blair, Theodore Hornberger, Randall Stewart, James E. Miller, Jr., 3rd Ed ed., vol. I (Illinois: Scott, Forseman & Company, 1971), 1042. 11 Miller, opjeil., 53. 12 Charles Ward, Charles Ives: The Relationship Between Aesthetic Theories and Compositional Processes. Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, 1974 (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1974), 55. 17
Thoreau became very interested in the sounds of nature. By listening with open ears and an uncluttered mind, Thoreau revealed that the "silence of nature was actually rich in sounds."13 Birdcalls near and far, the rustle of the leaves, the hum of the wind—these all revealed the presence and active role of the Divine to Thoreau. Thoreau believed that the earth was the great musical instrument of the divine. To hear its music was to experience a metaphysical awakening. Thoreau states in his journal:
There was a time when the beauty and the music were all within, and I sat and listened to my thoughts, and there was a song within them. I sat for hours on the rocks and wrestled with the melody that possessed me. I sat and listened by the hour to a positive though faint and distant music, not sung by any bird, nor vibrating any earthly harp. When you walked with a joy which knew not its origin. When you were an organ of which the world was but one big broken pipe You sat on the earth as on a raft, listening to music that was not of the earth, but which ruled and arranged it. Man should be the harp articulate.14
This universal song, for Thoreau, was the voice of the Divine revealing itself within
man's soul.15 Most importantly, Thoreau and the Transcendentalists thought of music as
a "catalyst for experience and a means of communication" with the Divine.16
Charles Ives fully embraced the teachings and philosophies of the
Transcendentalists. Much like the dissatisfaction the Transcendentalists felt with the
state of religion in the Unitarian church, in the years following college graduation, Ives
struggled to reconcile the rigid classical training he received at Yale University with the
experimental, radical tendencies of his father's music. This time is known as his most
13 Ibid., 56. 14 Henry David Thoreau, "May 23, 1854 " The Journal of Henrv David Thoreau VI ("New York: Dover Publications, Inc.,1962), 294. 15 Ward, op.cit.. 56. 16 Ibid . 55 18 experimental in his search for a mature style. He was preoccupied for much of his life with the sociological-moral position of man in society. The questions involving the
"nature of man and his relationship to society, the source of knowledge, and the nature and purpose of music" gently tugged at his subconscious but were never adequately resolved for Ives.17 His writings and also his music, however, show he found the greatest justification for his beliefs within the Transcendental movement.
Ives believed Transcendentalism was not only a literary tradition, but more importantly, a way of living. As a literary tradition, "Ives's experience [was limited] to virtually only two writers, Emerson and Thoreau;" but as a way of life, "it signifie[d] a set of beliefs, centering on the ideas of the divine presence in nature and humankind and immediate access to the divine through intuition, simplified in Ives's view to the idea of humanity's innate goodness."18 In 1920, Ives's musical aesthetic, the Essays Before a
Sonata19, was published along with the musical work, the Concord Sonata. In this profound statement, Ives tries to formulate and explain the musical philosophy that shaped his work throughout his career. His Transcendental followings are also apparent with the movements of the Concord Sonata named after his mentors: "Emerson,"
"Thoreau," and "The Alcotts."
Ives states his beliefs clearly and succinctly as "Freedom over slavery; the natural over the artificial; beauty over ugliness; the spiritual over the material; the goodness of man; the Godness of man; God."20 The first in this Ivesian creed, "Freedom over slavery," refers first to his belief in the humanity of mankind and the opposition of
17 Ibid.. 14. 18 J. Peter Burkholder, Charles Ives: The Ideas Behind the Music (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 26. 19 Charles E. Ives, Essays Before a Sonata (NY: WW Norton & Co., 1962) 20 Ml., 144. 19 slavery in his country. It also points to a musical enigma he was facing. Ives had been formally educated under the structure and rigid discipline of Horatio Parker at Yale but had received a more powerfully ingrained education of experimentalism and opportunity from his father. Ives' belief in "Freedom over slavery" also parallels his belief in pursuing new methods to unify a composition. Ives believed there were ways other than classic textbook thematic manipulations to unify a composition. This freedom, for Ives, was found in the "unifying power of the idea."21 This "idea" often occurred from the extra-musical associations a piece suggested. Unity, to Ives, was not to be found from the relationship between internal musical elements, but from a distance constructing all of the musical elements into a musical framework of meaning.
The "natural over the artificial" has a dual significance in Ives' Transcendental philosophy as did his belief in "Freedom over slavery." First of all, his statement should be taken literally. Ives was a Transcendentalist at heart, and he faithfully followed the
Transcendental teachings concerning the power of Nature. He embraced the ideas of the innate goodness of nature and nature as a vehicle for Divine inspiration. Nature was to teach, to comfort, and for us to contemplate. Ives carries this one step further in his music. For Ives, nature was limitless. Even in the present day, humanity never ceases to be amazed by the abundance of extremes in nature. Nature is at once comfortable and cruel, nurturing and destructive, bestowing of life and destroying it. Ives believed music should be approached from the same vantage point of extremes. For Ives, there were no wrong answers, only unexplored possibilities. Nature is also unique, for within nature there is very limited repetition. Scientists classify all living things by similarities, but there are no two living things that are an exact replica of each other. Nature is in a
21 Ward, op cit- 87. 20 permanent state of flux. Nature lives to create, yet it "evolves rather than repeats itself... .evolution is necessary for its own well being."22 Ives also reveled in the idea that "nature does not contain the idea of a downbeat."23 There is no unquestionable evidence that the world began or will end with one Divine "beat" recorded in the annals of infinity, just as each person, each creature, and each thing moves in a rhythm uniquely its own. Sometimes the citizens of nature interact harmoniously, sometimes discordantly, and sometimes the rhythms seem to merge unanimously together for a brief moment; but the truth remains that nature forms a rhythm unique only in its complexities. The only unifying rhythmic force that unites nature, is that of change. Ives also felt nature was a musical library of sounds, timbres, rhythms, and textures to be used as "vehicles for his own musical expression."24
The Transcendentalists viewed the beautiful in Nature as emblematic of the spiritual world, so it is not surprising that Charles Ives developed his own philosophy of "beauty over ugliness." To Ives, however, the true beauty in music lay beyond the notes on the page. Ives stated that beauty in music is often mistaken for "something that lets the ears lie back in an easy chair. Many sounds that we are used to do not bother us, and for that reason we are inclined to call them beautiful."25 Ives believed many people confused and limited beauty in music with familiarity. Ives feared if music stagnated along the familiar strains of Mozart, Haydn, and Tchaikovsky, for example, music would become an emasculated art. Music possessed spiritual and moral qualities that were an outward growth of the composer's inner self.26 Ives also believed strongly in the
22 Call, op,tit, 75. 23 Ward, op.cit., 141. 24 Ibid.. 68. 25 Ives, F.ssavs Before a Sonata. 97. 26 Ward, op,cut, 59. 21 necessity of progress of the musical language. This progress, however, was for Ives, always directed to a specific goal-spiritual truth. Progress, in other words, should be recognized in the "effect on the ideals of the inner conscience of the artist or the composer," rather than in the "effect as shown by the appreciation of an audience."27 This, for Ives, was true beauty, and beauty was only useful as a vehicle of the Divine. Ives' belief in the "spiritual over [the] material" has an especially important place in his aesthetic doctrine. Ives waged a long debate over the duality of value in music regarding substance (spiritual) versus manner (material). Substance, for Ives, was the intangible comprehension of a higher moral truth:
[T]he body of a conviction which has its birth in the spiritual consciousness, whose youth is nourished in the moral consciousness, and whose maturity as a result of all this growth is then represented in a mental image.28
The substance ideal, revealed in a composition, did not entirely depend on the music itself. It became significant not because of a unique formal outlay or a textbook modulation in the music itself, but in the music's "ability to become a part with the inner consciousness of man, and to extend the ideals of man rather than limiting" them.29 Manner, for Ives, is the same as the technical aspects of music-form and technique. Ives did not dismiss the merits of technique-his musical output is quite paradoxical when one notes the sprinkling of works which were solely exercises in technique and experimentation. What is important, however, is to realize that Ives always regarded substance as the most natural and highest of the art forms. Technique and
27 Ives, Essays Before a Sonata. 77-78. 28 Ibid.. 160. 29 Call, op.cit.. 73. 22 experimentation are prevalent with Ives, but he regarded them overall as necessary only to help bring forth the spiritual ideal of a composition. To understand technique was to control it. Substance, for Ives, was the "inner 'reality,' 'conviction,' or 'spirit' of a work, and manner, its execution or outward form."30 Musical unity, to Ives, was recognized by the intuition; technical details were recognized by the intellect.31
Ives's conflict between substance and manner was not entirely new to the musical scene. His conflict is similar to the debate in the Romantic era of form versus content.
Ives, like the Transcendentalists, found Nature to be the spiritual vehicle for the attainment of moral truths. Music, like Nature, also shared this power. Music possessed, or should possess, for Ives, moral qualities; therefore, music's ultimate goal should be to expound spiritual truths, not intellectual prophesies. As Ives states at the beginning of his
Fourth Symphony, "Nature builds the mountains and the meadows and man puts in the fences and labels."32
Ives' beliefs in the "goodness of man; the Godness of man; [and] God" further support the core of his aesthetic doctrine as they also form the foundation for the
Transcendental movement of the late nineteenth century. The innate goodness of man results from his relationship with the Divine; therefore, "[t]his innate goodness is. divine"33 (emphasis added). As the Transcendentalists believed the "outward world [was the] mirror of the human soul," Ives believed that "music [was] the translation of feelings perceived through the intellect.34 The divine goodness, present in all humanity, "brings
30 Burkholder, Ideas Behind, op.cit.. 2. 31 Call, ojmL, 73. 32 Charles E. Ives. Symphony no. 4 (NY: Associated Music Publishers, 1965), 13. 33Burkholder, Ideas Behind, op.cit.. 9. 34 Call, QjL£il„ 43, 140. 23 about progress in the world, as individuals learn to follow the 'universal mind'... ,"35 For Ives, the translation of these musical sounds reflected a moral goodness within all who listened. Music, therefore, was the idea, the spirit, the substance, rather than its physical embodiment in sound.36
35Burkholder, Ideas Behind, loc.cit. 9. 36 John Kirkpatrick, ed., Charles E. Ives: Memos (NY: Norton, 1972), 242. CHAPTER 3
IVES AND THE CONCEPT OF INTERTEXTUALITY
The literary concept of intertextuality, closely akin to allusion, has been slowly trickling into the musical world over the last few decades. As a premise for studies on
Charles Ives and his music, intertextuality has been explored in an explosion of articles and books in the last twenty-five years.1
The term, intertextuality. coined by French linguist Julia Kristeva in 1966, and its discipline ventures into convoluted areas of meaning shaded in ambiguity. In fact, like the earlier-mentioned literary trend Transcendentalism, detailed research will produce seemingly contradictory ideologies. Kristeva's view, however, shines dominantly within the field. Her basic premise is that no text is an entity within itself. It is bound by the nature of its representation from symbol (word) to signifier (object) to interpretation.
1 For example, see the following examples listed in the bibliography: Christopher Ballantine's article "Charles Ives and the Meaning of Quotation in Music," J. Peter Burkholder's book All Made of Tunes. Burkholder's articles "Quotation and Emulation," and "The Uses of Existing Music," Cassandra Can's article "Charles Ives's Humor as Reflected in His Songs," Stuart Feder's book Charles Ives "Mv Father's Song". Janet Lynn Gilman's Ph.D. dissertation Charles Ives - Master Songwriter. Clayton Henderson's book The Charles Ives Tunebook. Houtchens' and Stout's article "'Scarce Heard Amidst the Guns Below,"' Robert Morgan's articles "Ives and Mahler," and "Rewrititng Musical History," Rosaline Sandra Perry's book Charles Ives and the American Mind. Manayard Solomon's article "Charles Ives: Some Questions of Veracity," Larry Starr's book A Union of Diversities. Jan Swafford's book Charles Ives: A Life with Music. Charles Ward's dissertation Charles Ives: The Relationship Between Aesthetic Theories and Compositional Processes, and David Wooldridge's book From the Steeples and Mountains-
24 25
Intertextuality, therefore, describes interdependence of literary texts through quotation.2
The significance of this phenomenon rests not only in the direct quotation of the previously existent material, but also in the interpretation of meaning from primary source to secondary source.
Quotation, in general, is found in abundance both in music and in literature during two main times in history-Medieval/Renaissance eras and the modern era. For literature, reliance upon quotation as a way to communicate meaning comes as a result of the way that communicating ideas has evolved. The Medieval (400-1400) and
Renaissance (1350-1650) writers formulated their "means of communication upon resemblance between objects and objects and between objects and words."3 Similarity, recognition and repetition were important because "communication itself was a form of repetition; all communication occurred as a result of perceiving resemblances, or
'commentary'."4 Quotation, in Medieval and Renaissance literature, did not detract from the "unity of the quoting text" since little emphasis was placed "upon a text as a creation of a single ego."5 Quotations were frequently made to Biblical verses, dramatic works, and philosophical writings.6
After the Renaissance period, the function of language changed. Cause and effect relationships as well as signifier versus signified became the means of communication.
