Defining Musical Americanism: a Reductive Style Study of the Piano Sonatas of Samuel Barber, Elliott Carter, Aaron Copland, and Charles Ives

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Defining Musical Americanism: A Reductive Style Study of the Piano Sonatas of Samuel Barber, Elliott Carter, Aaron Copland, and Charles Ives

A document submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS

in the Keyboard Studies Division of the College-Conservatory of Music

Brendan Jacklin

BM, Brandon University, 2011 MM, Bowling Green State University, 2013

Committee Chair: bruce d. mcclung, PhD Abstract

This document includes a reductive style study of four American piano sonatas premiered between 1939 and 1949: Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord” by Charles Ives, Piano

Sonata by Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata by Elliott Carter, and Piano Sonata, Op. 26 by

Samuel Barber. Each of these sonatas represents a different musical style and synthesizes traditional compositional techniques with native elements. A reductive analysis ascertains those musical features with identifiable European origins, such as sonata-allegro principle and fugue, and in doing so will reveal which musical features and influences contribute to make each sonata stylistically American. While such American style elements, such as jazz-inspired rhythms and harmonies, are not unique to the works of American composers, I demonstrate how the combination of these elements, along with the extent each composer’s aesthetic intent in creating an American work, contributed to the creation of an American piano style.

ii Acknowledgments

I would first like to offer my wholehearted thanks to my advisor, Dr. bruce mcclung, whose keen suggestions and criticisms have been essential at every stage of this document. I would further like to thank my readers, Dr. Jeongwon Joe and Prof. Kenneth

Griffiths, for their comments and support throughout this process. I would also like to thank Prof. Awadagin Pratt and Dr. Catherine Losada for helping me focus and hone my thesis for this document. Finally, I would like to thank my fiancée, Susan Yang, whose patience and support has made the writing of this document possible.

iii Contents

Illustrations ...... vii

Introduction ...... 1

Chapter 1 Form and Genre ...... 6

Cycle of Movements ...... 6

The Sonata Principle ...... 10

Use of Other European Forms ...... 18

Chapter 2 Thematic and Motivic Compositional Techniques ...... 28

Motivic Basis of Thematic Material ...... 28

Quotation and Borrowing ...... 46

Chapter 3 Fugue and Other Compositional Techniques ...... 50

Fugue ...... 51

Twelve-Tone Technique ...... 55

Chapter 4 Originality and Americanism in Rhythm ...... 59

Originality ...... 59

Influence of Jazz ...... 67

Chapter 5 American Forms and Techniques ...... 75

American Forms ...... 75

American Compositional Techniques ...... 84

iv Conclusion ...... 93

Bibliography ...... 96

Appendix ...... 101

PIANO SONATA by Elliott Carter Copyright © 1948 by Mercury Music, Inc. Theodore Presser Company, Sole Representative. International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission of the Theodore Presser Company.

vi Illustrations

Musical Examples

1.1 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 221–24 ...... 11

1.2 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 86–89 ...... 13

1.3 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 156–60 ...... 14

1.4 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 51–53 ...... 14

1.5 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 178–80 ...... 14

1.6 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 12–14 ...... 15

1.7 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 202–4 ...... 15

1.8 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, first movement, mm. 1–2 ...... 17

1.9 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, first movement, mm. 22–23 ...... 17

1.10 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, first movement, mm. 128–29 ...... 18

1.11 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, second movement, mm. 4–8 ...... 22

1.12 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, second movement, mm. 195–97 ...... 22

1.13 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, second movement, mm. 388–92 ...... 24

1.14 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 122–28 ...... 24

1.15 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, second movement, mm. 1–4 ...... 25

1.16 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, second movement, mm. 26–30 ...... 25

1.17 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, second movement, mm. 47–49 ...... 25

1.18 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, third movement, mm. 1–5 ...... 26

2.1 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,” “Emerson,” m. 1 ...... 30

2.2 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,” “The Alcotts,” 56/4 ...... 30

2.3 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,” “Emerson,” 8/1 ...... 31

vii 2.4 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,” “Hawthorne,” 32/1–4 ...... 32

2.5 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 1–4 ...... 34

2.6 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 26–27 ...... 35

2.7 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 96–98 ...... 35

2.8 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 133–35 ...... 35

2.9 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, second movement, mm. 54–56 ...... 36

2.10 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, second movement, mm. 89–91 ...... 36

2.11 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, third movement, mm. 1–2 ...... 36

2.12 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, third movement, mm. 88–91 ...... 37

2.13 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, third movement, mm. 148–49 ...... 37

2.14 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 1–4 ...... 40

2.15 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 12–13 ...... 40

2.16 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 20–22 ...... 40

2.17 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, first movement, mm. 1–2 ...... 42

2.18 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, first movement, mm. 23–25 ...... 43

2.19 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, second movement, mm. 1–4 ...... 44

2.20 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, second movement, mm. 9–12 ...... 44

2.21 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, third movement, mm. 1–5 ...... 45

3.1 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, second movement, mm. 104–12 ...... 52

3.2 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, second movement, mm. 169–72 ...... 53

3.3 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, second movement, mm. 209–13 ...... 53

3.4 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, first movement, mm. 9–10 ...... 56

3.5 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, third movement, mm. 1–2 ...... 57

viii 3.6 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, third movement, mm. 5–6 ...... 57

4.1 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,” “Emerson,” 12/4/1–2 ...... 61

4.2 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,” “Emerson,” 5/2/2 ...... 62

4.3 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,” “Emerson,” 9/5 ...... 62

4.4 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, second movement, mm. 87–103 ...... 65

4.5 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 14–19 ...... 66

4.6 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, second movement, mm. 6–10 ...... 68

4.7 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, second movement, mm. 116–18 ...... 69

4.8 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, fourth movement, mm. 1–3 ...... 70

4.9 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, fourth movement, mm. 4–6 ...... 70

4.10 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, fourth movement, mm. 38–39 ...... 71

4.11 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, fourth movement, mm. 66–67 ...... 71

4.12 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 14–19 ...... 73

4.13 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, second movement, 209–20 ...... 74

5.1 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No 2 “Concord,” “Emerson,” 4/1 ...... 78

5.2 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,” “Emerson,” 20/1/2–20/2 ...... 79

5.3 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,” “Thoreau,” 63/3–4 ...... 80

5.4 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,” “The Alcotts,” 56/4–5 ...... 81

5.5 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, third movement, mm. 1–2 ...... 82

5.6 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, third movement, mm. 19–21 ...... 83

5.7 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, third movement, mm. 46–47 ...... 83

5.8 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, third movement, mm. 55–56 ...... 83

5.9 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,” “The Alcotts,” 56/4–5 ...... 85

ix 5.10 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,” “Hawthorne,” 26/1/1–2 ...... 87

5.11 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,” “Emerson,” 21/4/1–2 ...... 88

5.12 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 123–25 ...... 88

5.13 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, first movement, mm. 45–46 ...... 91

x Figures

1.1 Sonata Principle in Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, first movement ...... 10

1.2 Sonata Principle in Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement ...... 12

1.3 Sonata Form in Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, first movement ...... 16

1.4 Formal Diagram of Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,”

“Emerson” ...... 19

1.5 Ternary Form in Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,”

“The Alcotts” ...... 20

1.6 Formal Diagram of Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,”

“Thoreau” ...... 20

1.7 Ternary Structure of Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, second movement ...... 22

1.8 Rondo Structure of Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, second movement ...... 23

1.9 Ternary Structure of Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, second movement ...... 23

1.10 Rondo Form in Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, second movement ...... 26

1.11 Ternary Form in Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, third movement ...... 26

2.1 Borrowed European Works in the Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord” ...... 48

3.1 Fugal form in Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, second movement ...... 51

3.2 Fugal form in Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, fourth movement ...... 54

5.1 Free Form in Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, third movement ...... 84

xi Introduction

American art music has long been influenced by the European tradition, hampering the creation of an indigenous style. Composer Kyle Gann writes, “From the beginning the American composer labored under an assumption that crippled his or her creativity: any innovation, any departure from European precedent, would be interpreted as a technical deficiency.”1 It was not until the early twentieth century and the music of

Charles Ives that the influence of European music began to give way to an American style. Gann describes Ives as “the first American to step deliberately outside of European musical conventions in major works,”2 while David C. Paul notes that the conductor

Leonard Bernstein considered Ives to be America’s first great composer.3

One of Ives’s major works is his Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,” completed between 1911 and 1915, and premiered in 1939 by John Kirkpatrick. Thomas Owens indicates that in addition to the American Transcendentalist philosophers that gave each movement its name, this sonata “examines the possibility and desirability of a distinctly

American Music and the options for writing it. He alludes to contemporary controversies, such as…the value of ragtime…[and] the appropriateness of African-American and

Native-American music.”4 Though this work contains many explicit allusions to

American folk tunes and styles, it is still influenced by the European traditions, including quotations of many European works and the genre of the piano sonata itself.

1 Kyle Gann, American Music in the Twentieth Century (New York: Schirmer Books, 1997), 1.

2 Ibid., 7.

3 David C. Paul, Charles Ives in the Mirror: American Histories of an Iconic Composer (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 1.

4 Thomas Clarke Owens, “Charles Ives and His American Context: Images of ‘Americanness’ in the Arts” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1999), 170.

1 Establishing what constitutes an American style has been the subject of much scholarship, including Barbara Tischler’s An American Music and Charles Garret’s

Struggling to Define a Nation: American Music and the Twentieth Century. Larry Starr asserts that an American style is inherently eclectic, differing for each composer, claiming the term American “denotes a wide variety of peoples, ethnic backgrounds, and cultures, and a broad spread of social political, intellectual, and artistic phenomena.”5

Composer and critic Virgil Thomson was dismissive of an American style, provocatively asserting: “The way to write American music is simple. All you have to do is be an

American and then write any kind of music you wish.”6

This document will examine the problem of defining an American style through an examination of four piano sonatas, using a reductive style study to determine what specific musical concepts and techniques might make a work sound American. Beginning with Ives’s Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,” this document will examine three sonatas composed and premiered within the decade following the Concord Sonata’s premiere:

Aaron Copland’s Piano Sonata (1941), Elliott Carter’s Piano Sonata (1945–1946), and

Samuel Barber’s Piano Sonata, Op. 26 (1949). Each of these works demonstrates different approaches to incorporating American influences, with the creation of an

American style closely tied to each composer’s career and aesthetics.

Before the twentieth century, the piano sonata in the United States closely paralleled the development of the genre in Europe. Many of the early sonata composers

5 Larry Starr, “Ives, Gershwin, and Copland: Reflections on the Strange History of American Art Music,” American Music 12 (1994): 168.

6 Virgil Thomson, “On Being American,” A Virgil Thomson Reader (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981): 305, quoted in Larry Starr, “Ives, Gershwin, and Copland: Reflections on the Strange History of American Art Music,” American Music 12 (1994):168.

2 in the United States had been born in Europe, such as James Hewitt (1770–1827, born in

England),7 John Christopher Moller (1755–1803, born in Germany),8 and Alexander

Reinagle (1747–1809, born in England).9 American-born composers would continue to be influenced by European music, with many of them training there, including most members of the Second New England School of composers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: John Knowles Paine in Berlin, George Whitfield Chadwick in

Leipzig, Horatio Parker in Munich,10 and Dudley Buck in Leipzig and Paris.11 Two of the more famous late-nineteenth century American composers also studied in Europe:

Edward MacDowell studied at conservatories in Paris, Stuttgart, Wiesbaden, and

Frankfurt,12 while Charles Griffes completed his training in Berlin.13

This document examines whether the piano sonatas by Ives, Copland, Carter, and

Barber created an American style through a reductive style study. Each work combines

American and original influences, but as will be shown, simply incorporating native aspects is not enough to create an American style. The aesthetic intent behind the works by Ives and Copland will be shown to be a deciding factor in their successful creation of

7 J. Bunker Clark, “The Solo Piano in Early America: Hewitt to Heinrich,” American Music 2 (1984): 31.

8 Ibid., 32.

9 Ibid., 33.

10 Gann, American Music, 2.

11 William K. Gallo and N. Lee Orr, “Buck, Dudley,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, accessed March 28, 2016, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.libraries.uc.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/04240.

12 Douglas E. Bomberger, MacDowell (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 41.

13 Donna K. Anderson, “Griffes, Charles T.,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, accessed February 22, 2016, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.libraries.uc.edu/subscribers/grove/music/11770.

3 an American style, contrasted by Carter and Barber’s use of American influences. The reductive style study will be presented in two main sections. The first, comprised of

Chapters 1 to 3, examines elements in each sonata that can be traced back to Europe, including genre, form, compositional techniques, and other aspects acknowledged by the composer. The second section, Chapters 4 and 5, focuses on those musical elements that remain. I argue that it is the synthesis of old and new that results in Ives’s and Copland’s

American style, contrasted with the native elements in Carter’s and Barber’s piano sonatas.

The first chapter examines the role that traditional forms and the sonata principle had on each work, highlighting how each composer’s background and training influenced his use of traditional forms. The second chapter considers two compositional devices: the use of motives as a compositional framework in each sonata and quotation. Though motivic development is not unique to the European tradition, this chapter examines how it is specific European influences and teachers that resulted in this technique. Though

Ives’s use of quotation is exceptional, this chapter specifically explores the quotation of

European music within Ives’s Concord Sonata. Completing the first section of the reductive style study, Chapter 3 examines two European compositional techniques: the use of fugue in both Carter’s and Barber’s sonata, and Barber’s use of Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique.

After examining specific instances of European influence, Chapter 4 considers the idiosyncratic rhythmic techniques and their genesis within each composer. This includes original and experimental techniques (such as Carter’s creation of metric modulation) and the influence of jazz on Copland, Carter, and Barber. Chapter 5 returns to form and

4 compositional techniques, beginning with Ives’s creation of cumulative form found in the first and fourth movements of the Concord Sonata and Copland’s free form in his Piano

Sonata’s third movement, and concludes by examining the influence of American ultramodernist composers on the harmony of Carter’s Piano Sonata. These four piano sonatas demonstrate a union of American and original influences, with each composer forging his own style.

5 Chapter 1

Form and Genre

Sonatas as a genre first arose towards the end of the sixteenth century, with the label generally signifying a multi-movement instrumental work distinct from the Baroque dance suite.1 As the genre progressed, it gained more consistent attributes, such as generally referring to pieces of three or four movements by 1750 and acquiring common forms and characteristics for each movement in the Classical period—sonata form for the first movement, a slow second movement, followed by a minuet and trio, and ending with a rondo.2 This cycle of movements largely continued throughout the nineteenth century, with most composers continuing to use a four-movement model, but with an increasing amount of structural freedom. With the arrival of the twentieth century, the sonata genre had lost many of the traditional attributes with a greater sense of compositional freedom, including the multi-movement structure and its association with sonata principle.3 It is at this point in the long development of the sonata as both a form and a genre when Charles

Ives, Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, and Samuel Barber composed their piano sonatas.

Cycle of Movements

The overall movement structure of Ives’s Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord” seems to conform to the expectations of this genre. Musicologist Geoffrey Block notes, “Just as

Beethoven had explored the boundaries of classical sonata form and style without abandoning its fundamental ideologies, so Ives stretched and reinterpreted the nineteenth-

1 Sandra Mangsen, et al., “Sonata,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, accessed May 5, 2016, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.libraries.uc.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/26191.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

6 century European and American traditions.”4 Ives’s Concord Sonata utilizes a four- movement structure: “Emerson,” a slow first movement, followed by the contrasting

“Hawthorne” with the marking “this movement is supposed to be played as fast as possible,”5 then “The Alcotts,” and last “Thoreau.” However, Ives opens his Essays

Before a Sonata by writing “a group of four pieces, called a sonata for want of a more exact name, as the form, perhaps substance, does not justify it.”6 Ives acknowledged that his Concord Sonata had deviated from the traditional sonata structure, but Block suggests that the composer’s use of the term “sonata” derived from the nineteenth century, where it could encompass works as diverse as sonatas by Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms.7

Musicologist Rosalie Perry also acknowledges the structural aspects in this work, suggesting “Ives’s use of the term sonata is close to the way the term was used in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries for almost any kind of instrumental composition, implying nothing about form.”8

Ives’s use of the four-movement structure and his use of “nineteenth-century structural and aesthetic principles of cyclic form”9 (further discussed in Chapter 5 with

Ives’s use of cumulative form) suggest that the overall structure of the Concord Sonata is

4 Geoffrey Block, Ives: Concord Sonata (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 31.

5 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2, “Concord,” ed. Stephen Drury (New York: Dover Publications, 2012), 22.

6 Ibid., xiv.

7 Block, Ives, 31.

8 Rosalie Perry, Charles Ives and the American Mind (Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1974), 32.

9 Block, Ives, 42.

7 a melding of original and European ideas, a theme that can be found throughout much of his oeuvre.

The three-movement structure of Aaron Copland’s Piano Sonata—“Molto moderato,” “Vivace,” and “Andante sostenuto”—is common throughout his output, in both his solo and orchestral works. In an interview with Copland, Leo Smit notes that this slow-fast-slow arrangement is also evident in Copland’s Violin Sonata, Piano Fantasy,

Billy the Kid, and Appalachian Spring.10 Copland himself admitted: “It [the Piano

Sonata] isn’t very different really from an honest-to-God sonata, is it? It has a first movement and a slow movement—but the last movement is rather different.”11

The conventional influence upon Copland’s Piano Sonata can be traced back to his first composition teacher, Rubin Goldmark. Speaking about his teacher, Copland recalled:

The Piano Sonata I always connect with my old teacher, Rubin Goldmark…. He knew the ground stuff. He knew harmony and he knew counterpoint and form. In the conventional way he could make all that clear to you, but he had no sympathy at all with the contemporary idiom…. You couldn’t show him anything that was even close to Debussy harmonies without his getting sort of uncomfortable.12

Aspects of Copland’s Piano Sonata are influenced by the conservative sonata structure, and like Ives’s Concord Sonata, represents a synthesis of European and American influences.

Elliott Carter’s two-movement Piano Sonata also has precedent in the genre.

Beethoven and Haydn each composed two-movement sonatas, experimenting with different formal structures. Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Op. 49, no. 1 is organized slow–

10 Neil Butterworth, The Music of Aaron Copland (New York: Toccata Press, 1985), 204.

11 Ibid., 206.

12 Ibid.

8 fast, his Piano Sonata Op. 78 is organized fast–fast, and his Piano Sonata Op. 49, no. 2,

Piano Sonata Op. 90, and Piano Sonata Op. 111 are fast–slow. Like Beethoven, Haydn wrote in different formal structures, such as fast–slow piano sonatas (Hob. XVI: 18), slow–fast (Hob. XVI: 25, Hob. XVI: 42, Hob. XVI: 44, and Hob. XVI: 48), and fast–fast

(Hob. XVI: 40 and Hob. XVI: 41). The nineteenth and early-twentieth century saw a greater freedom in the number of movements in a sonata, as found in the sonatas of Liszt,

Brahms, and Scriabin.

Traditional sonata movement structure can be found in Samuel Barber’s Piano

Sonata, Op. 26. Each of the four movements conforms to the conventional structure: a sonata form “Allegro energico” first movement, a scherzo “Allegro vivace e leggiero,” a slow “Adagio mesto,” and a quick “Allegro con spirito” finale. Musicologist James

Fairleigh suggests that though the harmonies of Barber’s work are contemporary, the structure and other compositional techniques closely adhere to those found in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sonatas.13 Musicologist Barbara Heyman notes that many of

Barber’s early compositional efforts were closely related to the music he was studying

(which includes works by Clementi, J. S. Bach, and Beethoven), an influence that he never lost.14 Each of these sonatas’ overall structure can be followed back to the conventional instrumental sonata that had developed in Western European music, demonstrating its influence on these American composers.