Language itself changed from "commentary (on earlier texts) to criticism: words no
2 J. A. Cuddon, "Intertextuality," A Dictionary of Literary Terms. 3rd Edition ed., 454. 3 Leonard Diepeveen, Changing Voices: The Modern Quoting Poem (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1993), xiv. 4Ibid, xiv. 5Ihid-, xiv. 6In the General Prologue to Geoffrey Chaucer's (1340? / 1400) Canterbury Tales (late 1380s to early 1390s), Chaucer quotes "Amor vincit omina" from Virgil's Eclog X.69 which translates into "love conquers all." He does this to help describe the vibrant, fashionable, albeit unorthodox nun in the tales. 26 longer carr[ied] the truth, they interpreted] it."7 Literature shifted to criticism, and much quotation vanished, for the recognition of familiarity was deemed no longer necessary.8
The Romantic period (1760-1850) saw the return of quotation in literature, but not as a firmly established movement to return to or refine and expand the practices of the Medieval/Renaissance eras. The abundance of quotation in the modern era evolved from its reappearance in the Romantic era. The literature of the modern era (1900-1950) involved "individual reactions and manipulations" of a work and these reactions often became "more important than the content of the work."9 This evolved simultaneously with the function of language/representation, for "in the nineteenth century, language attempts to become purely formal, a 'pure language;' language becomes 'detached from representation' and at times becomes 'an act of writing that designates nothing other than itself.'"10
While the musical eras tended to lag slightly behind the literary eras of the same name, the same general increases in the use of quotation can be noted. The Renaissance period (1420-1600) saw an abundance of quotation in the form of cantus firmus masses using a borrowed melody, such as Dufay's Mass on L'homme arme'. and German quodlibets made of patchworks of songs. Quotation does not disappear in the Classical period, but functions more as a source for melodic material rather than as the basis for composition. Again, just as in literature, the nineteenth century musical world saw the return to quotation of earlier classical music in such works as Brahm's Variations on a
Theme of Haydn Op. 56a, 1873. With the Romantic era's new influence on the individual, quotation becomes a point to show familiarity with, but growth from the
7Diepeveen, loc.cit.. xiv. %i&, xiv-xv. 9U2ld, xv. 10Ibid.. xv. 27
formal models of the past. It is in the modern era, however, with such composers as Ives, that quotation takes on a new meaning in music. In the twentieth-century, music, like language, strives to be unique in its language and representation oftentimes representing "nothing other than itself."11 Intertextuality ventures into philosophical thought at times. A basic premise of intertextuality states that all authors are first readers of texts, and works absorbed initially by the authors will influence them in their own artistic output. Harold Bloom expounds upon this concept, and Kevin Korsyn discusses it in depth. In Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence,12 he states the history of poetry is "indistinguishable from poetic influence, since strong poets make that history by misreading one another, so as to clear imaginative space for themselves."13 For Bloom, an intertextual poem is a narrative between texts.14 Bloom's premise, however, is that the author does not knowingly welcome the cloak of influence. In fact, frequently authors strictly avoid this influence of predecessors. This avoidance, however, speaks volumes, for if "similarity is evidence of influence," then "dissimilarity can be evidence of a stronger influence; if a poet's direct allusion, not to mention his open assent or avowal, can be evidence of his susceptibility ... the absence of an allusion and his denial can be evidence of a stronger susceptibility."15 To deny, for example, the influence of a composer or genre, one must be intimately familiar with the works of that composer or genre. The artist must struggle "to be born. All strong
11 Ibid. 12 Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence; A Theory of Poetry (London: Oxford University Press, 1973). 13Ifcjji., 5. 14 Kevin Korsyn, "Towards a New Poetics of Musical Influence," Music Analysis X/1 -2. (1991): 5. 15 Richard Taruskin, "Revising Revision [Review of Korsyn and Straus]," Journal of the American Musicological Society XLVI H993Y 119. 28 personalities have to negate the importance of major figures that have gone before them."16 The negation of this influence often, however, speaks of an even stronger influence.
Another premise of intertextuality involves the active process of reading. This premise states that any reader of text brings with him/her a "cross-fertilization of the packaged textual material... by all the texts which the reader brings to it."17 The many possible outcomes to this scenario prove to be one of the places where the discipline of intertextuality fractures. First of all, if an intertextual reference is alluded to, yet remains unknown to the reader, this reference will remain dormant in that reading.18 If the intertextual reference is acknowledged by the reader, an interpretation of the reference may occur. However, upon recognizing an intertextual reference, the reader may bring to the allusion a new interpretation and meaning different from the author's original intent.
This new interpretation is the result of the reader's own experiences and readings. In this instance the boundary of creator/audience becomes blurred, for the reader, in essence, has "created" a new interpretation of the work.
The meaning of the intertextual reference, therefore, cannot be fixed; it cannot function exactly as it has before. Each new reading/reader feasibly brings to the reference a new interpretation. For, not only "word meanings (that is: 'vague stereotypes.' not fixed, stable meanings) and syntactic structures" but also "various types of non- linguistic knowledge, such as knowledge about the world in general ('encyclopaedic knowledge'), knowledge about particular events, objects, persons.. .('episodic
16 David Michael Hertz, Angels of Reality: Emersonian Unfoldings in Wright. Stevens, and Ives (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993), 16. 17 Michael Worton and Judith Still. Intertextuality Theories and Practices (Manchester Manchester University Press, 1990), 1-2. 18Ibid.. 2. 29 knowledge'), knowledge about contents and formal characteristics of different text types" play a significant role in the reader's interpretation of a work.19
Many, however, feel that the recognition and identification of the specific intertextual reference are subordinate to the more general ideology that it represents.
This intertextual reference, for some, is more important as a place on an interpretative grid.20 Here, the primary source is important mainly for helping to reconstruct a more abstract concept, idea, or emotion rather than a specific entity. The intertextual reference serves as a literal metaphor "which speaks of that which is absent and which engages the reader in speculative activity."21 The actual meaning of the intertextual reference serves as a part of the whole, its symbolism to be "constructed rather than extracted."22
These intertexts pose problems and solutions when viewed from both the author and the reader. First of all, for the author intertexts can solve a problem of expression by creating an immediate recognition and personal connection between author and audience; yet what is the effect if the reference is not recognized or if it is reinterpreted?
For the reader, recognition of an intertext can "confer authority to apparently random transitions from one set of images to the next. They can make up for what automatic writing eliminates,"23 or they can potentially do just the opposite by creating even more disjunction if unrecognized.
Intertextuality in literature encompasses both direct quotation and more subtle allusions. The word quotation derives its original meaning from "to mark the number
19 Janos. S Petofi and Terry Olivi, Approaches to Poetry: Some Aspects of Textualitv. Intertextuality. and Intermedialitv. (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1994), 3. 20Worton, loc.cit.. 46. 21 Ibid.. 12. 22Ibid.. 12. 23Ibid.. 58-59. 30
of," while "allusion has its Latin source in 'to play with.'"24 Charles Ives uses many shades of these terms in his intertextual portfolio. His mass collection of quotations can
serve as a veritable "anthology of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century musical
America."25 Because Ives was interested in the common American experience, he chose
tunes familiar to his peers. His goal was to create a uniquely American music which
represented American idealism. This does not mean, however, that the source of all
Ives's quoted material was American-only that it represented American experiences and
ideals.26 Ives explains in his Essavs Before a Sonata- "if local color, national color, any
color, is a true pigment of the universal color, it is a divine quality, it is a part of
substance in art-not of manner."27 The spirit of the source is of the ultimate concern to
Ives.
The material Ives quoted was greatly varied including church hymns, patriotic
and military songs, college tunes, popular instrumental melodies, symphonic literature,
and also self quotation. Ives used hymn tunes as the most abundant source of his
quotations. Having spent much of his young adult life as an organist in several Protestant
churches, it is not surprising that he used hymn tunes as a wealth of material to
manipulate. While the practice of variation on hymn tunes was not a new practice among
church organists, "Ives often used hymns for kinds of experimentation that went beyond
the scope of typical improvisatory practices."28
24Diepeveen, loc.cit.. 9. 25 Clayton W. Henderson, The Charles Ives Tunebook (Michigan: Harmonie Park, 1990), X. 26 J. Peter Burkholder, Charles Ives-The Ideas Behind the Music (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 14. 27 Charles E. Ives. Essavs Before a Sonata (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1962), 80- 81. 28Henderson, loc.cit.. 9. 31
Ives's use of patriotic and military songs is also found with great frequency as a source for his quotations. Charles Ives's father, George, is the obvious influence responsible for this genre of quotable material. These patriotic and military tunes were undoubtedly played by George Ives's band and sung by the people to "rally.. .'round the flag'"29 during the war. Bugle calls and drum cadences furnish quotation material that has a definite militaristic quality.
The popular music that finds its way into Ives's quotations is, for the most part, from an earlier era (roughly 1830-1890). Ives was especially drawn to quote the melodies of Stephen Collins Foster such as "Oh Susanna" (1848), "De Camptown Races" (1850), and "Old Folks at Home" (1851).-*° Most of Ives's quotations of popular music came from the refrain portion of the song-usually the most readily recognizable part.
Infrequently, Ives used college tunes for quotations. Perhaps he felt the recognition of this type of music was limited to those who had experienced the general college atmosphere. Since the average American did not attend college, college tunes did not help to further his search for a music representing an average American experience.
The instrumental melodies Ives quoted were often of the variety not intended for the formal concert stage. These songs, often dance tunes, were heard at local dances, fairs, and so forth. Infrequently, "Classical Music" is the source of some of Ives's quotations. Again, Ives's wish to create a uniquely American music would, by definition, exclude quotations of European composers. The opening motif to Beethoven's fifth symphony, however, might serve as an exception, showing up frequently in Ives's
29Ibid- 63. 3QIbid- 92. 32
Finally, Ives often quoted himself in his works. This technique is not necessarily new or unique to Ives. Like the great master Beethoven, much of Ives's material existed in sketch form. These sketches served, for Ives, as inspiration and a means of trial and error for composition. Thus it is not unusual that some of his material is "recycled" into several works.
It is important to note which types of music Ives quotes, as well as how he uses
this borrowed material. J. Peter Burkholder has built upon the seminal work of John
Kirkpatrick in his many articles and, most recently, his book All Made of Tunes- Charts
Ives and the Uses of Musical Borrowing.31 Burkholder describes Ives's use of quotation
in his works in fourteen categories. These categories show a chronological evolution of
Ives's use of quotation. Following each category, Burkholder lists an approximate date
and piece which exemplifies that particular technique. Burkholder's classification of
Ives's use of quotations in his works begins with the following list:
1 Modeling a work or section on an existing piece, assuming its structure, incorporating part of its melodic material, imitating its form or procedures, or using it as a model in some other way (Holiday Quickstep; Slow March: the Polonaise; and others, ca. 1887-88)
2 Variations on a given tune (Fantasia on "Jerusalem the Golden," ca 1888-89)
3 Paraphrasing an existing tune to form a new melody, theme, or motive (Fantasia on "Jerusalem the Golden" variation 2)
4 Setting an existing tune with a new accompaniment /March Nn 1, ca. 1890-92)
31 J. Peter Burkholder, All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the T ises ofMn.ir,! Borrowing (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. 33
5 Cantus firmus, presenting a given tune in long notes against a more quickly moving texture (March No
6 Medley, stating two or more existing tunes, relatively complete, one after another in a single movement (March No. 1)
7 Quodlibet, combining two or more existing tunes or fragments in counterpoint or in quick succession, most often as a joke or technical tour de force (sketch, ca. 1892)
8 Stylistic allusion, alluding not to a specific work but to a general style or type of music (Memories 1897; Psalm 67. ca. 1898)
9 Transcribing a work for a new medium (arrangement for string quartet of the second movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata in F minor, Op. 2, No. 1, ca. 1898)
10 Cumulative setting, a complex form in which the theme, either a borrowed tune or a melody paraphrased from one or more existing tunes, is presented complete only near the end of a movement, preceded by development of motives from the theme, fragmentary or altered presentation of the theme, and exposition of important countermelodies (Fugue in Four Keys on "The Shining Shore" ca 1902)
12 Collage, in which a swirl of quoted and paraphrased tunes is added to a musical structure based on modeling, paraphrase, cumulative setting, or a narrative program (Overture and March "1776," ca. 1903-8; Country Band March ca 1905-14)
13 Patchwork, in which fragments of two or more tunes are stitched together, sometimes elided through paraphrase and sometimes linked by Ives's interpolations (Largo cantahile (Hymn), ca. 1904-14)
14 Extended paraphrase, in which the melody for an entire work or section is paraphrased from an existing tune (The Housatonic at Stockbridge ca 1908-19).32
32Ibid 3-4. 34
Burkholder differentiates categories that are simply methods of adapting quoted tunes
(variation, paraphrase, cantus firmus, transcription), and those in which the quoted tune
plays an important role in the piece (modeling, quodlibet, programmatic), and those in
which musical forms result from the use of borrowed material (variation, setting, medley,
cumulative setting, extended paraphrase).33 While each category is distinct in itself, any
complete examination of the use of borrowed material in Ives's works cannot be made in
isolation. These practices "evolved together, one growing out of another,.. .Their
boundaries overlap, both in procedure and in function."34
Most anyone venturing into an Ives study must ask why Ives used borrowed
material. Perhaps the one point all Ivesian scholars agree upon is that Ives's introduction
of quoted material into his works was not accidental. Ives knew exactly what he was
doing. The question of why he practiced this, however, is a bit more challenging.