13 James P. Fairleigh, “Serialism in Samuel Barber’s Solo Piano Works,” Piano Quarterly 18, no. 72 (1970): 13.

14 Barbara Heyman, Samuel Barber: The Composer and His Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 12.

9 The Sonata Principle

The rise of the sonata as a genre helped to solidify the sonata-allegro form as the first (and often fourth) movement form. As a major element of this genre is its harmonic implications, this document will refer to the sonata principle, as opposed to the eighteenth-century sonata form, as a means of identifying the Western European influence on the first movements of Copland’s, Carter’s, and Barber’s sonatas.

Larry Starr describes the first movement of Copland’s Piano Sonata as “a rapprochement between the composer’s characteristic techniques of thematic economy and harmonic complexity, on one hand, and the traditional requirements of a ‘regular sonata allegro form with two themes.’”15 A diagram of the sonata principle and main themes of this movement evinces Starr’s observations (see Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Sonata Principle in Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, first movement.

Exposition Development Recapitulation Coda P T S K (P) (K) P S (P) m. 1 m. m. m. m. 96 m. m. 196 m. m. 26 58 85 123 223 237

Copland underscores his use of sonata principle by differentiating the first two themes through a harmonic change, moving from five flats (and a tonal center of Bb minor) to two flats (and a tonal center of G minor).16 Starr suggests that this harmonic change differentiates between the two themes, returning to a technique often used by

15 Larry Starr, “War Drums, Tolling Bells, and Copland’s Piano Sonata,” in Aaron Copland and His World, ed. Carol Oja and Judith Tick (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 241.

16 Benjamin Woods, “The North American Piano Sonata in Transition from Tonal to Atonal Styles” (DMA thesis, Midwestern State University, 1972), 29.

10 Classical composers such as Franz Joseph Haydn,17 while Gui Sook Lee writes, “The interval of a third in the key relationship between the first and second themes of the exposition…was one of the characteristics of the Romantic sonata.”18 Copland also follows this approximation of Classical sonata harmonic structure within the recapitulation. The primary theme, slightly modified, reappears at m. 196 in the original tonal center of Bb minor. When the secondary theme returns at m. 223, it retains the same key signature, following the same key found in the recapitulations (see Example 1.1).

Example 1.1 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 221–24.

This contemporary re-imagining of the sonata principle can also be found in the first movement of Carter’s Piano Sonata. There were a number of different influences on

Carter at this time, which resulted in a traditionally structured sonata principle movement.

David Schiff claims that two composers influenced Carter: Aaron Copland and Claude

Debussy.19 Copland’s influence is felt in the opening chords of each movement in

17 Starr, “War Drums,” 241.

18 Gui Sook Lee, “Aspects of Neo-Classicism in the First Movements of Piano Sonatas by Barber, Sessions, Copland and Stravinsky” (DMA thesis, Ohio State University, 1996), 33.

19 David Schiff, The Music of Elliott Carter, 2nd ed. (New York: Cornell University Press, 1983), 203.

11 Carter’s Sonata, and “also cites, in passing, Copland’s Piano Variations.”20 Schiff proposes that Debussy’s influence “is felt more in the realm of structure; the first movement pursues an improvisatory-sounding style.”21 Paul Griffiths goes further, writing that Carter “returned to America a fluent neo-classicist”22 after his studies in Paris with Nadia Boulanger from 1932 to 1935. All of these influences are evident in the form of the first movement.

Schiff writes: “[Carter’s] Sonata displays a conspicuously sophisticated approach to the classical forms of sonata-allegro and fugue. The merger of an improvisatory style with classical structures does not feel strained or artificial.”23 Carter combined the traditional elements of the sonata principle with a few departures (see Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2 Sonata Principle in Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement.

Exposition Devel. Recapitulation Coda I P I P T S K (P) P I T K (P) m. m. m. m. m. m. m. m. 134 m. m. m. m. m. 1 15 24 33 71 83 109 224 252 256 266 272

I = Introduction

The first movement generally follows the main structure of the sonata principle, with the

“device of the unexpected interruptions giving the music its improvisatory quality.”24

20 Ibid., 204.

21 Ibid.

22 Paul Griffiths, “Carter, Elliott (Cook),” The Oxford Companion to Music, Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, accessed February 15, 2016, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.libraries.uc.edu/subscriber/article/opr/t114/e1191.

23 Schiff, The Music of Elliott Carter, 208.

24 Ibid., 209.

12 In addition to the interruptions, the development causes the greatest challenges in diagramming this movement according to the sonata principle. Carter claimed the sonata has “no true development in the classical sense…all the ideas are in a constant state of change, expansion, contraction, intensification.”25 The composer’s development is a toccata-like improvisation upon the primary theme, but there are instances of new thematic material at m. 156 (see Examples 1.2 and 1.3), m. 178 (Examples 1.4 and 1.5), and m. 202 (Examples 1.6. and 1.7). Each of these themes shares a textural similarity to a previous theme: m. 156 is related to the left-hand secondary theme at m. 86; m. 178 to m. 51; and m. 202 to the introductory material at m. 12.

Example 1.2 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 86–89.

25 Elliott Carter, “Program Notes,” quoted in ibid., 208.

13 Example 1.3 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 156–60.

Example 1.4 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 51–53.

Example 1.5 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 178–80.

14 Example 1.6 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 12–14.

Example 1.7 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 202–4.

Similar to Copland’s sonata, Carter differentiates the primary and secondary themes harmonically, once again mimicking the tonal structure of a Classical sonata. The introduction and primary material is centered on the tonal area of B. With the transition beginning at m. 78, Carter switches the key signature to four flats, changing the implied tonal center enharmonically to G#. In the recapitulation, Carter returns to the B tonal area, continuing through both the returns of the primary and secondary thematic material.

Despite Carter’s improvisatory ingenuity, this movement has its roots in the European sonata principle.

15 The last of these sonatas to utilize the sonata principle is in the first movement of

Barber’s Piano Sonata, perhaps the most traditional of these four American piano sonatas.

Barbara Heyman claims that when Barber and his contemporaries were exploring its ancestors, they did not look at other living composers, but rather to Liszt, R. Schumann,

Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and Scriabin.26 As a result, this movement’s structure is highly conventional (see Figure 1.3 below).

Figure 1.3 Sonata Form in Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, first movement.

Exposition Development Recapitulation Coda P T S K (P) (K) P T S K (K) m. 1 m. 11 m. 23 m. 35 m. 51 m. 75 m. m. m. m. m. 110 120 129 141 149

Sarah Masterson succinctly outlines Barber’s harmonic structure throughout this movement, highlighting its similarity to the Classical sonata and its merger of traditional materials and those derived from Barber’s use of twelve-tone techniques. She writes,

“Although the sonata is tonally centric, it does not maintain the traditional dominant- tonic relationship between the S zones in the exposition and recapitulation.”27 The first thematic material is centered on Eb. This is evident in the key signature, the repeated left- hand Eb 1/2s, acting as a pedal, and the half-step relationship around the dominant Bb of the pitch material in the primary theme (see Example 1.8).

26 Heyman, Samuel Barber, 307.

27 Sarah E. Masterson, “Approaches to Sonata Form in Mid-Twentieth-Century American Piano Sonatas” (DMA thesis, University of Connecticut, 2011), 82.

16 Example 1.8 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, first movement, mm. 1–2.

Barber deviates from the sonata principle in the exposition in his transitional and secondary material. In Gui Sook Lee’s analysis, she outlines eight twelve-tone rows that occur beginning in the transition at m. 9, concluding, “Barber’s experimentation with serial writing as a compositional technique is explored in the transition and second theme section.”28 Because of the conventionality of the form, this sonata differentiates the themes again in the recapitulation. Barber transposes the secondary thematic material in the recapitulation at m. 129, beginning with a B tonal center in the exposition (see

Example 1.9) and moving to a D tonal center in the recapitulation (see Example 1.10).

Example 1.9 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, first movement, mm. 22–23.

28 Lee, “Aspects of Neo-Classicism,” 30.

17 Example 1.10 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, first movement, mm. 128–29.

Instead of relying on the traditional sonata principle harmonic relationships, Barber explores twentieth-century techniques, synthesizing tradition with his own twelve-tone rows, combining two distinct European influences.

The first movements of the sonatas by Copland, Carter, and Barber represent a continuing of the sonata genre and sonata principle. Yet the formal influence of traditional European music does not stop with these movements. Many of the other movements’ large-scale forms also derive from European models.

Use of Other European Forms

Ives’s Concord Sonata presents the most problematic formal structure of these four sonatas, as none of its movements closely adhere to any traditional form. This does not mean, however, these movements do not share any characteristics with traditional forms. Geoffrey Block describes the first movement, “Emerson,” as “resembling a rondo perhaps more than any other classical form”29 despite noting that the recurring themes diverge from the original statements and are often presented out of order. J. Peter

29 Block, Ives, 42.

18 Burkholder posits that “Emerson” is actually “loosely related to sonata form,”30 suggesting that “the thematic plan of the movement…combines elements of sonata and ternary forms with the idea of continuous development and of incorporating several movements in one, in a manner reminiscent of Liszt’s Sonata in B Minor.”31 Each of these hypotheses posit that there is some connection to Classical forms in this experimental work. To make these divisions clear, reproduced below is Block’s formal diagram of “Emerson” to which Burkholder’s suggested sections have been added (see

Figure 1.4). Because of the large number of unmeasured systems, in lieu of measure numbers, the page number and system will be listed, as they correspond to Dover’s 2012 published edition, edited by Stephen Drury (page number/system number/measure number [if provided]).

Figure 1.4 Formal Diagram of Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,” “Emerson.”

RONDO Section 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 System 4/1– 7/1– 11/1– 15/1– 16/4– 17/2/2 18/3– 19/4/2 7/5 10/4 14/4 16/3 17/2/1 –18/4 19/4/1 –21/4 SONATA Section Exposition Development Recapitulation Coda Theme P S (P) (S) P S -

Block himself described these sections as “murky” and chose them with recurrences of the first theme, cautioning that sections blend from one to the next.32 Neither of these formal structures adequately captures the improvisatory nature of “Emerson,” and this movement’s structure will be further explored as “cumulative form” in Chapter 5.

30 J. Peter Burkholder, All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses of Musical Borrowing (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 353.

31 Ibid., 351.

32 Block, Ives, 42–43.

19 The second movement of the Concord Sonata, “Hawthorne,” is a formally ambiguous movement, which John Kirkpatrick described as a free fantasy.33 The third movement, “The Alcotts,” presents clear ternary structure. The presence of slow ternary third movement reveals the influence of the traditional sonata genre, with many musical precedents (see Figure 1.5).

Figure 1.5 Ternary Form in Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,” “The Alcotts.”

A B A1 52/1 54/3/2 55/3

The final movement of this sonata, “Thoreau,” offers many of the same formal ambiguities presented by “Emerson.” Once again, Block describes this movement as resembling a rondo, with only the “extra-musical features of the sonata” such as programmatic content tying it to the traditional sonata principle.34

Figure 1.6 Formal Diagram of Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,” “Thoreau.”

RONDO Section 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 System 57/1 58/2/2 60/1 60/5 62/5 63/3 65/3

In choosing these sections, Block admits that many of them elide into one another and admits, “Other possible choices, of course, might have deemphasized the rondo character of these movements [“Emerson” and “Thoreau”].”35 Each of these sections denotes either a return of the original thematic material in some form or the introduction of new motivic

33 Burkholder, All Made of Tunes, 353.

34 Block, Ives, 43.

35 Ibid.

20 material. Ives’s originality in constructing this final movement as cumulative form will be explored in Chapter 5.

Ives’s Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord” may have been influenced by traditional sonata structures, but such an influence must be tempered by the freedom and originality in his writing. In the movements to be further investigated by Copland, Carter, and

Barber, a stricter adherence to traditional forms will be observed.

In a manner similar to Ives’s “Emerson,” there are differing multiple interpretations of the second movement to Copland’s Piano Sonata. In an interview with

Leo Smit, Copland described this movement as follows:

The idea of writing music—serious concert music—that a European would recognize as having been written by an American. It seemed to me important, also, that we should have our own musical language, based on the great works of the past wherever they were created, but nevertheless, a music that reflected the life that we lived here and now.36

Part of this combination of originality and European influence can be found in the form of this movement. Musicologist Neil Butterworth describes this movement as a loose minuet and trio ternary form, with the appearance of the second theme in m. 195 heralding the trio (see Example 1.12). He strengthens his argument for this formal structure by noting the motivic relationship between the two sections, “The second subject is derived from the opening bars [see Example 1.11], answered by the sequence of sixths taken from the accompanying left hand.”37

36 Butterworth, The Music of Aaron Copland, 208.

37 Ibid., 85.

21 Example 1.11 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, second movement, mm. 4–8.

Example 1.12 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, second movement, mm. 195–97.

Considering this movement in Butterworth’s ternary structure would keep this scherzo well within the traditional sonata genre, but would result in a lopsided minuet and trio section, with the final return of the A section greatly truncated (see Figure 1.7).

Figure 1.7 Ternary Structure of Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, second movement.

A (Minuet) B (Trio) A1 (Minuet) m. 1 m. 195 m. 274

Michael Haberkorn describes this movement as a “scherzo-style Rondo” (see

Figure 1.8).38 He supports his argument by citing Copland’s numerous reprises of the original thematic material and the motivic similarities between the different sections (to be explored in Chapter 2).

38 Michael H. Haberkorn, “A Study and Performance of the Piano Sonatas of Samuel Barber, Elliott Carter, and Aaron Copland” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1979), 27.

22 Figure 1.8 Rondo Structure of Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, second movement.

A B A1 C A2 B1 A3 m. 1 m. 54 m. 79 m. 126 m. 178 m. 253 m. 274

Each thematic return is varied from its original presentation and often shortened, but the similarity to a traditional rondo form is unmistakable. Both of these formal designs show the influence of European musical traditions on Copland’s second movement.

The second and final movement of Carter’s Piano Sonata offers an obvious ternary structure, with a slow prologue, fast fugue, and slow epilogue.

Figure 1.9 Ternary Structure of Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, second movement.

Prologue Fugue Epilogue m. 1 m. 104 m. 330

Carter’s originality in this movement is not evident simply in the formal design, which is traditional, but in the purpose that this alternation of slow and fast section serves. David

Schiff advocates that the second movement serves a dual purpose as a “portmanteau of slow movement and fugue.”39 The epilogue section has yet another purpose, as it also recapitulates material from both movements. This is first found at mm. 388–92, recalling a similar harmonic effect from the first movement at mm. 123–28 (cf., Examples 1.9 and

1.10), while Carter’s use of thirds in mm. 400–402 is reminiscent of the opening material of the first movement (see Example 1.13).40

39 Schiff, The Music of Elliott Carter, 205.

40 Haberkorn, “A Study and Performance,” 78.

23 Example 1.13 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, second movement, mm. 388–92.

Example 1.14 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 122–28.

Though Carter’s formal design is typical of the European tradition, the multiple purposes that it serves sets it apart, once again showing how this sonata is the result of a synthesis of tradition and ingenuity.

The second and third movements of Barber’s Piano Sonata are clearly modelled on traditional forms and genres: a rondo scherzo and a ternary chaconne, respectively. In her thesis “Anticipating the Unknown: Applications of Expectation Theory to Rhythm in

24 Barber’s Sonata for Piano,” Jennifer Oliver outlines three contrasting sections, found for the first time at mm. 1, 25, and 45 (see Examples 1.15, 1.16, and 1.17).41

Example 1.15: Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, second movement, mm. 1–4.

Example 1.16 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, second movement, mm. 26–30.

Example 1.17 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, second movement, mm. 47–49.

The modified form that results is ABCAB1A1B2 (see Figure 1.10).

41 Jennifer Eileen Oliver, “Anticipating the Unknown: Application of Expectation Theory to Rhythm in Barber’s Sonata for Piano” (DMA thesis, Rice University, 2014), 34.

25 Figure 1.10 Rondo Form in Samuel Barber’s Piano Sonata, Op. 26, second movement.

A B C A B1 A1 B2 m. 1 m. 27 m. 47 m. 81 m. 109 m. 126 m. 152

The third movement opens with “an ostinato bass comprising six dyads (a vertical statement of twelve tones) [that] is transformed in measures 3–4 to an arpeggio….”42

This ostinato (see Example 1.18) continues throughout the movement, going through several transpositions and variations.

Example 1.18 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, third movement, mm. 1–5.

The ternary form of the movement can be determined through changes in the melodic material, keeping the ostinato bass throughout each section (see Figure 1.11).

Figure 1.11 Ternary Form in Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, third movement.

A B A1 m. 1 m. 11 m. 28

42 Heyman, Samuel Barber, 309.

26 Forms associated with the sonata genre, ranging from the large-scale cycle of movements and use of the sonata principle, to traditional forms, influenced each of these four American sonatas. As has been shown, each of these composers also modified these formal structures, adjusting each movement’s structure according to his own compositional aesthetic and creativity. However, while Ives’s changes to formal structure are a deliberate attempt to distance the Concord Sonata from the “deformity” of repetition in classical forms,43 and Copland’s are an aid to his deliberate creation of

“American-sounding” music, those by Carter and Barber reflect their own compositional ingenuity.

43 Charles Ives, “Essays Before a Sonata” in Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,” ed. Stephen Drury (New York: Dover Publications, 2012), xliii.

27 Chapter 2

Thematic and Motivic Compositional Techniques

Tracing the influence of American compositional techniques poses challenges not found when analyzing European forms and genres. This chapter will examine these four

American sonatas for compositional techniques that derive from each composer’s own training and development. This could be an influential teacher, a compositional device commonly associated with a specific musical genre, or the acknowledged influence of a previous or contemporaneous composer. Thus, this chapter will delve into each composer’s biography as needed to examine where the impetus for a certain compositional device may have originated to help determine which traits are European in origin and which are truly original American.

Motivic Basis of Thematic Material

In his essay “Ives and the Nineteenth-Century European Tradition,” J. Peter

Burkholder claims that the previous understanding of Ives as a uniquely avant-garde composer is incomplete, suggesting, “For Ives is not only an American but a composer working in European genres, using European procedures, and conforming to European ideas about the nature and purpose of art music.”1 Though the influence of the European tradition is generally associated with Ives’s composition teacher at Yale, Horatio Parker, his father, George Ives, “taught his son conventional counterpoint and the old contrapuntal forms of fugue and canon, along with introducing him to the Bach repertoire

1 J. Peter Burkholder, “Ives and the Nineteenth-Century European Tradition,” in Charles Ives and the Classical Tradition, ed. Geoffrey Block and J. Peter Burkholder (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 11.

28 that became a lifelong daily study and recreation”2 in addition to encouraging Ives’s experimental tendencies. This is not to understate the influence that studying with

Horatio Parker had on him: Ives’s first compositions in the European musical tradition come from assignments in Parker’s composition classes.3

Parker’s influence manifests itself in Ives’s compositional techniques in several ways, including his “learning from European styles and procedures through imitation.”4

In the Concord Sonata, one of the imitated compositional characteristics is Ives’s use of motivic unity and development within individual movements and throughout the sonata as a whole. These compositional traits derive from two nineteenth-century German composers, Ludwig van Beethoven and Johannes Brahms.