As previously stated, Ives was very interested in portraying the common
American experience as a means of producing distinctly American music. To imitate and
reflect this shared experience, Ives preserved the "germ kernel of the nostalgic method
and produced . . . a many-sided, many-layered, at once serious and facetious,
common and cultivated fabric in which the tonal characters stand up, walk forth, and
have a whole life against a setting (with commentary) of Ives's own invention."35 Ives
tried to present this common experience in the only way he knew how: through his
personal experiences. He had, through his quotations, "assemble[d] the data of his
observed surroundings and [told] the tale.. .of what he and his friends were like and
33Ibid.. 4. 34 J. Peter Burkholder, "The Uses of Existing Music: Musical Borrowing as a Field" Notes 50/3 (1994), 859. 35 Lou Harrison, "On Quotation," Modern Music 23/1 (1946), 167. 35
where they lived in short, the revealed mind of the author as oracle."36 Ives may have
wished to portray the common American experience in his music, but his upper-class education and lifestyle sometimes precludes this ideal
While Ives must have known that his own personal account of the American
experience could not encompass the entire populace, the unique quality of memory could
touch all who heard the familiar tunes he quoted. Ives believed that music could not only
be heard, but viewed subconsciously as well.37 In the same way that the mind can view
memories as pictures, Ives's music attempts to mix "visual notation with the idea of
sound."38 The quoted material stirs a memory in the subconscious which triggers a
mental image in the brain. Rosaline Perry believes that Ives "makes the listener 'look
with the ears' at common things by re-creating them so they take on the coloration for his
point of view."39
Ives expressed over and over in his Essavs Before a Sonata that the goal of his
music was to attain a higher moral truth. The familiarity of the quoted tune served as way into the mind through the memoiy. Ives also hoped that the ultimate realization of this higher moral truth will lead from the memory into the reality of the listener. The actual quotation "through its particular words or associations, can cany a more specific meaning than can a reference to a general style or type."40 Quoted material then, to Ives, was a part of the substance of his music, and not the manner. His hope was to "suppress his quotation marks-to make his quoted material truly his own," for "hearing quotations
36Ibid- 167. 37 Rosaline Sandra Perry, Charles Ives and the American MinH (Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1974), 57. 38Ibid.- 58. 39Ibid.. 66-67. 40Burkholder, All Made of Times loc.cit.. 362. 36
is not hearing a composition, [just as] listing quotations is not analyzing a composition.
The interest must lie in how the composer uses the material to make an aesthetic
statement."41 The richest and most complete understanding of the intertextual relations
within a work comes only after the listener hears the quotation; relates it to the work,
other quotations and shared memories; and ultimately understands that the "meaning of
the piece cannot be reduced to its program."42 In other words, the quotation, while
recognized, has helped the li stener to attain a higher understanding of an aesthetic or
moral principle.
Ives's use of intertextual references does not differ significantly from those of his
literary counterparts in producing a higher or more abstract level of meaning in a work.
Ives also, unfortunately, suffers from the problems intertextual references can produce. It
appears Ives was not discouraged by different interpretations of his works from his
performers, for he himself introduced an element of chance into many of his
compositions. By providing optional obligato parts, suggesting different
instrumentations, leaving the number of repeats up to the performer, or giving the
performer the option of leaving out measures, Ives certainly felt no anxiety over personal
interpretation of his works. What he may not have anticipated, however, was that the
familiarity that his audience might have with the quoted material might fade. When Ives composed much of his music, his quoted material was well known to his American audience. With the passage of time, the sources for these quotations may have been forgotten and often must be rediscovered to complete the intertextual link Ives was hoping to achieve. Over the passage of time, some "dust" may have settled on some of
41 Larry Starr, A Union of Diversities; Style in the Music of Charles Tves fNew York: Schirmer Books, 1992), 78-79. 42 Christopher Ballantine, "Charles Ives and the Meaning of Quotation in Music," The Musical Quarterly 65/2 (April 1979), 180. 37
Ives's intertextual references; however, it does not take much speculation to discover the core of meaning for much of Ives's works, for he never ventures far from the aesthetic principles outlined in his Essavs Before a Sonata CHAPTER 4
"IN FLANDERS FIELDS"
World War I, known as the Great War of 1914-1918, did not pass without musical commentary from Charles Ives. In his 1922 edition of 114 Songs,1 Ives subcategorizes three works as his "Three Songs of War." These works are "In Flanders Fields," number 49 (dated by its revision in 1919 instead of its completion in 1917), "He Is There!", number 50 (May 30, 1917), and "Tom Sails Away," number 51 (September 1917).
There is no consensus among critics of Ives's social and moral positions on the subject of war is nonexistent. Like many people of his day, Ives surely felt the dichotomy of the patriotic support of his country against the threat of "sneak thieving by medieval- minded dictators"2 versus the complex moral challenges of war itself. He did, however, get swept up in the initial fervor following United States' entry into the war on April 6, 1917. His first song on a war subject, "In Flanders Fields," was composed and performed less than two weeks after the United States' declaration of war. Ives also became involved in the initial war movement with his insurance company by devoting much of his time to selling war bonds. The surface enthusiasm Ives portrayed in support of the war effort occurred in the "early days of the U.S. involvement, when American troops had not yet gone into combat and the public had not yet been stunned by casualty lists."3
1 Charles Ives, 114 Songs (New York: Peer International, Associated Music Publishers, and Theodore Presser, 1975). 2 Charles Ives, Essays Before a Sonata. The Majority and Other Writings ed. Howard Boatwnght (New York: W. W. Norton, 1970), 228. 3 Alan Houtchens and Janis P. Stout, ""Scarce Heard Amidst the Guns Below": Intertextuality and Meaning in Charles Ives's War Songs," The .Tonrnal of Mnsirnlngv
38 39
No matter how enthusiastically Ives threw himself into the initial war fervor, he could not reconcile the noun "war" with the verb "to make war." Ives supported the cause but could never justify the human cost for the act of war and this affected him personally. He states in his Memos. "In 1917 the War came on, and I did but little in music, I didn't seem to feel like it.. ,".4
The text to Ives's first war song, "In Flanders Fields," was written by Canadian
John David McCrae (1872-1918). McCrae himself, like Ives, was the son of a military man. His father, an artillery officer, raised young McCrae in a military atmosphere.
Upon completing his medical degree, John McCrae enlisted in the Canadian
Expeditionary Force at the age of twenty-seven. At the start of World War I, McCrae served as a medical officer, later in the artillery brigade, and finally in a hospital. It was during his time as second in command of a field artillery brigade at the second of three battles of Ypres that McCrae composed his poem, "In Flanders Fields," possibly as a result of the death of a friend. This was to become one of the most beloved poems of the war.5
The fighting in and around the northern town of Ypres, Belgium that John
McCrae witnessed, continued from 1914-1917. The Flanders area of Belgium, really just a narrow strip of lowlands, became the objective of the Germans. Controlling Flanders would give the Germans a clear line to the Belgian coast and an approach to the English
Channel, and would allow them to dominate the railway center of Roulers. The first of the three battles of Ypres occurred from October 30-November 24,1914. The Allied forces stemmed the German offense, but the result was a long period of trench warfare.
Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae witnessed the second battle of Ypres, from April 22-
4 Charles Ives, Memos, ed. John Kirkpatrick (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972), 112. 5Houtchens, loc.cit.. 72. 40
May 25,1915. In this battle, the German forces employed a new weapon—poisonous chlorine gas. A stalemate ensued after five weeks of fighting, and both sides suffered heavy causalities. The German casualties numbered around 35,000, and the Allied forces lost around 60,000 men.6
McCrae's poem, "In Flanders Fields," was published just a few months later in the December 8,1915 issue of Euneh magazine and quickly gained popularity. In 1917, Charles Ives's life insurance partner, Julian Myrick, "discovered during World War I that Colonel John McCrae.. was one of The Mutual Life's medical referees in Montreal, and it seemed logical to suggest that Charles Ives should set [McCrae's] poem to music."7 Since "In Flanders Fields" had become the "most popular single poem of the war years,"8 Ives consented. The musical material for "In Flanders Fields" comes from a 1899 work for band entitled March for Dewey Day to commemorate Admiral George Dewey's success at Manila in the Spanish-American War; however, the manuscript for this work has been lost. Ives's "In Flanders Fields" made its debut at a luncheon for some of the Mutual Life's managers probably on April 15,1917, at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. McCall Lanham, himself and insurance agent, performed Ives's composition for Baritone or Male Chorus, and was accompanied at the piano by William Lewis. As Lanham reported, the two worked together on the song "for countless weeks,... the dissonance was unbearable ... however I was glad to attempt it for the sake of old and faithful friend Mike Myrick!"9 The reception of Ives's latest work was less than
6 John Terraine. The Great War 1914 -1918 (New York: MacMillan Co., 1965), 301- 316.
7 Henry Cowell and Sidney Cowell, Charles Ives and His Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955), 49. 8Houtchens, op.cit.. 66. 9Ives, Memos, op.cit.. 271. 41
lukewarm. Ives states in his Memos that the performers "never [made] head or tail of it"10 and this dissatisfied Ives. Mr. Myrick reported, Ives rushed up to him after the performance, distressed, and said, "If I'd known they were going to do it like that, I'd have done it myself!"11 The version used for this first performance is now missing; it may have been "in Ives's more hasty hand-and... may have been more dissonant than the familiar 1919 version."12
Ives's aggressive setting of McCrae's poem becomes more poignant when viewed after the third battle of Ypres, which began a few months after the insurance luncheon's premiere of the work. The third battle of Ypres, also known as the Passchendaele campaign, lasted from June 7 to November 10,1917. Allied forces ran approximately nineteen tunnels, some more than one-half mile long, under the German positions. In those tunnels, they planted nineteen mines, around one million pounds of explosives, and detonated them simultaneously at 3:10 A.M. on June 7,1917. The effect was similar to an atomic bomb, as mushroom clouds ascended into the air over the deafening explosion. Lloyd George, Prime Minister of Britain, reportedly heard the rumble and quake from the explosion in London (around one hundred-fifty miles away) while working late in his study that night. What began as an impressive advantage by the Allied forces, however, quickly turned against them.
The craters left by the exploded mines, some one-hundred yards across by one- hundred yards deep, annihilated the intricate drainage system of this lowland area of Belgium. This, coupled with a worsening of the weather, caused the area to turn into a bog. Pictures and reports show the battle area inundated with mud-often waist deep. In
10ML,271. 11 Mi-, 271. 12Ibid.. 271. 42 early November, five months after detonating the explosives, the Canadian infantrymen finally halted the German offense by capturing the village of Passchendaele. The Allied forces had pushed the German offense back only five miles. This third battle of Ypres had come "to embody for future generations, especially in Britain, all the worst and most repellent connotations of the war of trenches."13 The casualty lists staggering on both sides, Prime Minister George described the battle as the "most gigantic, tenacious, grim, futile and bloody fight ever waged in the history of war."14 The Allied and the German forces each suffered casualties approaching 250,000 at the third battle of Ypres. While John McCrae wrote his poem, "In Flanders Fields," after the second battle of Ypres, the poem is perhaps remembered more for the tumultuous and costly third battle of Ypres. McCrae died on January 28,1918, shortly after the final battle in Flanders. In March of 1919, Canada was granted land in the Flanders area for a memorial and shrine to the fallen Canadian soldiers.
John McCrae's poem, "In Flanders Fields," is simple, yet full of powerful imagery:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved and now we lie In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw
13 John Terraine, The Great War 1914-1918 (New York: MacMillan Co., 1965), 308. 14Ibid.. 308. 43
The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.15
The poem is fifteen lines long and consists of three stanzas with five lines in the first stanza, a quatrain for the second, and six lines in the last stanza. The rhyme scheme, consisting mostly of couplets, is AABBA for the first stanza, AABC for the second stanza, and AABBAC for the third stanza. The versification for much of the poem is iambic tetrameter, with the exceptions of lines eight, nine, and fifteen. Line eight,
"Loved and were loved, and now we lie," uses a trochaic structure in the first foot
(accented / unaccented) and iambic for the second, third and fourth feet.
/ \J / V S u / "Loved and / were loved / and now / we lie / " Trochaic / Iambic / Iambic / Iambic
Lines nine and fifteen are the same and use Iambic Dimeter:
i/ U / "In Flan / ders fields. / "
The poem makes much use of caesura within the lines. For example, line seven contains
three caesuras, indicated below by double bars:
"We lived, // felt dawn, // saw sunset glow, //"
15 John McCrae In Flanders Fields and Other Poems (New York: Putnam, 1919), 3. 44
The punctuation at the end of the line causes it to be end-stopped. "In Flanders Fields" is very equally split between end-stopped lines and enjambment lines where the poetic statement continues from one line to the next. There are several slight textual changes in Ives's setting of McCrae's poem "In Flanders Fields." In line one, Ives and adds a comma (indicating a pause) after the last word "blow." Punctuation is again changed at the end of line two (a comma is changed into dashes) and line four (a comma is added). Ives changes the word "amid" to "amidst" in line five of the poem. In line six, McCrae seems to deify the dead by capitalizing the word "Dead," but Ives uses the lower case. In line ten, Ives changes the end punctuation from a colon to an explanation point, perhaps to show a furor of emotion to the line "Take up our quarrel with the foe!" Line eleven changes the word "failing" to "falling," repeats the words "we throw," and adds a comma at the end of the line. The semicolon after "The torch" in line twelve is changed to a period. Finally, in line fourteen, Ives inserts the word "the" before the word "poppies." The significance of these changes is debatable, for it is not known which copy of "In Flanders Fields" Ives used to set the song. Whether Ives purposely made these changes, or was working from a corrupt version of the text remains a mystery. Houtchens reports "In Flanders Fields" was "widely disseminated orally.. .but it also was reproduced extensively in the United States Too often mistakes crept in during transmission, as McCrae bemoaned... ,"16 While McCrae may never have personally aligned himself with the Transcendental movement, his poem exemplifies many of the Transcendental ideals. Central to the Transcendentalists was a belief in the innate goodness of mankind coupled
16Houtchens, op. cit.. 77. 45 with an instinctive knowledge of the moral principles of humanity. The first two stanzas of "In Flanders Fields" alone can be seen as a tribute to the dead. Without waging a debate upon the morality of World War I (or any war for that matter), and without discussing sides; these stanzas commemorate those who have died for a cause. The cause was important enough to these soldiers to risk their lives in pursuit of it. They believed that mankind would be bettered by the pursuit of this ideal. Never far from the surface in these two stanzas, however, lies the irony of death: despite the soldiers' pursuit of a higher moral good, attaining this goal usually requires the sacrifice of human life. In the third stanza the tone changes. Here, McCrae hopes to awaken in his readers the realization that the "cause" for which these soldiers were fighting is in jeopardy. The dead are essentially "passing the torch" so that the cause will not perish along with them. In McCrae's "call to arms," he hopes to appeal to the responsibility of the living to ensure that the goodness of mankind is not threatened by those lacking moral principles. The last three lines of the poem even serve as a type of omen to the readers if they do not perpetuate the cause: "If ye break faith with us who die / We shall not sleep, though poppies grow / In Flanders fields." McCrae suggests that the dead not only will be unable to rest but also will haunt the memory of the living if the soldiers' deaths have been in vain. Perhaps an even more powerful statement of Transcendental philosophies comes in McCrae's treatment of nature in "In Flanders Fields." The most powerful nature imageiy McCrae presents is of the poppies growing in Flanders Fields. The poppies serve not only as a symbol of the deceased, but actually become the war dead. Growing from the graves, the poppies personify the dead, yet they themselves are living. They represent the universal soul connecting man, nature, and the Divine on a unique level. The poppies 46 have become a voice for humanity asking humankind to "respect the smallest blade that grows, and permit it to speak for itself. There may be a poetry, which may not be written, perhaps, but which may be felt as a part of our being."17 These poppies serve as a reminder, asking the living to continue the quest of the fallen.