David C. Paul writes, “Two motives from the beginning of Emerson also permeate the sonata: the ascending three notes of the initial wedge gesture, each a whole tone apart, capped by a falling fifth [(a)], and the Beethovenian ‘oracle [(b)],’”5 referring to the opening four-note “fate” motive of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, Op. 67 (see

Example 2.1).

2 Jan Swafford, Charles Ives: A Life with Music (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996), 90.

3 J. Peter Burkholder, ed., Charles Ives and His World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 12.

4 Block and Burkholder, Classical Tradition, 22.

5 David C. Paul, Charles Ives in the Mirror: American Histories of an Iconic Composer (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 16.

29 Example 2.1 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,” “Emerson,” m. 1.

In addition to these two recurring motives, Geoffrey Block notes “two musically and programmatically interrelated thematic families emerge as centrally prominent from one movement to another.”6 He refers to these two as the “human faith” family and the “corn field” family after Stephen Foster’s minstrel song “Massa’s in de Cold Ground” (see

Examples 2.2 and 2.3).

Example 2.2 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,” “The Alcotts,” 56/4.

6 Geoffrey Block, Ives: Concord Sonata (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 32.

30 Example 2.3 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,” “Emerson,” 8/1.

These four motives and themes recur throughout the sonata, often restructured, in a manner that “Ives had learned mainly from Brahms, perhaps, to saturate a texture with melodic motives, sometimes highlighting them, sometimes submerging.”7 In Block’s analysis of the Concord Sonata, he notes that each thematic family is composed of related motives that are subjected to many of the conventional variation techniques, such as inversion and rhythmic augmentation.8

Of interest is the manner in which Ives introduces the material that comprises his thematic family. The opening wedge and Beethovenian oracle motives, and the “corn field” theme are introduced near, if not right at the beginning, of “Emerson.” However, the first full appearance of the “human faith” theme does not occur until the end of “The

Alcotts.” Ives does, however, foreshadow the appearance of this theme throughout the previous movements. In the main thematic material in “Emerson” (see Example 2.1), the opening rising third and falling scale figures are both inverted motives derived from the

“human faith” theme. Such foreshadowing continues into “Hawthorne.” With a rising

7 Swafford, Charles Ives, 259.

8 Block, Ives, 33.

31 scale followed by a falling interval (a), repeated eight-note rhythmic patterns (b), and the pattern marked (c), which all derive from the “human faith” melody9 (see Example 2.4).

Example 2.4 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,” “Hawthorne,” 32/1–4.

9 Ibid., 36.

32 Ives’s foreshadowing technique and motivic saturation suggest his musical education at Yale, but he continued to reinvent those techniques throughout his career to create his own unique “American” sound. The origin of these motives and thematic families will be explored later in this chapter.

Many of the external influences on Copland’s Piano Sonata came from his early composition teacher, Rubin Goldmark. His first studies in Europe were with Paul Vidal

“whose attitude to music was conservative—not far removed from that of Rubin

Goldmark.”10 However, Copland’s most influential teacher proved to be Nadia

Boulanger. During the years Copland studied with her (1921–24), she taught harmony, counterpoint, music history, analysis, organ, and composition at the École Normale de

Musique and at the American Conservatory at Fontainbleu.11 Copland recalled: “She knew everything about music—what came before Bach, Stravinsky’s latest works, what came after Stravinsky, and everything in between. Technical skills—counterpoint, orchestration, sight-reading—were second nature to her.”12 Her composition students were both instructed in conservative musical studies (all of her students composed motets and passacaglias13), while simultaneously encouraging experimentation and exploration of new musical ideas and genres.14

10 Neil Butterworth, The Music of Aaron Copland (New York: Toccata Press, 1985), 286.

11 Caroline Potter, “Boulanger, Nadia,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, accessed February 15 2016, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.libraries.uc.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/03705.

12 Aaron Copland and Vivian Perlis, Copland: 1900 through 1942 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984), 63.

13 Ibid., 78.

14 Butterworth, The Music of Aaron Copland, 17.

33 These numerous European influences manifest themselves in Copland’s Piano

Sonata partially through the traditional motivic construction and cyclicism of all three movements. As musicologist Larry Starr notes, the opening three-chord gesture in the first movement comprises the “basic material of the entire first movement [that] proceeds with ineluctable logic from the first two bars, and the echoes of these three chords continue to resound [(a)]… throughout the remaining two movements of the work”15 (see

Example 2.5).

Example 2.5 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 1–4.

A three-note gesture often signals the beginning of a new section in Copland’s first movement, heralding moments such as the first transitional material at m. 26 (Example

2.6), the beginning of the development at m. 96 (Example 2.7), the Allegro section within the development (Example 2.8), and the recapitulation.

15 Larry Starr, “War Drums, Tolling Bells, and Copland’s Piano Sonata” in Aaron Copland and His World, ed. Carol J. Oja and Judith Tick (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 239.

34 Example 2.6 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 26–27.

Example 2.7 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 96–98.

Example 2.8 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 133–35.

Copland’s motivic unity continues throughout the following two movements, with the three-chord gesture returning numerous times throughout both the second and third movements. It signifies an abrupt shift at m. 54 in the second movement (Example 2.9), as well as serving as transitional material at m. 89 (Example 2.10), with similar musical material returning at m. 251.

35 Example 2.9 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, second movement, mm. 54–56.

Example 2.10 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, second movement, mm. 89–91.

Copland’s third movement also opens with a three-chord gesture, recalling the opening of the first movement (Example. 2.11). Material from the first movement returns cyclically at both m. 89 (Example 2.12) and m. 148 (Example 2.13), ending the work with a final recollection of the opening.

Example 2.11 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, third movement, mm. 1–2.

36 Example 2.12 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, third movement, mm. 88–91.

Example 2.13 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, third movement, mm. 148–49.

The unity throughout this sonata ties it closely to the traditional compositional practices associated with the piano sonata genre, with composers from Haydn and

Beethoven to Brahms having respectively pioneered and utilized such techniques.

Elliott Carter’s music, including his Piano Sonata, reflects the twin influences from his early training and career—Charles Ives and Nadia Boulanger. David Schiff writes, “For Carter, the conflict between Europe and America coalesced around his formative relationships with Charles Ives and Nadia Boulanger…[they] took on the roles of surrogate parents.”16 Carter’s first important musical influences were with the

American ultra-modernists, such as Charles Ives, Henry Cowell, Edgard Varèse, Ruth

Crawford Seeger, and Conlon Nancarrow, introduced to him at concerts during his

16 David Schiff, The Music of Elliott Carter, 2nd ed. (New York: Cornell University Press, 1983), 8.

37 studies into modern film and literature at the Horace Mann School from 1922 to 1924.17

He continued his studies at Harvard, studying literature and philosophy before composition with Walter Piston.18

It was only after these early experiences, largely in contemporary idioms, that

Carter began to feel the influences of European traditions, because of his studies with

Nadia Boulanger. Unlike many of her other students, Carter did not compose much music during his studies in Europe—rather he focused on studies into counterpoint and early music. Schiff notes that this study of counterpoint “taught him the benefit of generating music from strict principles, and of thinking of melody, harmony and rhythm in systematically related ways. He [Carter] has often said that his study of Bach cantatas with Boulanger was a defining experience.”19

These two compositional influences, ultra-modernism and early music, would come to fruition with his Piano Sonata and later his Cello Sonata, as Carter “set out on a course of exploration that would gradually synthesize many of the ideas of European modernism (composers such as Claude Debussy, Béla Bartók, and Alban Berg) with those of the American ultra-modernists.”20 In a manner similar to Copland, one of the

European influences on Carter’s Piano Sonata is its motivic unity, and the underlying harmonic implications reflect the composer’s modernist musical language.

17 Paul Griffiths, “Carter, Elliott (Cook),” The Oxford Companion to Music, Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, accessed February 15, 2016, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.libraries.uc.edu/subscriber/article/opr/t114/e1191.

18 Ibid.

19 Schiff, The Music of Elliott Carter, 13.

20 Griffiths, “Elliott, Carter (Cook).”

38 David Schiff suggests that Copland’s Piano Sonata influenced Carter’s Piano

Sonata, but he treated the musical materials very differently. If Copland’s Sonata is “built entirely of short, reiterated ideas,”21 Carter’s Piano sonata “moves in the opposite direction; its materials are dramatic and charged with energy.”22 Schiff suggests that there were five composers who influenced this composition: Beethoven, Boulanger, Copland,

Ives, and Liszt.23

Carter describes the opening of the first movement as “the first passage in my works that is not primarily thematic. Its central idea comes from the total sounds of the piano writing.”24 In his notes, Carter writes that this opening contains the motivic material from which everything that follows in the movement is derived, with five main motives: the opening octave leap (a), a theme in thirds (b), quick arpeggio figures (c) (see

Example 2.14), a repeated-note rhythmic pattern (d) (see Example 2.15), and a rising bass melody in octaves (e) (see Example 2.16).25

21 Schiff, The Music of Elliott Carter, 19.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid.

24 Else Stone and Kurt Stone, eds., The Writings of Elliott Carter: An American Composer Looks at Modern Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 195.

25 Schiff, The Music of Elliott Carter, 208.

39 Example 2.14 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 1–4.

Example 2.15 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 12–13.

Example 2.16 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 20–22.

Two of these motives can be traced back to the opening: the opening leap belies the influence of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 29 “Hammerklavier,”26 while the fourths

26 Ibid., 207.

40 that make up the quick arpeggio are indicative of Copland’s influence.27 However, these scorrevole fourths are indicative of a different type of influence on Carter’s music. Schiff describes these gestures as a “jazzy toccata,” and Carter has claimed that jazz pianists

Fats Waller and Art Tatum influenced these passages.28 As will be further explored in

Chapter 4, Carter’s American influences manifest themselves through syncopations and other rhythmic techniques, even though the formal treatment of these techniques derive from Carter’s traditional education.

Samuel Barber’s musical studies centered on the canonic European composers, although his formative early musical studies occurred within the United States. Barber entered the recently opened Curtis Institute of Music in 1924, studying piano with George

Boyle and Isabelle Vengerova, voice with Emilio de Gogorza, and composition and music theory with Rosario Scalero. 29 It was Scalero’s pedagogy that helped to shape

Barber’s neo-Romantic aesthetic. Musicologist Barbara Heyman writes, “The rigorous, traditional education Scalero dispensed in counterpoint, the experience in writing for all genres, and training in all musical forms—large and small—unquestionably left an indelible mark.”30 In studying counterpoint and form, his students studied the works of

J. S. Bach, Monteverdi, Palestrina, and di Lasso.31 This emphasis on compositional

27 Ann Schein, interviewed by author, Cincinnati, OH, April 2, 2016.

28 Schiff, The Music of Elliott Carter, 209.

29 Barbara B. Heyman, “Barber, Samuel,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, accessed February 15, 2016, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.libraries.uc.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/01994.

30 Barbara Heyman, Samuel Barber: The Composer and His Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 35.

31 Ibid., 35–36.

41 models was enhanced by Barber’s many travels to Europe (particularly Italy), where he continued his work with Scalero.32

In Barber’s Piano Sonata, Op. 26, his neo-Romantic tendency can be heard in the economic motivic unity and construction of the first three movements. Describing the first movement, Heyman writes, “[It] is generated from an extraordinary economy of thematic material.” Sarah Masterson identifies several motives that are introduced within the first and second themes that Barber manipulates throughout the remainder of the first movement.33 The motive that begins the first movement with a half-step organized main thematic material (a) is paired with the rising left-hand motive (b) (see Example 2.17).

Example 2.17 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, first movement, mm. 1–2.

The second theme introduces the other two important motives: the rising half-step and fourth that begins the second theme (c), and the accompanying sextuplet figure (d) (see

Example 2.18).

32 Heyman, “Barber, Samuel.”

33 Sarah E. Masterson, “Approaches to Sonata Form in Mid-Twentieth-Century American Piano Sonatas” (DMA thesis, University of Connecticut, 2011), 83.

42 Example 2.18 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, first movement, mm. 23–25.

These four motives are modified throughout the movement to generate the themes. The transitional material at m. 9 is derived from (a), as is the passage from mm.

14 to 19. Barber foreshadows the appearance of (d) in the triplet sequences in mm. 20–

22, and modifies it further in the fingerwork passage that immediately follows (mm. 32–

33). Even the closing thematic material, with its obvious tonal implications, is generated from motive (c). Barber continues to modify these four motives throughout the development and recapitulation. The motivic generation in the first movement of

Barber’s Piano Sonata, Op. 26 highlights his conservative tendencies, and reflects of his traditional and neo-Romantic musical style.

The second and third movements of Barber’s sonata are organized differently than the first, showing a greater motivic freedom, but are still motivically generated. Heyman writes, “In II and III, the half-step features prominently as an organizing interval.”34 The three main melodic sections that make up the rondo second movement (outlined in

Chapter 1) are each organized around this half-step interval. It begins the opening right- hand melody, which is comprised largely of falling half steps (a) (see Example 2.19).

34 Heyman, Samuel Barber, 308.

43 Example 2.19 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, second movement, mm. 1–4.

Barber also utilizes the half-step interval harmonically. The section at m. 9 begins with both hands shifting up and down by half-step, changing the implied left-hand harmonies from B major to C major, and Bb minor over a C4 pedal (see Example 2.20).

Example 2.20 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, second movement, mm. 9–12.

Similar uses of the half-step motive can be found throughout the other sections.

The second section is characterized by large minor ninth leaps in the left hand, accompanied by a rising chromatic melody in the right hand. This is followed by a texture similar to that found in mm. 9–12, where each hand slowly shifts certain notes by half-step. The third melodic section is the most tonal of the three rondo sections, beginning with a C-major tonality. Barber begins by lowering the third to Eb to outline C

44 minor, and then raises the fifth to G#, all the while continuing to shift the left-hand accompanimental figure by half steps.

The half step continues to play an important structural role in the third movement, both within the passacaglia theme variation and figurations. The opening measure of this movement is split into two parts (evinced by Barber’s pedal markings). Each chord in the first half is related by half step to its partner in the second half (see Example 2.21). This pattern continues throughout the movement’s variations of the theme, as seen in m. 3.

Example 2.21 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, third movement, mm. 1–5.

Also found in this example are many prominent half steps within the right-hand material.

Variations on the melody in m. 3 are found throughout the work, acting as a common theme that unites this movement.

Barber’s motivic unity and strict compositional techniques reflect his compositional education with Scalero, focusing on the European tradition. Yet if structuring a movement’s themes from small motives is traditional, organizing a movement’s accompanimental and melodic material from a single interval is certainly

45 original. American composers began to find their compositional voices through a melding of tradition and modernist originality, drawing from both their education and original ideas.35 Ives, Copland, Carter, and Barber all drew on motivic saturation and unity from the Western European tradition, with their idiosyncratic techniques manifest themselves in these sonatas.

Quotation and Borrowing

In music of any genre, quotation and borrowing are compositional techniques that can highlight which composers and music may have influenced a composer. In Western

Art Music, quotation of various folk music and popular tunes is common, and many compositions allude to previous music. Ives utilized quotation and musical borrowing in his music with both traditional and original techniques. This section will examine his methods, showing his debt to the European tradition.

Borrowing is a fundamental characteristic of Ives’s music, with examples occurring throughout his oeuvre. In his seminal book All Made of Tunes, J. Peter

Burkholder lists fourteen different compositional techniques that Ives employed: modeling, variations, paraphrasing, setting, cantus firmus, medley, quodlibet, stylistic allusion, transcribing, programmatic quotation, cumulative setting, collage, patchwork, and extended paraphrase.36 He notes: “Distinguishing between these uses of existing music also shows how much Ives derived from tradition. Some of these methods, such as

35 Barbara Tischler, An American Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 6–7.

36 J. Peter Burkholder, All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses of Musical Borrowing (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 4.

46 cumulative setting and collage, are virtually unique to Ives, perhaps his own invention.

But most have long precedent.”37

Within the Concord Sonata, Burkholder identifies two main types of quotation: programmatic quotation and cumulative setting. Both of these techniques were original and largely unique methods of quotation (they will be explored further in Chapter 4). The works from which Ives borrows firmly tie him to a number of musical traditions, both

European and American. Including the aforementioned “Beethovenian oracle” from the composer’s Symphony No. 5, there are at least five quotations from European composers, with the possibility of eight more identified by Geoffrey Block as “questionable” (see

Table 2.1).

37 Ibid., 5.

47 Table 2.1 Borrowed European Works in Ives’s Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord.”38

Composer Work Movement it Appears Beethoven Symphony No. 5, Op. 67 All Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 29, All Op. 106 Brahms Piano Sonata No. 2, Op. 2 All* Schubert Symphony No. 9, D. 944 All* Wagner Prelude to Tristan and Emerson Isolde Bach Es ist genug, Cantata No. Emerson* 60 Stravinsky Petrushka Emerson* Chopin Etude No. 12, Op. 10 Emerson* Debussy La Cathedrale engloutie, Emerson* from Préludes Book 1 Debussy “Golliwogg’s Cake-walk,” Hawthorne from Children’s Corner Wagner Wedding March from The Alcotts Lohengrin Debussy Bruyères from Preludes Thoreau* Book 2 Debussy De Pas sur la neige, from Thoreau* Preludes Book 1 * denotes questionable borrowings

Burkholder labels the majority of these borrowed works as programmatic quotation, where these works play a role in the program of the Concord Sonata. Ives describes the program of this work as

… an attempt to present [one person’s] impression of the spirit of transcendentalism that is associated in the minds of many with Concord, Mass., of over a half century ago. This is undertaken in impressionistic pictures of Emerson and Thoreau, a sketch of the Alcotts, and a Scherzo supposed to reflect a light quality which is often found in the fantastic side of Hawthorne.39

38 Block, Ives: Concord Sonata, 61–64 and Burkholder, All Made of Tunes, 350–57.

39 Charles Ives, “Essays Before a Sonata” in Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,” ed. Stephen Drury (New York: Dover Publications, 2012), xiv.

48 If the program of Ives’s sonata is to present one person’s impressions of American transcendentalist philosophers, their ideas, and settings, what role do European composers play in this narrative? Some explanations are simple: in his description of

“The Alcotts,” Ives writes that “there sits the little old spinet-piano Sophia Thoreau gave to the Alcott children, on which Beth [Alcott] played the old Scotch airs, and played at the Fifth Symphony.”40 Burkholder suggests that other quotations may be symbolic.

Much of the “Prologue” of Ives’s Essays before a Sonata asks the question whether music can answer or represent morality, emotions, natural beauty, and philosophy. Ives also posits his own theories of “cataloguing” these philosophers. He despairs that

Emerson is considered a classicist and Hawthorne a romanticist, and decides that

“Emerson is neither classic or romantic but both—and both not only at different times in one essay, but at the same time in one sentence—in one word.”41 This is followed by

Ives’s impressions of the relationships of European composers, including Bach, Chopin,

Brahms, Palestrina, and Scriabin. Perhaps the inclusion of these European composers is

Ives attempt to represent these philosophic ideals in music, presenting original themes in tandem with European quotations.

The motivically based compositional techniques of Ives, Copland, Carter, and

Barber are largely derived from their education in the European tradition, whether deriving from studies with a European-trained composer, studies in Europe, or borrowing directly from European composers. Each of these composers combined their Western

European techniques with their own ideas, but the European influence on their compositional styles is undeniable.