In addition to the poppies representing the over-soul, they also represent Ives's philosophy of beauty over ugliness. Nature's beauty, the poppies, is chosen for the symbol to overcome the ugliness of war. The image of the lark, a citizen of nature, also personifies this ideal. The lark, often symbolically used as a messenger of the Divine,18 continues singing over the gunfire below. This powerful image not only exemplifies the
Ivesian ideal of beauty over ugliness, but also the spiritual over the material. The lark continues to sing (the Divine to preach/save) "bravely" amidst the turmoil of a war (the material). Substance reigns over manner if one grasps the meaning McCrae tries to portray in the third stanza.
Another interesting nature reference occurs in line seven of the poem. Here
McCrae describes the speaker "feeling" dawn and "seeing" the sunset glow. Normally one would see. the dawn, and feel the glow of sunset: dawn would be associated with the visual imagery of light whereas the residual heat from the day would naturally be linked with the tactile imagery of sunset. Dawn and dusk are often symbols of birth (or rebirth) and death. McCrae's inversion of the expected paring of sensory detail and time of day clouds the boundary between the living and the dead. The speaker feels the dawn of a new life approaching, but sees his own life extinguished.
17 Samson Reed, "Observations of the Growth of the Mind," The Transcendentalists. an Anthology, ed. Perry Miller (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1950), 57. 18The lark is often used as a divine reference because it sings at dawn, symbolically referring to prayers offered at the beginning of day (Lauds). 47
Nature is an abundance of extremes, much like Ives's musical setting. Ives surely understood the many layers of meaning McCrae's poem evoked, for his music is full of dualities and ironies. Ives used his music to "In Flanders Fields" to help reveal the moral truths McCrae described. When Ives said the performers of his debut performance "never [made] head or tail of it,"19 he possibly alluded to the challenges of interpretation facing the performers. "In Flanders Fields" runs the gamut of musical emotions, with comfortable and familiar strains of quoted material, unexpected shifts in tonality, uneasy isolations of the tritone, moments of clarity expressed in triadial harmonies, and pounding dissonances. The work is confusing, ever-changing, and often unsettling. Many failed to recognize the similarities between the music and its subject. To the average person, war is at once unreal, exciting, sorrowful, hopeful, scary, joyous, and horrific. Many are confused by these changing emotions, for which of the emotions is the "right" or "correct" one to possess? Ives packages this ambiguity in forty-two short measures. The work begins uncertainly and ends disturbingly-as does war itself. Ives uses rhythm and tempo to emphasize certain words in the text. In measure twelve, he writes "Hold back a little" and introduces syncopated rhythms in the vocal line for the words "row on row." Houtchens believes this is to "highlight and reinforce the image of graves extending endlessly in waves as far as the eye can see, even to the point of being superimposed on one another, and perhaps to imply a never-ending cycle of immeasurable dimension touching generation after generation."20 This dark mood is furthered in the following measure where both piano and voice have simple triadic half notes. Ives does something similar with the phrase "We are the dead" in measures twenty through twenty-one by writing "hold back here" over the music. His next use of
19Ives, Memos, op.cit.. 271. 20Houtchens, op.cit.. 76. 48 tempo to control the text occurs in measure twenty-six. At the text "and now we lie in Flanders fields," Ives writes "slower" above the measures, but again slows the rhythmic pulse by introducing longer note values into the piano and vocal lines. Ives's final use of tempo marking comes in the last five measures where he again writes "slower" above the music. Here, too, the rhythmic pulse winds down with longer note values at the text "shall not sleep though the poppies grow in Flanders fields." Ives may have been responding to the "lachrymose mood of the poetry, established, in part, by the frequent iteration of long, dark o vowels in assonantal patterns."21 Ives's use of a slowing tempo and rhythmical pulse at the points where death imagery occurs in McCrae's poem are important, for they personify the rhythm of human life. The images of death are realized in the music by a slowing of the rhythmic heartbeat of the piece. The images of nature, however, have a faster tempo indication. Ives seems to personify the image of the lark (spiritual) persisting amidst the gunfire (material) by indicating "faster" in the score at measure fifteen. His next nature image of dawn and sunset at measure twenty-two is marked "less restrained" in the score, perhaps to evoke an unencumbered recollection of an earlier time. At McCrae's "call to arms" in the third stanza (measure thirty), Ives writes "decisively, evenly and broadly (largamente)" above the music. These measures give McCrae's words the feel of a political campaign setting by evoking the familiar in both rhythms and melody. The rhythm and tempo indications Ives uses in his setting of "In Flanders Fields" do not correlate with the line/stanza version McCrae composed except in one place-the end of the second stanza (measures twenty-eight and twenty-nine). This further exemplifies Ives's belief in the natural over the artificial. Nature, itself, in a permanent
21Ihi&, 77. 49 state of flux, has been pillaged by the product of war-its harmonies disrupted and its rhythms disturbed by humanity. Man ignores the presence of the Divine in nature, and Ives portrays this by creating rhythmical and temporal ambiguities in the setting of the text between the vocal line and the piano. Ives uses his music to reveal a moral truth. In his setting of "In Flanders Fields," he acts "as a kind of musical scribe of the whole nation, being one with all those who had felt it deeply."22 Ives's introduction of intertextual elements weaves a new web of meaning into "In Flanders Fields." The quotations heard or alluded to in this work are: "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean," "The Battle Cry of Freedom," "America" (My country, 'tis of thee), "All Saints New," "La Marseillaise," "Taps," "Reveille," and other militaristic drum cadences. The work begins with a piano introduction that quickly introduces four quotations in seven measures. Beginning in measure three, "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean" is mixed with "Taps" in the treble clef. Their patriotic character, however, is distorted due to the abundance of chromatically altered notes. Next, the chorus of "The Battle Cry of Freedom" (text is "The Union forever") is heard in measure six in the right hand of the piano over nervous, ominous tremolos in the left hand.
The texture thins in measures seven and eight with the introduction of the first percussive sounds of a drum cadence. Houtchens describes these measures as imitating snare drum flams inciting the words, "Left. Left. Left, right, left."23 In all, the first seven measures with their aggressive polyharmonic chords, somber setting of typically patriotic songs, and drum cadences introduce a topic of melancholy quality. As the voice enters, the melody and accompaniment are in G major, but slip into the minor mode as Ives emphasizes the interval of the tritone slipping from B to F-
22 H. Wiley Hitchcock, Ives (London: Oxford University Press, 1977), 51-52. 23Houtchens, loc.cit.. 76. 50
natural. This exposure of the tritone occurs three times in the piece: at measures ten through eleven, measure twenty-seven, and measure forty. Each instance also correlates with a text about death or being dead in Flanders fields. As mentioned earlier, the tempo changes at measure twelve, and this is intensified by a rhythmic ritardando in measure thirteen. Measure fourteen may contain a brief reference to "Taps," further signifying the death and burial subject in the text.
Measure fourteen also begins a new quotation with the tune of "America" (My country, 'tis of thee) in the vocal and piano lines. To the vocal text, "And in the sky the larks still bravely singing fly," Ives sets the beginning of the tune "America"~"My country, 'tis of thee." The introduction of this musical quotation has dual possibilities.
"America," (My country, 'tis of thee) as many know, is the same tune as "God Save the
Queen" in Britain. Its introduction here could be a reference to the Allied troops still bravely fighting the enemy despite great losses. However, given the actual time in which this piece was written, it is more probable that Ives was drawn to quote this portion of the song to symbolically represent the United States' entry in the war.
This interpretation is further supported by the introduction of the next quotation in measure eighteen. Here, the piano quotes the chorus section of "The Battle Cry of
Freedom" whose text is "The Union forever, Hurrah boys, Hurrah!" This quotation is heard under the vocal text "scarce heard amidst the guns below." It appears that Ives used these quotation of "America" (My country, 'tis of thee) and "The Battle Cry of
Freedom" to symbolically represent the recent U. S. involvement into the war. Ives depicts image of the lark (musically represented as the U. S.) entering to bravely sing (of liberty and freedom) amidst the already bleak war front.
Measures twenty and twenty-one create an eerie, surreal setting with the introduction of two quotations at the text "We are the dead." Here, the vocal line quotes 51 the somber first four notes of "Taps," while the piano quotes a nervous "Reveille" underneath. Houtchens states that at this point, Ives either "means for us to picture the soldiers rising from the dead to pronounce the exhortation of the third stanza, or he wishes to intensify the irony of a situation in which the Dead (deified by McCrae through the use of a capital D) speak from the grave while the living, unhearing or unmoved, senselessly.. .continue the bloodbath;"24 The only quotation in "In Flanders Fields" with a non-militaristic source is "All Saints New" which appears in both lines beginning at measure twenty-two. Here, the second phrase of this hymn (text "His blood-red banner streams a-far") is quoted at McCrae's words "Short days ago we lived, felt dawn." Burkholder suggests that perhaps the "sentiment of these words required a hymnlike rather than patriotic setting,"25 but Ives's choice of a hymn using a war-like text is also significant.26 Ives's use of a hymn quotation at the only suggestion of remembrance of a (presumably) happier time in McCrae's text is significant. Ives quoted hymn tunes most frequently in his works. His introduction of a hymn tune here exemplifies Ives's belief that within the melodic line of the hymn "lay that 'depth of feeling,' that 'sincerity,' that true 'ring' of his source. "27 The musical representation of drum cadencing occurs for the second time in measures twenty-eight and twenty-nine. The first time a rhythmical motif akin to this occurred (measures seven through eight) it immediately preceded the words "In Flanders fields," and helped to intensify the foreboding mood of the text. Here, the military drum
24Ibid.. 78. 25 J. Peter Burkholder, All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses of Musical Borrowing (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 313. 26 The opening words to the hymn "All Saints New" are: "The Son of God goes forth to war". 27 Clayton W. Henderson. The Charles Ives Tunebook (Michigan: Harmonie Park, 1990), 11. 52 sounds follow the words "in Flanders fields" and once again shift the listener from the comfort of remembrance back into the reality of the present. The beginning of the third stanza of McCrae's poem is introduced along with quoted material in the voice and the piano. To McCrae's text, "Take up our quarrel with the foe! / To you from falling hands we throw," Ives quotes the French tune "La Marseillaise" in the vocal line. The text which accompanies the quotation of "La Marseillaise" is "To arms, to arms ye brave! Th'avenging sword unsheathed!" This occurs simultaneously over another reference to "America" (My country, 'tis of thee) in the piano line. The combination of these two quotations at this particular point in the text (the "call to arms") is very significant for it symbolizes the "passing of the torch from the dead French soldiers to the Americans,"28 in fact the very text of "La Marseillaise" is in itself a "call to arms." In this one important example from "In Flanders Fields" the listener would gain a higher understanding of the work by not only recognizing the presence of an intertextual entity, but also by being intimately familiar with the primary source of the reference.
The piano line continues quoting "America" (My country, 'tis of thee) until measure thirty-seven while the vocal line quotes a portion of "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean" at measure thirty-four. The text of the quotation continues the theme of "passing the torch" to the Americans with the words "Thy banners make tyranny tremble" at McCrae's words "Be yours to hold it high." This image of "passing the torch" also represents a common image of viewing war literally as a game. Here, the quotation is "clearly meant to invoke images associated with ancient and modern sporting festivals
28Burkholder, op.cit.. 313. 53 like the Olympic Games. Ives .. .would probably have found the strategies and logistics of warfare initially both thrilling and challenging .. ,"29 The final quotation occurs in measures thirty-eight and thirty-nine at the words "We shall not sleep though the poppies grow" with a quotation from the opening of "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean." This creates closure to the piece since "Columbia" was also the quotation with which the piece opened in measure three. It is significant to note, however, that this is the only minor mode quotation occurring in the piece. The vocal line in this last phrase ends by repeating an earlier gesture, the tritone falling from B to F-natural. This unsettling interval, coupled with the slowing melodic line helps to create the effect of the vocalist being "pulled down by the very weight of the sentiment"30 of the text. "In Flanders Fields" ends with ominous drum rolls in the piano line. These non- specific intertextual references to drums have occurred at strategic moments in the work. They are first heard in the opening of the work (measures seven and eight) suggesting the marching of troops. Next, they are heard prior to the start of the climactic third stanza1 "call to arms" (measures twenty-eight and twenty-nine). Finally, they are heard at the conclusion of the work as a rumbling in the background. The appearance of drums as the troop march, the call to arms, and the echo in the distance keep the cyclical nature of war going throughout the course of the song.
Perhaps a greater level of meaning can be achieved by investigating and being intimately familiar with the intertextual references Ives presents within this song. Ives relies on the power of the intellect to intuitively perceive the broader scope of his references. Not a single quotation in this work was haphazardly introduced. Each serves
29Houtchens, loc.cit- 87. 30Ibid.. 79. 54 a purpose whether for structure, memory stimulation, or textual enhancement. Quotations allow Ives to juxtapose the issues of patriotic fervor, enthusiasm, and the human cost of war. His layering of quoted tunes and words achieves the effect of this dichotomy of duty versus the human cost of war. CHAPTER 5
"HE IS THERE!"
The subject matter of the second song in Ives's "Three Songs of War," "He Is
There!", continues where "In Flanders Fields" concluded. "In Flanders Fields" ended with a "passing of the torch" to the Americans and an earnest charge for the Americans to continue the quest for liberty. "He Is There!" is the continuation of this quest as a spirited, and patriotic, although subtly pessimistic, tribute to the war effort.
The date given to "He Is There!" in 114 Songs is May 30, 1917-a little more than a month after "In Flanders Fields" was first performed. Some of the music for "He Is
There!" was taken from a sketch Ives composed around Columbus Day, 1914. This sketch, an unfinished choral piece, was called Sneak Thief and was written to protest the
German invasion of Belgium. Ives originally conceived "He Is There!" as a work for unison chorus and orchestra, but later reduced the instrumentation for voice and piano.
However, no complete manuscript of "He Is There!" is extant.
There is no record of the first performance of "He Is There!"; however, Vivian
Perlis records an interesting recollection of "He Is There!" in her book, Charles Ives
Remembered: An Oral History.1 Ives tried to enlist his nephew, Bigelow to sing "He Is
There!", and Bigelow reported: "If I didn't sing with enough spirit or gusto, he would land both fists on the piano. 'You've got to put more life into it,' he'd say. There was one little passage which called for a real shout, but I shouted very timidly and he nearly hit
1 Vivian Perlis, Charles Ives Remembered: An Oral History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976).
55 56 the roof. 'Can't you shout better than that? That's the trouble with this country-people are afraid to shout.'"2 Ives designates "He Is There!", a forty-nine measure work, for medium high voice "In march time." Ives also includes an optional obligato line beginning at the chorus in measure twenty-one for violin, flute, or fife. This line, however, was likely added circa 1919-1921. Ives includes several footnotes to the score to "He Is There!". First of all, he suggest a different scoring to the piano line if the obligato part is performed. He states, "If the obligato is used, or if there are several voices, the pianist may reinforce his part in the following manner"3 (a musical example follows). At the conclusion of the work, Ives names several of the quotations used in "He Is There!":
Of the tunes suggested above, "Tenting tonight" was written and composed by Walter Kittredge, in 1862-a farmer and soldier, from Merrimack, N.H.; the "Battle Cry of Freedom," was also composed during the Civil War, by Geo. F. Root, a composer and publisher in Boston; Henry Clay Work, the composer of "Marching Through Georgia," was born in Middletown, CT.. in 1832.4
Ives wrote his own text for "He Is There!" in strophic form, using three stanzas, a chorus, and a coda. The text is written in free verse, with no apparent rhyme scheme or versification. It does, however, make frequent use of assonance, centering on the vowel "a." The text to "He Is There!" follows:
1st Stanza: Fifteen years ago today a little Yankee, little Yankee boy
2Ibid . 82. 3 Charles E. Ives. 114 Songs (New York: Peer International, 1975), 109. 4H2i&, 111. 57
Marched beside his Grand-daddy In the Decoration Day parade. The village band would play those old war tunes, And the G. A.R. [Grand Army of the Republic] would shout, "Hip-hip Hooray!" in the same old way, As it sounded on the old campground.
1st Chorus: That boy has sailed o'er the ocean; He is there, he is there, he is there. He's fighting for the right, but when it comes to might, He is there, he is there, he is there. As the Allies beat up all the warlords, He'll be there, he'll be there, and then the World will shout the Battle Cry of Freedom, Tenting on a new camp ground.
2nd Stanza: Fifteen years ago today a little Yankee with a German name Heard the tale of "forty-eight"; Why his Grand-daddy joined Uncle Sam. His father fought that medieval stuff And he will fight it now. "Hip-hip Hooray!" this is the day When he'll finish up that aged job.
2nd Chorus: That boy has sailed o'er the ocean; etc....
3rd Stanza: There's a time in every life When it's do or die, and our Yankee boy Does his bit that we may live In a world where all may have a "say." He's conscious always of his country's aim, Which is Liberty for all, "Hip-hip Hooray!" is all he'll say, As he marches to the Flanders front.
3rd Chorus: That boy has sailed o'er the ocean; etc. ...
Coda: 58
Tenting on a new camp ground. Tenting tonight, tenting on a new camp ground, For it's rally round the Flag boys, Rally once again, Shouting the Battle Cry of Freedom.5
The text of the song references past wars and moves the speaker from memories of an earlier day ("fifteen years ago today") to the present. The first stanza recounts a memory, some fifteen years old, of a boy with his grandfather at a Decoration Day parade commemorating the Civil War dead. The chorus brings the speaker into the present when the young man has left for war. The second stanza begins with the same memory as in the first stanza, but gives a bit more insight into the scene. Here, the boy, "with a German name," remembers his grandfather telling how he left Germany in 1848 for the United States. Ives's reference to the "tale of'forty- eight'" refers to the failed 1848 German revolution. This revolution advocated a unified Germany and against the sovereign rule of kings. Many of these German revolutionists fought for a liberal government which would guarantee popular representation, trial by jury, and free speech. The concluding two verses of the second stanza originally were "Hip Hip Hooray! for old Carl Schurz, / his soul is ever marching on."6 Carl Schurz was involved in the 1848 German revolution, later fled to the United States where he worked for Negro rights, and was a Union general in the Civil War.7 Ives further clarified his intent for the second stanza of "He Is There!" by stating:
5Ibid.. 107-111. 6 J. Peter Burkholder, All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses of Musical Borrowing (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 480. 7Ibid.. 314. 59
The second verse was inserted in the realization of the added strain that the American soldiers of German descent are under. The forbears of many of them were exiled from Germany after the revolution of 1848, and came to the United States as a country where their ideals could be realized. Carl Schurz was an example of this kind of patriot; like him, many of them fought under the Stars and Stripes against slavery in this country. The hope of a "free Germany" was always with them, and now their boys are fighting for the fulfillment of that hope.8
The last three verses of the second stanza shift back into the present as the soldier is
"passed the torch" from his grandfather to "finish up that aged job."
The second chorus is identical to the first chorus. The final stanza of "He Is
There!" changes the focus of the work and is full of double meanings. Previously, "He Is
There!" focused on the memory and present situation of a particular "little Yankee boy," but in the third stanza the scope broadens to include "every life." This stanza is about the duty and obligation requiring everyone to go to war for his country. In 1917, president
Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated for a second term of presidency. Ives managed to include some of Wilson's campaign slogans into the text of this stanza with his "world where all may have a 'say,'" and "Liberty for all." The last two verses to this stanza, "Hip
Hip Hooray! is ail he'll say, / As he marches to the Flanders front." (emphasis added) are loaded with double meanings to be discussed later.
The third chorus is, again, identical to the first and second choruses up to measure thirty-four, where the music breaks into the coda section. The coda repeats a verse of text previously at the last verse of the first stanza and the last verse of the chorus—
"Tenting tonight on a new campground." The song ends boisterously, stating its
John Kirkpatrick, ed., Charles E. Ives: Memos (New York: Norton, 1972), 171. 60
"unabashed enthusiasm for taking on the enemy" and "wide-eyed optimistic spirit" of the war effort.9
At the onset of World War II, in 1942, Ives reworked "He Is There!" into "They
Are There," also called "War Song March." "They Are There" is strikingly different in
tone from "He Is There!" It appears as an almost bitter parody to its original text, but
only minor adjustments are made in the music. In 1961, Lou Harrison arranged "They
Are There" for unison chorus and orchestra.
Underneath the patriotic fervor of this song lies an unsettling Transcendental
dilemma. The Transcendentalists put unquestioning faith in humanity's instinctive
knowledge of moral principles. In his earlier work, "In Flanders Fields," Ives champions
the cause for war, but has trouble reconciling the effect-death. In "He Is There!", this
instinctive knowledge for an attainment of a higher moral ideal materializes as an
internal struggle of duty versus the morality of war.
The soldier's sense of duty to "Do his bit that we may live" is stated explicitly in the third stanza, but is also alluded to throughout the text. "He Is There!" is a constantly changing continuum of old and new within the text. The first stanza, as mentioned earlier, is cited as a memory from "Fifteen years ago today." This memory theme is summarized by the last verse, "As is sounded on the old camp ground" (emphasis added). This "old" memory is changed to a new situation within the chorus until the verse "As the Allies beat up all the warlords." The Allied forces of the present conflict must conquer the warlords of the past. Ives mixes old and new terminology in this phrase along with the last verse of the chorus where he has changed the "old" camp ground to the "new" camp ground.
9 Clayton W. Henderson, The Charles Ives Tnnehnnk (Michigan: Harmonie Park, 1990), 64. 61
Ives's references between the old and the new appear again in the second stanza
where he describes the soldier's grandfather, and, ultimately himself, fighting "that
medieval stuff." Certainly neither 1848, nor 1917 would be considered "medieval"; what
Ives is referring to, however, is the struggle of humanity to achieve a sense of freedom
over slavery. This struggle can be seen in the German revolution of 1848 where the
populace strove for freedom from the oppression of aristocratic rule; in the Civil War's
effort to abolish slavery, and the current war's oppression from a "sneak thieving
Kaiser."10 Ives's verse that "this is the day / When he'll finish up that aged job"
contradicts the verse in the opening to the third stanza. Here, Ives states that "There's a
time in every life / When it's do or die, and our Yankee boy / Does his bit that we may
live" (emphasis added). This contradicts his earlier statement that "he'll finish up that
aged job," for this is a deed that cannot ultimately be finished if it is something that every
person has to face sometime within his life. This is the cyclic nature of all of Ives's
previous references to the old and the new, for what is old new and what is new is also
old. The concept of war is one which cannot be "finished." While the phrase a "war to end all wars" may have been circulating around the time "He Is There!" was written,
Ives s juxtaposition of old and new states that there cannot be a "war to end all wars" if this situation is one everyone must face.
The soldier feels a sense of duty to his country to further the pursuit of liberty, but is faced with a moral dilemma. He considers his contribution may make little difference in the broad scope of history if war is an ever-present evil of society. This is a dilemma that was also chronicled within the Transcendental observation of the Civil War.
10 Philip Edward Newman, The Songs of Charles Tves (1874-1954) Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1967 (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1967), 155:303. 62
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), an earlier Transcendental writer, seems to
glorify war and hold in reverence the supreme sacrifice fallen soldiers have given. His
poem, "Hymn Sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument, April 19, 1836," also
looks gloriously upon a war memory as does Ives's song, "He Is There!". Emerson's
perspective on war, however, is in retrospect. He comments on the Revolutionary War,
which he has not witnessed. Emerson never directly experienced war; therefore, from a
distance of over half a century, he depicts the glory of war. Ives has done the same in the
first two stanzas of "He Is There!".
Walt Whitman (1819-1892), a late Transcendental writer, has a much different
perspective on war. During the Civil War, Whitman served as a Union nurse. His
perspective on war is shaped by his direct experiences with war and its human
consequences. His collection of poems, Drum Taps (1865), chronicle his changing
attitudes toward the subject of war-from propagandistic recruiting poems, to realistic
and unromanticized accounts of war. His changing perspective of war is summarized in
a verse from "The Wound Dresser" (1865,1881): "(Arous'd and angry, I'd thought to beat
the alarum, and urge relentless war, / But soon my fingers fail'd me, my face droop'd and
I resign'd myself, / To sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently watch the dead)".11
Ives seems to chronicle the changing perspective of war in a similar fashion with
"He Is There!". His propagandic outlook, evoking patriotism and a sense of duty changes to skepticism, and even pessimism, in the third stanza. This change in tone culminates with the final two verses, '"Hip Hip Hooray!' is all he'll say, / As he marches to the
Flanders front." Why is this "all he'll say"? It seems, perhaps, the soldier's perspective
Walt Whitman, ""The Wound Dresser"," The Norton Anthology to American Literature, eds. Nina Baym, Wayne Franklin, Ronald Gottesman, et. al., 4th ed., vol. 1 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994), 2124-2125. 63
has evolved much like the verse from Whitman's "The Wound Dresser." An added rhythmical emphasis is even given to the words "all" and "say" in this phrase. The syncopated rhythm used for this verse places stress and a longer duration on these two words, thus heightening their significance:
prprppiprprpp
The soldier's patriotic fervor seems to dwindle as he comes to realize the harsh reality he is about to face.