40 Ibid., xxvii.

41 Ibid., xxi.

49 Chapter 3

Fugue and Other Compositional Techniques

This chapter will examine two compositional techniques, one ancient and the other modern, both of which have their genesis in the European tradition: fugue and twelve-tone technique. The fugue reaches back to the imitative techniques found in the fourteenth century, becoming a recognized form during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.1 The incorporation of fugal movements into other musical genres has many practitioners, including Handel, J. S. Bach, F. J. Haydn, W. A. Mozart, Beethoven, and

Liszt. In an early review of Barber’s Piano Sonata, Op. 26, Hans Tischler attributes many of the fugue’s characteristics to the influence of Handel, and most importantly,

Beethoven. Nadia Boulanger was an important influence on the prevalence of fugal (and contrapuntal) writing in her students’ music, with much of her teaching stemming from the contrapuntal practice of past European composers.2

Twelve-tone music, originally developed by Arnold Schoenberg in Vienna in

1921, represents a different kind of European tradition than those previously examined in this document. With some exceptions (such as a number of compositions by John Cage and Ruth Crawford Seeger), the majority of pieces composed with this technique for thirty years were by European composers, only becoming more common with North

American composers in the 1950s and ’60s. Samuel Barber’s incorporation of twelve-

1 Paul M. Walker, “Fugue,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, accessed June 24, 2016, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.libraries.uc.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/51678.

2 Caroline Potter, “Boulanger, Nadia,” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, accessed February 15 2016, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.libraries.uc.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/03705.

50 tone techniques represents both his innovation and influence of European music, as will be shown below.

Fugue

The second movement of Elliott Carter’s Piano Sonata features an extensive four- voice fugue, framed by a slow moving prologue and epilogue. David Schiff writes, “Its fugal second movement consolidates Carter’s study of early music and traditional counterpoint,”3 referring to his studies with Nadia Boulanger. The inclusion of a fugue in what is largely a modern work is perhaps indicative of Carter’s eclecticism in his mature style, “fusing the experimental techniques of the ultramodernists with the lofty artistic ambitions of European modernists.”4

Despite its harmonic ambiguity, and rhythmic complexity, Carter’s fugue contains a large number of traditional techniques. Its form is similar to that of other eighteenth- century fugues, with a number of alternating episodes and subject entries (see Figure 3.1).

Figure 3.1 Fugal form in Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, second movement.

Exposition Episode Middle Episode Middle Episode Final Codetta Entry Entry Entries m. 104 m. 160 m. 177 m. 194 m. 256 m. 278 m. 290 m. 317

Michael Haberkorn suggests that the scale, scope, and techniques of the fugue are influenced by late nineteenth-century fugues, such as those by Max Reger and Ferruccio

Busoni.5

3 David Schiff, The Music of Elliott Carter, 2nd ed. (New York: Cornell University Press, 1983), 203.

4 Ibid., 7.

5 Michael H. Haberkorn, “A Study and Performance of the Piano Sonatas of Samuel Barber, Elliott Carter, and Aaron Copland” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1979), 75.

51 The subject of the fugue resembles that of a Baroque gigue in character,6 despite the lack of the siciliano rhythm (see Example 3.1). This fugue also contains a real answer, but does not contain a true countersubject. It also contains a number of instances of stretto, including a three-voice stretto at m. 178 and a two-voice stretto at m. 182, and octave doublings of the subject near the climax of the fugue at m. 272, m. 290, and again at m. 298.

Example 3.1 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, second movement, mm. 104–12.

In a 1962 article, Elliott Carter writes, “It is by carrying on the European tradition and by following the methods of some of its experiments in the different context of his own experience that our composer affirms his identity and the identity of American music.”7 Carter’s experimenting with tradition can be found in this early sonata, melding fugue with his own creative experiments. In his brief analysis, Schiff notes that each

6 Ibid., 75.

7 Else Stone and Kurt Stone, ed., The Writings of Elliott Carter: An American Composer Looks at Modern Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 217.

52 episode is “based on a contraction of the fugue subject” and includes canonic writing, isorhythmic variations, and a gradual reassembly of the subject fragments into the climax.8 Instances of this fragmentation are found below (see Examples 3.2 and 3.3).

Example 3.2 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, second movement, mm. 169–72.

Example 3.3 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, second movement, mm. 209–13.

The fragmentation of the subject is Carter’s experiment with this traditional

European genre. A similar fusing of old and new will be seen in the other fugue of these four sonatas, the fourth movement of Samuel Barber’s Piano Sonata, Op. 26.

The finale of this sonata is another four-voice fugue, influenced by Vladimir

Horowitz’s suggestion that the work needed a “flashy last movement.”9 Parts of this

8 Schiff, The Music of Elliott Carter, 210.

9 Barbara Heyman, Samuel Barber: The Composer and His Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 300.

53 sonata were conceived and composed while Barber was in Italy, where he studied and listened to Baroque music, especially by Antonio Vivaldi and J. S. Bach.10

Perhaps it is this European music, coupled with his traditional musical upbringing that resulted in what is, at least formally, a highly conventional fugue (see Figure 3.2), with a countersubject and a dominant answer appearing in m. 3.

Figure 3.2 Fugal form in Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, fourth movement.

Exposition Episode Middle Episode Middle Episode Middle Episode Final Coda Entry Entry Entry Entries m. 1 m. 13 m. 17 m. 23 m. 37 m. 55 m. 64 m. 80 m. 90 m. 107

Similar to the second movement of Carter’s Piano Sonata, this fugue also contains a number of instances of traditional fugal techniques: strettos of subject and countersubject

(mm. 19–20, mm. 27–28, mm. 79–80, mm. 81–83, mm. 90–94), augmentation (mm. 27–

29, mm. 39–45, mm. 72–77, mm. 99–106), and inversion (mm. 42–43). Hans Tischler suggests that this fugue is similar to Italian fugues in that the subject is clearly divided into several sections. He then goes on to suggest that the “two sections of the subject are treated as separate entities for portions of the movement, turning it almost into a double fugue,”11 similar to Ludwig van Beethoven’s Große Fuge, Op. 133 and George Frederich

Handel’s Concerto Grosso No. 9.12

Despite its debt to European tradition, the sonata and its reception showcased it as an American work. Barbara Heyman highlights multiple reviews of the work by

10 Ibid., 299.

11 Hans Tischler, “Barber’s Piano Sonata Op. 26,” Music & Letters 33 (1952): 353.

12 Ibid., 354.

54 musicians and critics that all hail this piece as an American triumph: Sidney Homer

(“America Is Waking Up”), Olin Downes (“The First Sonata Really Come of Age by an

American Composer of This Period”), and Vladimir Horowitz (“Aristocratic and Full of

Taste, and Also Very American”).13 What gives Barber’s Piano Sonata (and in particular the final movement) its American flavor will be explored in Chapter 4.

Twelve-Tone Technique

Hans Tischler writes the following about the twelve-tone techniques within

Barber’s Piano Sonata, Op. 26: “The twelve-note row is thus employed here in a new fashion, namely as one among many agents of logical patterning…. In Barber’s hands the twelve-note row comes to life as an interesting, an outstandingly attractive aid to musical formulation.”14 Appearing most clearly in the first and third movements, Barber uses the technique to help organize structural, melodic, and accompanimental figures, without relying on its strict use.

To generalize, many of the appearances of the twelve-tone row in the first movement signal different sections of the sonata-allegro form. In her document “Aspects of Neo-Classicism in the First Movements of Piano Sonatas by Barber, Sessions,

Copland, and Stravinsky,” Gui Sook Lee identifies several different tone rows in this first movement, with the first occurring in the right-hand part at the transitional figure at mm.

9–10.15

13 Heyman, Samuel Barber, 300.

14 Tischler, “Barber’s Piano Sonata Op. 26,” 352–53.

15 Gui Sook Lee, “Aspects of Neo-Classicism in the First Movements of Piano Sonatas by Barber, Sessions, Copland and Stravinsky” (DMA thesis, Ohio State University, 1996), 22.

55 Example 3.4 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, first movement, mm. 9–10.

Tone rows appear throughout the transitional material and the secondary theme, serving a structural purpose. Both Catharine Lysinger and Sarah Masterson suggest that Barber utilizes the tone rows to continue the sonata-allegro formal tradition in a modernist fashion, avoiding the traditional tonic-dominant relationship.16 Lee further identifies hexachords as a recurring organizational technique within these tone rows, a common technique of the Second Viennese School. Barber’s familiarity with twelve-tone music was no doubt aided by the immigration of Arnold Schoenberg to the United States in

1935. Schoenberg’s musical influence was so pervasive that “by the late 1950’s…twelve- tone music dominated what was ‘acceptably modernistic’ in American music for a full quarter-century.”17

However, like many other European influences, Barber’s use of the twelve-tone system is not without his own personal stamp. James Farleigh suggests that Barber’s use of serialism is not fully in the tradition of Schoenberg, and in fact, that his rows outline numerous triadic relationships and harmonic areas.18 In her analysis, Lee finds that three

16 Sarah E. Masterson, “Approaches to Sonata Form in Mid-Twentieth-Century American Piano Sonatas” (DMA thesis, University of Connecticut, 2011), 83.

17 Kyle Gann, American Music in the Twentieth Century (New York: Schirmer Books, 1997), 104.

18 James P. Farleigh, “Serialism in Samuel Barber’s Solo Piano Works,” Piano Quarterly 18, no. 72 (1970): 13.

56 tone rows, found in the transition, all begin on the same pitch, “effectively establishing an implied tonal center for the second theme.”19 The pitch Bb is close to the expected Bb dominant relationship to the Eb tonic emphasized in the first theme, bringing this highly unusual section closer to the expected sonata-allegro harmonic form.

The third movement contains a similar passage, where Barber utilizes tone rows within the traditional form, working within the system for his own musical ends. The first tone row is presented in the first two measures and serves as the recurring chaconne melody, while the second row begins in the left-hand part in m. 5.