The next verse, "As he marches to the Flanders front," is, perhaps, the pinnacle of this realization. It was "well known that Flanders was a deadly, filthy theater of bloody trench warfare,"12 not to mention Ives's earlier treatment of the Flanders subject in his previous song, "In Flanders Fields." These verses are not mere shallow sentiment, but a harsh awakening for the soldier who is about to confront the reality of war. Ives textually portrays his ideal of "freedom over slavery" by evoking memories of previous wars. He portrays this ideal musically with a patchwork of quotations all having patriotic or military themes. Ives's interpretation of the Transcendental concept of self reliance manifests itself in the unifying power of the idea. He felt no need to necessarily unify his compositions according to typical European models. Ives's unity is
12 Alan Houtchens and Janis P. Stout, ""Scarce Heard Amidst the Guns Below:" Intertextuality and Meaning in Charles Ives's War Songs," The Journal of Mnsimlopv 15/1 (Winter 1997), 87. 64 achieved through a stream of quoted material wrought with layers of intertextual meanings.
Ives's presentation of the intertextual subjects, particularly in "He Is There!", has been described by Burkholder as a patchwork technique. Melodies sewn together using this patchwork technique are "stitched together from fragments paraphrased from many tunes."13 This ultimately results in a "joining [of] related tunes into a composite melody."14 The almost continuous stream of intertextual references is "sometimes elided through paraphrase and sometimes interspersed with new music. The sources for any one piece are usually drawn from a single genre The effect is like that of stylistic allusion, but with direct borrowing."15 Burkholder has suggested that Ives's source for patchworks based on patriotic subjects comes from the work of composers in Tin Pan Alley. These composers (such as George M. Cohan and Paul Dresser) wove recognizable tunes with original musical material to create popular music such as "Yankee Doodle Boy" (1904),
"You're a Grand Old Flag" (1906), and "The Blue and the Gray" (1900). These songs quote much of the same patriotic music Ives does in "He Is There!". This borrowed material creates the unique effect "because the Tin Pan Alley style of the early twentieth century is quite different from that of the eighteenth or mid-nineteenth century songs..
.we hear these phrases as if the singer is speaking in his own voice. The same effect is heard when Ives's "He Is There!" interleaves the current popular style with tunes from previous generations."16
Ives's most obvious use of the patchwork technique occurs in the obligato line that begins at the chorus of "He Is There!". This line, beginning in measure twenty-one,
13Burkholder, loc.cit.. 300. 14Ibid- 300. 15Ibid.. 301. 16Ibid.. 326. 65
is a cleverly woven stream of nearly continuous quoted material. This line, while clearly not the primary focus musically or intertextually, does enhance the text in several places. Ives quotes the following in the obligato line; "Dixie's Land" (measure twenty), "Marching Through Georgia" (measure twenty-one), "Yankee Doodle" (measure twenty- two), "Marching Through Georgia" (measures twenty-five through twenty-seven), "Reveille" (measures twenty-eight through twenty-nine), "Maryland, My Maryland" (measures twenty-nine through thirty), "La Marseilles" (measures thirty-one through thirty-six), "The Battle Cry of Freedom" (measures forty-three through forty-seven), and "The Star Spangled Banner" (measures forty-eight through forty-nine).
Ives's piano introduction to the song begins with a self quotation from a fanfare figure used in his 1903 band piece, Country Band March. His next intertextual reference occurs in measure eleven in the vocal line with a quotation from "Marching Through Georgia" at this song's words "Sing it as we used to sing it fifty thousand strong." This intertextual reference to repetition and memory is echoed in the text Ives uses with this quotation. Ives's first stanza states "The village band would play those old war tunes, and the G. A. R. [Grand Army of the Republic] would shout," citing a close parallel between the primary and secondary sources. In this stanza, Ives uses an actual "old war tune" to incite this memory.
The correlation between sources is similar in the second stanza which uses the same quotation. Ives's words, "His father fought that medieval stuff," uses the same quotation from "Marching Through Georgia." Here, the Civil War tune reminds the "little Yankee boy" of his grandfather's encounter with war; and now the boy must "sing" it (war) again, "fifty thousand strong."
The third stanza again uses the same intertextual reference to "Marching Through Georgia" with Ives's text, "He's conscious always of his country's aim which is Liberty for 66
all." This intertextual reference has a more general connotation. The Civil War tune, "Marching Through Georgia," tells of the union procession through Georgia to end the oppression of slavery. The Yankee boy in "He Is There!" is also heading out to "march" through Europe to bring "Liberty for all" and set the soul of Europe free from the "slavery" of German oppression.
Ives's next intertextual reference occurs in the vocal line at measure eighteen.
Here, Ives quotes the last phrase from the melancholy Civil War song, "Tenting on the
Old Camp Ground." In Ives's first stanza, the quotation serves simply as text-painting to
his own words, "As is sounded on the old camp ground." His intertextual reference
broadens somewhat when placed with the text of the second stanza, "When he'll finish up
that aged job." The somber Civil War song, "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground," speaks
of weary soldiers who are searching for inspiration to continue fighting, yet find
themselves yearning for peace and home. The soldier in "He Is There!" is fresh in his
pursuit of the war effort, but finds himself somewhat cynical about "finishing" the "aged job" begun so long ago. Ives's introduction of an sM element into this n£iv life furthers
his cyclical view of war. This view culminates in the third stanza.
The text Ives placed with the quotation from "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground"
in the third stanza, "As he marches to the Flanders front," further depicts the weary soldier who wished for the war to end, but must continue "tenting on the old camp ground." Each subsequent appearance of the quotation from "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground" weaves a new level of meaning. Ives's first stanza parallels the seemingly carefree and optimistic outlook of the song. The second stanza shadows an uneasy undercurrent to the work of finishing "unfinished" business. Like the overall progression of tone from stanza to stanza, the third appearance of this quotation has reversed the original optimism of the work to cynicism and dread. 67
The chorus of "He Is There!" is an almost continuous stream of quotations, and for the first time in the piece, the piano doubles much of the vocal line. The first quotation of the chorus begins at measure twenty. Ives does a bit of text painting with the words "That boy has sailed o'er the ocean" by quoting the tune (and opening words) of "O Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean."
The entrance of the obligato line in measure twenty-two adds a new layer of quoted material with its quotation from "Dixie's Land." This quotation is heard over an allusion to George M. Cohan's (new) 1917 work "Over There" in the vocal line. While the music set to the words "He is there" differs from Cohan's "Over There," the rhythmic nature of the allusion is the same. An interesting layering of meaning becomes apparent if the intertextual element is examined from primary source to secondary source at these two quotations. The obligato line quotes from "Dixie's Land," at this song's text, "I wish I was in de land ob cotton, / Old times dar am not forgotten, / Look away!" This quotation occurs simultaneously over Ives's allusion to "Over There" in the vocal line at Cohan's text "Send the word, send the word over there." The allusion to "Over There" is set to Ives's words "He is there, he is there, he is there." Ives seems to hint that beneath the patriotic fervor "send[ing] the word" that "he is there," the soldier secretly wishes he were back home ("I wish I was in de land ob cotton") recounting pleasant memories ("Old times dar am not forgotten").
The next few measures once again link the present conflict with a remembered account of the Civil War. The obligato line begins measure twenty-three with a quotation from "Marching Through Georgia" at this song's text "Bring the good old bugle boys" and continues measure twenty-four with a quotation from "Yankee Doodle" at this songs words Fathr and I went down to camp." The vocal and piano lines here set Ives's text, "He's fighting for the right, but when it comes to might," to George Frederick Root's 68
"Tramp, Tramp, Tramp." It is difficult to trace an exact textual reference to the quotation from "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp" since this particular portion of the melody is set to several different texts within the song; however, each of these texts carries a common theme. "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp" begins with the text "In the prison cell I sit, / Thinking Mother, dear, of you" and continues to tell of a woeful war prisoner trying to uphold his faith in the war effort, but finding himself overcome with grief. Again, Ives shows, with the combination of these intertextual references in the obligato and vocal/piano lines, a conflict between the soldier's sense of duty to his country and his own questions and doubts about war. The first indication of the soldier's personal doubts occurs in measures twenty-one through twenty-two with the quotations from "Dixie's Land" and "Over There." Here the essence of doubt occurs in the obligato line and festers in the subconscious. The undercurrent of doubt works itself to the surface in measures twenty-three through twenty-five with the quotations from "Marching Through Georgia," "Yankee Doodle," and "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp." Now the essence of doubt occurs in the vocal/piano line, although still slightly masked by the use of quotation.
This complex conflict of duty versus emotion all but dissolves for the remainder of the chorus. The obligato line quotes again from "Marching Through Georgia" in measures twenty-five through twenty-seven to the text "Hurrah! Hurrah! The flag that makes you free!" This occurs over the second appearance of Ives's text "He is there, he is there, he is there" which is, again, set to Cohan's "Over There." The obligato line begins a quotation of "Reveille" in measure twenty-eight over a vocal quotation of "O Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean." To Ives's text, "As the Allies beat up all the warlords!," Ives sets the "Columbia" text "Thy mandates make heroes assemble." Again, like his use of "Reveille" in "In Flanders Fields," Ives uses this bugle call to symbolize the "awakening" 69
of the Americans to the war effort. This is furthered by the quotation form "Columbia"
which states the urgency for this entry.
Ives's third use of the phrase "He is there" is changed slightly by the future tense to "He'll be there" but uses the same musical quotation from Cohan's "Over There." Over this, the obligato line quotes a phrase from "Maryland, My Maryland." Like the earlier quotation from "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp," several passages of text could correlate with this particular quotation. The opening phrase of "Maryland, My Maryland," however, summarizes the subject of the song with the text "The despot's heel is on thy shore." The combination of these two intertextual references, along with Ives's change in tense of his catch-phrase "He'll h£ there" (emphasis added) explains the urgency of the U. S. involvement in the war. In fact, the "despot's heel" is an intertextual reference within itself since the tune for "Maryland, My Maryland" comes from the well-known German tune "O Tannenbaum." The threat of the "despot's heel" (the Germans) "on thy shore"
(America) is why the soldier will be there to defend liberty.
Measures thirty-one to thirty-six begin a new quotation of "La Marseilles" in the obligato line to this song's text "March on, march on! / All hearts resolved on victory or death." This occurs over Ives's text "and then the world will shout the Battle cry of
Freedom / Tenting on a new camp ground." The vocal and piano lines use two quotations to set Ives's text. In measure thirty-two, Ives's sets his words "shout the Battle cry of
Freedom" to the verse from "O Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean" with this song's text
"Thy banners make tyranny tremble." This is a rather jingoistic episode in "He Is
There!", for Ives seems to be suggesting that the U. S. entrance into the war will be the crucial event to turn the course of the war towards an Allied victory. Ives suggests that the mere appearance of the American flag will "make tyranny tremble," and exhorts the soldiers to "March on!" for "victory or death." The suggestion of a turning point in the 70 course of the war is elaborated with a second quotation from "Tenting of the Old Camp Ground" at measure thirty-four. Here, though, a "new" camp ground is described to portray, perhaps, a "continuation of the old glory onto a new turf."17 This idea of the "new" camp ground continues in to the coda section of "He Is There!" at measure forty. During this short coda, Ives unexpectedly shifts the stable Bb major diatonic center of the entire piece by modulating up a minor third to the key of Db major. The obligato line repeats the phrase "victory or" conspicuously leaving out "death" from "La Marseilles" in measures forty to forty-one. Here, Ives uses the stream of consciousness technique known as ellipsis. Ellipsis is the "omission of one or more words, or parts of a tune phrase, obviously understated, to make the expression complete."18 Ives has left out the music suggesting the word "death" in his quotation as if to signify that death is not an option for the soldier; or perhaps to remove the possibility of death from the soldier's mind. The vocal and piano lines also repeat the quoted phrase, "Tenting on a new camp ground," three times in measures forty through forty-four.
The obligato line sets up a quotation from "The Battle Cry of Freedom" in measure forty-three. This quotation was first alluded to textually in measures thirty-two through thirty-three where the singer speaks of "shout[ing] the Battle cry of Freedom," however, the actual musical reference to "The Battle Cry of Freedom" is delayed until the end of the song. The obligato line in measure forty-three finally quotes musical material from "The Battle Cry of Freedom" to this song's text "The Union forever, / Hurrah boys, hurrah! / Down with the Traitor, / Up with the Star; / While we rally round the flag boys."
17Houtchens, op.cit.. 87. 18 Rosaline Sandra Perry, Charles Ives and the American Mind (Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1974), 51. 71
Ives begins the obligato's quotation of "The Battle Cry of Freedom" two measures before the vocal/piano line begins its quotation of the same song. The two lines, however, do not quote the same material simultaneously. The musical material of the obligato line remains two measures behind the musical material of the vocal/piano line. The vocal/piano line's quotation of "The Battle Cry of Freedom" begins in measure forty-five. For the first time in the work, Ives uses an exact textual and musical quotation with the text "For it's rally round the flag boys / Rally once again, / Shouting the battle cry of Freedom." The obligato line, however, states the last musical quotation in measures forty-eight and forty-nine with a quick quotation from the beginning of "The Star Spangled Banner" to the words "Oh say can you see." What, ultimately, is the meaning, the higher moral good Ives hopes to achieve after one hears "He Is There!"? Is the song merely a jingoistic contribution to the war effort, or is it a sly, but clever parody of war itself? It is both. As seen in "In Flanders Fields," Ives has mixed emotions regarding war. On the one hand, Ives, like Emerson, views war retrospectively. He has never directly experienced war before, and, therefore, views it nostalgically "with a flood of childhood memories relating to the other war, the one in which his father served."19 Much of Ives's patriotic spirit shown in "He Is There!" must be taken in earnest, for Ives enthusiastically supported the war effort. On the other hand, Ives knew that the "Gettysburg of Europe loomed, beckoned perhaps-Flanders."20 This tinge of doubt and bitter reality never lies far from the surface of "He Is There!". The singer even directly states this ominous reality with the line "Hip Hip Hooray! / is all he'll say, / As he marches to the Flanders front."
19 Stuart Feder, Charles Ives "Mv Father's Song" (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 283. 20Ibid.. 283. 72
"He Is There!" remains an easily accessible march (even for 1917) "replete with written in cheers [measure twenty-one] and a Sousa-like 'flute or fife' obligato in the.. .chorus."21 Yet the song's accessibility does not completely mask the undercurrent of the harsh reality of war.
21 Ibid.. 282. CHAPTER 6
"TOM SAILS AWAY"
Ives's final song in his collection of "Three Songs of War" is "Tom Sails Away." In marked contrast to "In Flanders Fields" and "He Is There!", this song presents itself as a nostalgic look at the events in the speaker's childhood through a series of memories. The song concludes in the present day as Tom sails away for war.
"Tom Sails Away" was composed in September of 1917. Much of the music for this song was taken from a now lost, rejected sketch of Ives's Third Violin Sonata from
October 1914. "Tom Sails Away" was included in three different publications. The first was in a collection entitled Two Songs (1917-1918) that grouped "Tom Sails Away" with
Ives's 1917 song "The Things Our Fathers Loved." Only one copy of Two Songs is known to be in existence. "Tom Sails Away" was also published in Ives's 114 Songs
(1922) as number fifty-one, and in his 19 Songs.
"Tom Sails Away" is written for a medium range voice and is unique within the
"Three Songs of War" in that there is no regular meter within the piece. Ives's avoidance of a strict meter throughout "Tom Sails Away" is enhanced by his use of "free-flowing, atmospheric music, largely whole-tone in flavor, that clearly shows Ives's appreciation of
Debussy."1 Ives's liberation of the bar lines, however, dissolves in measures nineteen through twenty-three. This is the only time in the song where a common-time meter
(although still left unnotated) and standard rhythms occur.
1 Alan Houtchens and Janis P. Stout, '"Scarce Heard Amidst the Guns Below:' Intertextuality and Meaning in Charles Ives's War Songs," The Journal ofMusicologv 15/1 (Winter 1997), 81.
73 74
Several errors exist within the score of "Tom Sails Away," most of which result from Ives's use of freely flowing rhythms. Measure six is missing a quarter note rest in the inner accompaniment line. Measure fourteen is missing two eighth note rests in the inner accompaniment line, one each at the beginning and end of the measure. Measure eighteen proves to be problematic rhythmically in the upper piano line. Ives, however, corrects this ambiguity in his version of "Tom Sails Away" found in 19 Songs. The mask of rhythmic uncertainty in "Tom Sails Away" complicates a definitive performance of the work. It is unlikely, however, that this troubled Ives, for he opposed the idea of music as an exclusive art. If the rhythmic ambiguity in "Tom Sails Away" resulted in a slightly different performance with each reading, Ives likely would not have been disturbed. Ives wanted the listeners to shift their focus around a musical composition, as would be done while looking at a painting or sculpture. His music has an artistic quality involving motion, foreground and background. Ives believed that "the ear should focus on different features, that one should listen to the same music from different spots, the way one walks around a sculpture to see if from as many angles and distances as possible."2 While the ear may be focusing on something in particular, it does not ignore the other elements in the foreground or background. The ear is simply adjusting its focus to the items most important at the time.
"Tom Sails Away" presents itself as an arch-type form. Measure one is a piano introduction which foreshadows the melodic material presented in measure two. The melody which begins measure two also closes the piece in measures twenty-four and twenty-five (although lowered by one-half step). This return to the melody which opened the work creates the arching form of "Tom Sails Away." Larry Starr's A Union of
2 Kurt Stone, "Ives's Fourth Symphony: A Review," The Musical Quarterly 52/1 (January 1966), 11. 75
Diversities3 describes the first five measures as a "Scene Preparation" which unassumingly "fade[s] in"4 from an almost inaudible level. At the words, "mother with Tom" in measure five, Starr notates the beginning of the first major section of "Tom Sails Away."5 This section begins with a musical figure in the vocal line which Starr calls the "mother motive."6 This first section closes with a reiteration of the "mother motive" in the piano line at measure fifteen. At the text, "Daddy is coming" in measure fifteen, Stan- delineates the beginning of the second major section of the work.7 The dynamics of "Tom Sails Away" have continued to grow throughout the work, from the pianississimo of the "Scene preparation," to mezzopiano at the start of the first major section, to mezzoforte at the conclusion of the second major section in measure eighteen. A complete fissure occurs in the song in measure eighteen at the text "But today!"; however, the dynamics continue to grow to fortissimo in measure nineteen—the climax of the work. A sequential decrescendo begins in measure twenty-one fading once again to the point of inaudibility at the conclusion of the work.8 The ending passage, or coda, begins in measure twenty-four with a restatement of the opening motive. The harmonic center of "Tom Sails Away" is ambiguous throughout much of the work. The keys of E major and B major are hinted at, but never firmly established. Ives, however, does frequently allude to both whole tone scales as well as the chromatic scale. An F-sharp pedal point also dominates much of the work in the piano line.
3 Larry Starr. A Union of Diversities fNew York: Schirmer Books, 1992). 4Ibid.. 72. 5Ibid.. 72. 6ML, 72. 7Ihid-, 73. 8Starr believes that the "Scene dissolution" and "fade out" begin in measure eighteen (Starr 74); however, I have moved this distinction to measure twenty-one where the actual decrescendo begins. 76
The text to "Tom Sails Away," like "He Is There!", is original to Ives. Ives writes, once again, in one long free verse stanza.
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, over there! Scenes from my childhood are floating before my eyes.9
The first line of "Tom Sails Away" summarizes the subject of much of the text. The speaker, presumably an adult, recounts memories of his/her childhood. What follows is an "idealized vignette of small-town America as the speaker and the speaker's mother, with baby brother Tom in her arms, wait for Daddy' to come home from work."10 It has been suggested that the memories recounted in "Tom Sails Away"-"the family, the old house, his mother's vegetable garden, his father coming home"~are Ives's own personal memories of his childhood.11
9 Charles E. Ives, "Tom Sails Away." 114 Songs (New York: Peer International, 1975), 112-114. 10Houtchens, op.cit.. 81. 11 Jan Swafford, Charles Ives: A Life with Music (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996), 281. 77
The gender of the speaker in Tom Sails Away" has been debated among Ives scholars. Burkholder believes the gender of the speaker to be feminine due to the "character of her feelings and by the fact that, if a man, he would likely be heading to war himself."12 Starr, however, contends
the tenderness of feeling and the sensitivity to nature and detail in both text and music can lead us into stereotyping the singer/narrator, Tom's sibling, as female, especially since the one remembering is left behind as Tom sails off. However, there is no more necessity of making this assumption than there is of being surprised that a song like this could come from such a "masculine" composer as Ives. As specific as the song's surface may be, it probes feelings and issues that are not specific to time, place, or gender.13
Houtchens and Stout side with Starr stating the "text does not seem to be gendered in any
way."14 Ives may have indeed intended for the singer/narrator to be conceived of as
feminine, but this is an assumption which is unnecessary for understanding the subject of
the song. The argument that the singer/narrator is genderless is the more convincing one.
The memory recounted in "Tom Sails Away" appears to take place in early spring.
This is evidenced by the line, "the lettuce rows are showing green," indicating new
growth. The line, "Thinner grows the smoke o'er the town," has several interpretations.
First of all, if the recounted memory occurs in the spring, the smoke, presumably from
house chimneys, has thinned due to a rise in temperature. This warming would lessen the
need for heat from fires and cause a "thinning" smoke as Ives describes. The thinning
12 J. Peter Burkholder, AH Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses of Musical Borrowing (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 492. 13 Starr, op.cit.- 71 14Houtchens, op.cit.. 81. 78
smoke, however, could help to indicate the time of day. Ives states a few lines later, '"Tis
after six, the whistles have blown." The thinning smoke Ives describes could be the
result of the factories shutting down for the day.
Shortly after the appearance of "Daddy" in Ives's dream landscape, the
singer/narrator abruptly returns to the present day (1917) as Tom leaves for war. The
song ends as it began, with a slight textual change to "Scenes from my childhood are
floating before my eyes" (emphasis added). The floating image suggests, as William
Bland has said, "a vision blurred through tears."15
While "Tom Sails Away" remains a "gem of understatement"16 on the surface, it
is a supreme example of Ives's Transcendental beliefs. Ives uses the setting of nature to
recount cherished memories. These memories retain a spiritual essence due to their
proximity to nature, for the Transcendentalists believed nature was the Divine
personified. Ives expresses his reverence for nature in the subtle details he recalls from
his childhood scenes. It is within this spiritual bonding between man and nature, and
man and the Divine that the narrator comes to terms with his/her present conflict. The
narrator retreats to nature for comfort and spiritual guidance to guide him/her in the
present conflict.
This retreat to nature is closely paralleled in many Transcendentalist writings
such as Emerson's Nature, and Whitman's poem "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking."
Whitman's poem, like "Tom Sails Away," chronicles the author's recollection of a
William Bland, lmer notes for sound recording Charles Ives / George Crumb "Apparition." performed by Jan DeGaetani (mezzo), and Gilbert Kalish (piano) (Bridge Records CD 9006,1982 / 1987). 16 Clayton W. Henderson, The Charles Ives Tunebook (Michigan: Harmonie Park, 1990), 64. 79
boyhood experience at a time of crisis in his adult life.17 Whitman's memory, like Ives's, occurs within the setting of nature; and, also like Ives's memory, helps him to confront and understand a current dilemma. The solace provided by nature in Whitman's poem allows the poet a resolution to his conflict and ends with a hopeful atmosphere. Within the Ives song, the retreat to nature furthers the narrator's anxiety over their separation and ends despairingly.
While the narrator in "Tom Sails Away" may have retreated to nature for comfort,
the specific memories Ives recounts portray the contrasting nature of all living things.
"Tom Sails Away" is full of images of beginning and ending. The first reference is found
in the opening and closing lines of the piece. In the opening line,
scenes from childhood were 'with' the protagonist~the choice of preposition effectively indicating closeness and security, perhaps even implying possession or at least some deal of control by the narrator. At the end, the remembered visions no longer seem within the singer's control, as they have become insubstantial and diaphanous, evaporating, floating before the essential passive eyes of one who is helpless to retain them.18
The next contrasting reference to nature occurs in the phrase "a spring day's sun is
setting. Ives juxtaposes images of spring that symbolically represent a new beginning or
birth (the garden, the lettuce sprouting) with images portraying the end of a day, representing closure, rest, or death (sunset, time of day, industry closing, "Daddy" returning from work). Most of the physical action described in "Tom Sails Away" also
17 Walt Whitman, ""Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking"," The Norton Anthnlnpvnf American Literature, eds. Nina Baym, Wayne Franklin, Ronald Gottesman, et.al., 4th ed., vol. 1 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994), 2112. 18Starr, loc.cit, 77. 80
reflects a paradoxical nature. "Mother" is described coming "towards" the garden, while the milk train has gone "down" the valley. Similarly, "Daddy" is described coming "up" the hill as the family runs "down" to meet him. Finally, Ives juxtaposes images of Tom as a baby with images of his possible death in the war. Nature, an abundance of extremes, parallels the extreme conflict the singer faces-reconciling the childhood image of Tom with the adult who has now left for war.
Precisely at this point in the text, "But today! In freedom's cause," Ives introduces again the internal conflict of duty versus morality. Ives's two previous songs, "In Flanders Fields" and "He Is There!", also dealt with this conflict. "Tom Sails Away" continues this dilemma, but from a new perspective-the family left behind. "In Flanders Fields" was a dutiful charge from the fallen soldiers to continue their quest. "He Is There!" chronicled the entry of an untried soldier into the war and hinted at his possible disillusionment about the morality of war. "Tom Sails Away" portrays the conflicting views of patriotism and duty to one's country versus the "unhappy emptiness left by his going"19 to war and the foreboding dread of his possible death. The narrator plainly has an instinctive knowledge of the moral principles Tom is leaving to uphold ("In freedom's cause"), but is left feeling helpless at his departure.
Ives's own changing feelings regarding the morality of war appear in a subtle change to the text made for the inclusion of "Tom Sails Away" in his collection of 19 Songs- Here, Ives eliminates the words, "in freedom's cause," and adjusts the line so that it simply reads "But today! Today Tom sailed away." This suggests in 1935, "Ives's
19Houtchens, loccit 81. 81
disillusionment with the Great War thus [was] brought into clearer focus. He was no longer sure that the war had been entered into for the sake of freedom."20
Ives helps to portray the fleeting images of the narrator's childhood in the music by his use of changing tempos and a lack of metrical accents. The ebb and flow effect of the music carries the narrator through a series of stream of consciousness episodes in the memory. The stream of consciousness technique, as developed by such twentieth- century authors as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, involves the unintentional placing of events in an order not sequenced by chronology, logic or importance, but rather due to memory and inner thoughts.21
"Tom Sails Away" begins veiy "slowly and quietly" over flowing thick chords. As the narrator enters the first "scene" from his/her memory, Ives indicated the music should be "a little faster." At the words "a spring day's sun is setting," Ives writes "slow again," helping to portray rest and closure associated with sunset. In addition, at the words "sun is setting," Ives text-paints by writing a descending melody line in the vocal part.
The next memory scene, "mother with Tom in her arms," also begins with a quickening of the tempo. Over this "mother motive" discussed earlier, Ives writes "somewhat faster, but evenly." The tenderness of lettuce rows sprouting is enhanced by Ives s indication of "lightly" above the piano line. Again, Ives text-paints at the words "Thinner grows the smoke" in measure five by composing a thinner texture rhythmically with eighth-note figures in the piano line. Subsequently, two measures later at the text, "stronger comes the breeze," Ives changes his texture to include a thicker, faster line rhythmically of sixteenth-notes in the piano line. As if to symbolize closure and rest at
20ML, 84. 21 Robert P. Morgan. Twentieth Century Mmir rNPw York: Norton, 1991), 15. 82
the end of this second scene, Ives slows his rhythmic pulse at the words "the milk train's gone down the valley." The words, "down the valley," are also text-painted in a descending chromatic scale.
The third scene Ives presents also begins with a tempo change. Measure fifteen,
at the text "Daddy is coming up the hill," Ives indicates the tempo should be "Faster and
more animated." Ives presents an interesting episode of text painting in measures sixteen
through eighteen. The vocal line ascends chromatically at the words "up the hill"
(measure sixteen) and descends to a whole-tone scale at the words "down the lane to
meet him" (measures seventeen through eighteen). Underneath this descending whole-
tone line in the vocal part, the piano line ascends to the same whole-tone scale. This
gives the "visual effect on the score of the vocal and piano parts coming towards one
another or 'meeting' as the text so describes it."22
At the change in narrative which, as discussed earlier, begins in measure eighteen at the text "But today!," Ives abruptly ends the ebb and flow of memories and tempo changes presented previously. Here, Ives indicated these words to be sung "Slowly, but firmly," so as to help carry their importance. The speaker's memories, and Tom himself, fade further away with Ives's indication of "Slower" in measure twenty-one at the text "over there." As if to solidify the weight of the sentiment upon the narrator, Ives indicates the last line of text, "Scenes from my childhood are floating before my eyes," to be sung "Very slowly, as in [the] beginning."
Ives's dream sequence of events from the narrator's childhood "suspend[s] sense impressions and ideas in the memory [by],. .giv[ing] a private quality to the passage."23
Janet Lynn Gilman, Charles Ives-Master Songwriter: The Methods Behind his Madness, Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, 1994 (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1995), 96. 23 Rosaline Sandra Perry, Charles Ives and the American Mind (Ohio: Kent State 83
The dream, or memoiy, Ives recounts is of a highly personal and private nature.
Christopher Ballantine describes the nature of the dreams and memories:
Dreams ... tap the private unconscious; [where],. .music.. .taps the social unconscious. Dreams show the points of growth in the personal unconscious; music the points of growth in the social unconscious. Dreams deal with distortions in the person because of repression: music with distortions in society because of oppression. Dreams unmask the ideology of the individual; music unmasks the ideology of society.24
In short, the dream-sequence rendered in this highly personal account of Tom's idyllic childhood contrasts sharply with the reality of the adult trauma of his leaving for war.
This contrast is meant to portray the thoughts and emotions of anyone experiencing uncertainty and change. The specific account described in "Tom Sails Away" represents a more general rite of passage for all humanity. In "Tom Sails Away," the cause of separation is war, but growth and separation are universal events for all of humanity.
In Ives's previous two songs, "In Flanders Fields" and "He Is There!", Ives's use of intertextual elements never lies far from the surface. Quotations are, for the most part, unmasked, easily recognized, and plentiful in number. This is not so in "Tom Sails
Away." Here, Ives weaves only four intertextual elements into the song. Ives's use of quotation in "Tom Sails Away" serves a different purpose than in his previous two war songs. Intertextuality in "Tom Sails Away" is introduced for a programmatic purpose.
Within program music, the composer strives to "depict a scene, tell a story, or relate a series of events. Musical elements correspond to a specific happening.. .or
University Press, 1974), 46. 24 Christopher Ballantine, "Charles Ives and the Meaning of Quotation in Music," The Musical Quarterly 65/2 (April 1979), 171. 84
represent a person, object, or idea."25 In other words, in programmatic quotation, "a tune may stand for a thing, person, or situation associated with it."26 Ives's first musical quotation in "Tom Sails Away" occurs in measures one through two. Measure one, the brief piano introduction, foreshadows the quotation of George Kiallmark's "Araby's Daughter" heard in measure two of the vocal line. Others have suggested this quotation also suggests the spiritual "Deep River," or Dvorak's "Songs My Mother Taught Me,"2"7 but textually and rhythmically the quotation conforms more to "Araby's Daughter." The opening line to "Araby's Daughter" reads "How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood." Ives begins his opening line, "Scenes from my childhood are with me," which corresponds to the second half of the line of text from Kiallmark's "Araby's Daughter." To set this text musically, Ives uses a stream of consciousness technique known as hyperbation. Hyperbation places the "second phrase of the tune ahead of the first [phrase]."28 Ives places the second half of the text with the music of the first half In doing this, he invokes the "words he does not quote: 'how dear to this heart.'"29 Through the recognition of this intertextual element, Ives "suggests what these childhood memories mean to his speaker."30 His subtle reference tells us "how dear to [his/her] heart" these memories remain.
Ives's next intertextual element occurs at the abrupt change in the text at the words "But today!" in measure eighteen. To these brief words, Ives sets a haunting quotation of "Taps." The introduction of "Taps" at this particular moment in the song is
25Burkholder, All Made, loc.cit.- 340. 26Ihid., 341. 27See Newman's The Songs of Charles Ives. . Vol I, 80; Kirkpatrick's Catalogue 201, Houtchens and Stout's "Scarce Heard " 81. 28Perrv. loc.cit.. 51. 29Burkholder, All Made. op.cit.. 364. 30Ibid- 364. 85
profound. At this moment in the song, Ives indicates the text to be sung "Slowly, but firmly." Here the narrator returns to the present day, and Ives begins his only treatment of regular rhythmic figures. This point in the music directly precedes the dynamic climax of the song. The introduction of "Taps" conveys the harsh reality of the situation. It brings the narrator out of the idyllic recollections of Tom's infancy to the possibility of his death in war.
Measure nineteen begins a quotation in the piano line of "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean." Ives quotes the opening section of the song beneath his own text, "In freedom's cause Tom sailed away." This draws a textual parallel between Ives's text "sailing" and the word "ocean" from the quoted tune. The piano line continues its quotation from "Columbia" in measure twenty-one at the text "The home of the brave and the free." Over this, the vocal line begins a quotation of Cohan's 1917 song "Over There" to Ives's same text. Ives clearly meant here for the text of his song to suggest another song with closely associated words.
Ives's rendition of "Over There" however, is not the same as the "sprightly tune that was so popular."31 Within the context of "Tom Sails Away,"
"over there" is Tom's point of arrival, but "over there" are also the reasons for his departure from the narrator, and for the uncertainty of the future. The boisterous, affirming quality of the quoted war tune "Over There" is ironically at odds with the mood of Ives's song even as it is being recalled. At the rather lugubrious tempo in which Ives actually presents it, the stalwart cadence figures of "Over There" may evoke in fact the finality of Tom's distance from the protagonist and the feared finality of death, which could cause him never to return. Thus, Ives at once presents his quotation and reinterprets its original flavor and meaning.32
31Houtchens, loc.cit.. 82. 32Starr, op.cit.. 77. 86
Ives programmatically depicts the growing distance between the narrator and Tom by a gradual diminishing dynamic level and an extreme slowing of the rhythmical pulse to a halt in the piano line. The stagnant rhythmical pulse is culminated by a fermata placed over an eighth-note rest in measure twenty-three. "Tom Sails Away" concludes with the same reference to "Araby's Daughter" that opened the song.
The change in the last line of text Ives uses to close "Tom Sails Away" has even greater significance following the intertextual reference to "Over There." To open the song, Ives states that the memories are "with" the narrator. What follows is a series of scenes set to portray these tender memories. However, if the "earlier passages set the scene, the latter ones effectively destroy it; and of course the sense of symmetry is enhanced at the end of the song by music and words that recall the very beginning."33
Within this highly personal content of reflection and memory, Ives's musical expression transcends mere "mannerism" and speaks of a greater "substance," a higher moral awakening. Ives's climatic rendition of "Taps," "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean," and "Over There" together produce "flashes of transcendent beauty, of such universal import, that they may bring, of a sudden, some intimate personal experience, and produce the same indescribably effect that comes in rare instances to men from some common sensation."34 While the subject matter and personal memories presented are highly specific to one person (the narrator) in a particular time in history (World War I), this song transcends the boundaries of time and place. "Tom Sails Away" captures the essence of a universal human emotion and unites its listeners with its tenderness, anticipation, and dread.
33ML, 76. 34 Charles E. Ives. Essavs Before a Sonata fNe.w York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1962), 30. EPILOGUE
The "substance" Ives ultimately portrays in each of his Three Snr>^ nf War "In
Flanders Fields," "He Is There!," and "Tom Sails Away," is the dualism of war. Ives
presents three settings, each different in tone, perspective, and time to portray his own
conflicting views on the morality of war. The dichotomies Ives lays out each make a
point: "that this is good and that is weak; that either of these without the other is
unbalanced; or, as in the case of manner and substance, that the lesser ideal must always
serve the greater."1
In each of the three songs, Ives shows the difficulty of reconciling the noun "war"
with the verb "to make war." His first song, "In Flanders Fields," personifies the dead
somberly in the first two stanzas. Here, the dead reminisce "Short days ago / We lived,
felt dawn, saw sunset glow" yet charge the soldier to "Take up our quarrel with the foe"~ to continue their quest. The soldier's sense of duty is evoked, yet he cannot help but anticipate that his fate might also lie in Flanders fields. In "He Is There!," the soldier's sense of duty is evoked as an internal struggle of duty versus the morality of war.
Through an undulating of old and new within the text, the soldier questions his own effort in the war, for the concept of war appears to be one that cannot be "finished." Ives even alludes to the Flanders front towards the end of "He Is There!" to again, perhaps, suggest to the soldier that his fate might remain the same as those who lie in Flanders
1 J. Peter Burkholder, Charles Ives, the Ideas Behind the Music (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985) 9.
87 88 fields. Finally, in "Tom Sails Away," the narrator clearly understands the meaning of the verb, "to make war." It is this harsh reality that frightens the narrator, for with Tom sailing away for "over there," lies the possibility that he will never return. Each of these three Ives songs also deals with the cyclical nature of war. "In Flanders Fields" portrays this cycle both textually and structurally. Ives's textual representation of the cyclic nature of life is found in his representation of nature. The boundaries of life and death are clouded as the dead, symbolically represented by the living poppies, speak to the living to continue their quest. Also, Ives's inversion of sensory and tactile details in the line, "We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow," uses nature imagery to symbolically represent the human cycles of life (dawn) and death (sunset). Structurally, Ives uses the intertextual references to drums to reveal the cyclic nature of war and life itself. The drum cadences progress from a troop march, to a call to arms, to a faint echo of rumbling in the distance. This portrays the cyclic nature of war by chronicling a war effort, a "new" war effort, and a "reminder" that the underlying cause of war has never ceased. In "He Is There!," Ives mixes images of previous wars with the current conflict. The speaker realizes in this song that the concept of war is never- ending, for what is old is new and what is new is old. The cycle continues in "Tom Sails Away." Here, however, the cycle is portrayed again textually and structurally. Textually, Ives mixes images of beginning and ending. His nature images of spring (birth) and sunset (death), in addition to images of Tom as a baby (new life) versus images of him leaving for war (possible death) portray the cyclic nature of all living things.
Structurally, Ives creates a cyclic nature by ending the song with the same music and dynamic level that the song began with. Again, Ives portrays beginning and ending, as well as old and new. 89
Each of these three songs seems to develop along a similar underlying emotional
path: optimism, leading to uncertainty, leading to realism. "In Flanders Fields" begins its
first stanza as a tribute to the war dead. An element of uncertainty appears with the stark
setting of the words, "We are the dead," set musically to "Taps." Here, the listener cannot
help but feel apprehension that his fate might be the same as the fallen soldiers'. Reality
appears in the third stanza, as the listener is charged to continue the quest of the fallen
soldiers. In "He Is There!," the spirit of optimism almost always remains on the surface.
Uncertainty appears, subtly masked in the subconscious, through a series of intertextual
references. The first references to doubt appear within the text the obligato line suggests.
These doubts work their way to the surface a few lines later as the speaker himself
implies the original words of the quoted tunes. Reality appears abruptly in the line '"Hip-
hip Hooray!' is all he'll say, / As he marches to the Flanders front." Here, the speaker has
realized the harsh reality of what he is about to face at the Flanders front. The third song,
"Tom Sails Away," begins tenderly recounting childhood memories. This optimism
continues throughout most of the song. Uncertainty and reality, however, are realized
simultaneously as the narrator returns to the present day where "Tom sailed away for
over there." The uncertainty presented results from the possibility of Tom's death in war.
This possibility causes the narrators' memories to "float" before his/her eyes. This
suggestion of tears portrays the narrator's understanding of the harsh reality of war.
The subject of each of these songs is molded by Ives's Transcendental beliefs.
These beliefs do not always supply Ives with definitive answers to life's enigmas such as war, but rather form the underlying structure to his approach on the subject. Quotation leads to extra-musical associations and meanings within these works and, like
Transcendentalism, heightens the significance of their "substance" within the broader scope of interpretation. Ives's Three Songs of War do not leave the listener with 90 absolutes as to the subject or morality of war; instead, they accurately portray the human experience of war. BIBLIOGRAPHY
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