Example 3.5 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, third movement, mm. 1–2.

Example 3.6 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, third movement, mm. 5–6.

19 Lee, “Aspects of Neo-Classicism,” 23.

57 Again, Lee notes that the first row outlines augmented triads, while the second row outlines several diminished seventh chords.20 She concludes, “While serial procedure typically carries atonal implications, Barber overrides this ‘rule’ through tonal implications in each row and enhances it through repetition of the row in such a manner as to create a sense of pitch center.”21

Though the twelve-tone technique found in two movements of Barber’s Piano

Sonata, Op. 26 demonstrate a European influence on this work, this proves more complicated than at first glance. Barber uses compositional techniques from Schoenberg, but circumvents the ideal to eliminate harmonic hierarchy to fit his needs for a tonal center and formal outlines, finding himself closer to Alban Berg than to Arnold

Schoenberg. Barber’s innovations with both fugue and twelve-tone techniques demonstrate his own originality and indebtedness to the European tradition, but as will be seen below, do not contribute enough to develop a distinctive “American” style.

20 Ibid., 34.

21 Ibid., 36.

58 Chapter 4

Originality and Americanism in Rhythm

The previous chapters have examined the European influences of these four

American piano sonatas, including various forms and compositional techniques. In the following two chapters, I investigate both original innovations of each of these composers and those influences drawn from the United States and its musical culture.

This chapter will examine rhythm in these four sonatas, probing both original rhythmic procedures and those from jazz. In his article “The Rhythmic Basis of American

Music,” Carter draws together the irregular polyrhythmic groupings found in Bartok and

Stravinsky, the irregular jazz-influenced groupings in Copland, and those procedures used by Ives to show the importance of irregular rhythms to American music.1 Both

Ives’s original rhythmic procedures and Carter’s formulation of metric modulation will be examined, and the prevalence of jazz rhythms in the piano sonatas of Copland, Carter, and Barber.

Originality

As J. Peter Burkholder notes, “The aspect of Ives’s music that most distinguishes him from his European contemporaries…is his penchant for writing experimental music.”2 Throughout the 1890s, Ives composed many short musical experiments that explored new ideas, including those related to different rhythmic series. These experiments had precedent within the Ives family through Ives’s father, George. Vivian

Perlis writes:

1 Elliott Carter, “The Rhythmic Basis of American Music,” in The Writings of Elliott Carter, ed. Else Stone and Kurt Stone (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 160–65.

2 Geoffrey Block and J. Peter Burkholder, eds., Charles Ives and the Classical Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 14.

59 George Ives was not an ordinary musician…. He experimented with space… bands playing different tunes as they marched toward each other from opposite directions. He built his own instruments that made sounds different from the norm…he would have them [his family] sing “Swanee River” in one key while he played it in another.3

Ives continued these experiments, drawing upon these influences as he composed the

Concord Sonata.4

Many of the rhythmic complexities in the Concord Sonata derive from Ives’s use of “layering,” where each melodic part within the music has different note values, creating complex rhythms. Describing the rhythms found in Ives’s oeuvre, Henry Cowell writes, “It is true that it is in some spots and in some ways probably more involved than that to be found in any other written music.”5 Examples of this layering are especially prevalent in “Emerson,” but may also be found in the subsequent three movements.

In examining Ives’s use of rhythmic layering, Elliott Carter divides his technique into three categories. The first “consists in the superposition of different speeds that can be expressed in notation with a common unit,”6 the second type “consists in notated rubati on one level and strict time on another,”7 and the third type “two unrelated levels are heard simultaneously.”8 The first type is more commonly found in Ives’s symphonic

3 Vivian Perlis and Libby Van Cleve, Composers’ Voices from Ives to Ellington: An Oral History of American Music (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 11.

4 J. Peter Burkholder, All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses of Musical Borrowing (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 160.

5 Henry Cowell, Charles Ives and His Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955), 165.

6 Carter, “Rhythmic Basis,” 163.

7 Ibid., 164.

8 Ibid., 165.

60 works, where the larger number of instruments allows for dense polyphony, but the second and third types can be found in the Concord Sonata.

An example of Carter’s second type of “layering” from “Emerson” is found at

12/4, where the rhythmic notation becomes inaccurate, denoting an effect rather than strict rhythmic values (see Example 4.1). The upper parts’ arpeggiated whole-note chords fit neither the time signatures supplied in some measures nor the rhythmic values they are paired with in the left-hand figuration. The addition of dotted whole notes (a) at the end of measures implies a written-out rubato throughout this section.

Example 4.1 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2, “Concord,” “Emerson,” 12/4/1–2.

A three-voice example of type three can be found at 5/2 (see Example 4.2). Each part has a different rhythmic value: the bottom part is largely comprised of half notes, the middle part quarter notes, and the top part uses the longest note values. A by-product of the “layering” technique is that the note values between the parts do not always precisely subdivide. Examining the top voice, it can be seen that the first note (a) does not last long enough to sustain to the second chord in the top part, and there should be a rest (b) to be rhythmically accurate.

61 Example 4.2 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2, “Concord,” “Emerson,” 5/2/2.

Often this rhythmic layering is derived from combining different motives together, such as at 9/5 (see Example 4.3). Here Ives combines the opening motive first found at 4/2 (a) and combines them with the “Beethovenian oracle” (b). The independent layers combine to create a rhythmically intricate section, which Ives accommodates by utilizing three staves.

Example 4.3 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2, “Concord,” “Emerson,” 9/5.

Much of the rhythmic freedom and notation in this sonata derives from Ives’s attitude towards improvisation and performance. Elliott Carter recalled the following conversation with Ives:

62 We asked why the notation of the Concord Sonata was so vague, why every time he played it, he did something different, sometimes changing the harmonies, the dynamic scheme, the degree of dissonance, the pace…. He said that he intended to give only a general indication to the pianist, who should, in return, recreate the work for himself.9

With the score acting as a guide for the performance, rhythmic complexities within the

Concord Sonata exchange the irregularities of the notated rhythms for personal freedom and rubato. Thomas Owens contends, “Ives’s independence and pioneering self-reliance reflects prominent Americanizing images.”10 Owens’s “self-reliance” is referring to the musical experiments that Ives uses throughout much of his music. Another aspect of the notated rhythms is Ives’s lack of time signatures and bar lines. Rosalie Perry suggests this rhythmic freedom and experimentalism derived from Ives’s understanding of the transcendental philosophers, especially that of Emerson.11

Carter’s Piano Sonata also contains rhythmic innovations, partially derived from his early influences of Ives and ultramodernist composers, and his thinking about rhythm and complexity.12 David Schiff suggests, “We can crassly reduce Ives’s teachings to one crucial belief; that music should not be ‘simple-minded….”13 Rhythmic complexity begins to manifest itself in this sonata in several ways: shifting meters, lack of time

9 Elliott Carter, “The Case of Mr. Ives,” in The Writings of Elliott Carter, ed. Else Stone and Kurt Stone (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 49.

10 Thomas Clark Owens, “Charles Ives and His American Context: Images of ‘Americanness’ in the Arts” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1999), 67.

11 Rosalie Perry, Charles Ives and the American Mind (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1974), 94.

12 David Schiff, The Music of Elliott Carter, 2nd ed. (New York: Cornell University Press, 1983), 9.

13 Ibid., 9–10.

63 signatures, independent contrapuntal parts, polyrhythms, and the beginnings of systematic metric modulation.

Carter’s approach to rhythm is stricter than Ives’s, with little to no rhythmic freedom. David Thurmaier writes, “Carter dealt with some of the same temporal and textural issues [as Ives], he advocated a decidedly more rigorous and systematic compositional method that produced new conceptions of time and structure,”14 concluding that this need for systematic techniques developed from Carter’s interest and studies into serialism. This can be heard in Carter’s development of metric modulation, a technique where changing the time signature leads to a change in meter. This technique has its beginnings in the Piano Sonata, the Cello Sonata (1948), and the First String

Quartet (1951), with influences from Indian tālās, Arabic durub, Balinese gamelan music, Watusi music, Scriabin, Ives, and techniques from Cowell’s New Musical

Resources.15

An example of this early foray into metric modulation is found in the Piano

Sonata’s second movement during the transition into the fugue (see Example 4.4). The steady eighth-note pulse and marked accents belie the rapidly changing time signatures, which change almost every measure from m. 87 to m. 103. The repetition of material within measures of different time signatures and at different parts of the measure adds to the complexity of the metric modulation, shifting expectations of the downbeat marked

(a) and (b).

14 David Thurmaier, “‘A Disturbing Lack of Music Stylistic Continuity?’: Elliott Carter, Charles Ives, and Musical Borrowing,” Current Musicology 96 (2013): 100.

15 Elliott Carter, “Sonata for Cello and Piano (1948), Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello, and Harpsichord (1952)” in The Writings of Elliott Carter, ed. Else Stone and Kurt Stone (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 270.

64 Example 4.4 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, second movement, mm. 87–103.

Carter also imbued this piece with an improvisatory feel but maintained strict rhythm. In “Music and the Time Screen,” Carter writes:

…whole complex notions about rhythm, meter, and timing became a central preoccupation. In a sense, this was explored according to the principles of “clock,” or in this case, “metronomic,” time, but its relationship to the jazz of the thirties and forties combined free improvisation with strict time….16

16 Elliott Carter, “Music and the Time Screen” in The Writings of Elliott Carter, ed. Else Stone and Kurt Stone (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 346.

65 This is found in the constantly shifting groups in the scorrevole passages found in the first movement, where the basic pulse remains the same, but the sixteenth-note groups change from twos, threes, fours, fives, and sevens (see Example 4.5).17 This synthesis of complexity and improvisatory sounding passages becomes a characteristic of much of

Carter’s late music, an innovation he began exploring within this piece.

Example 4.5 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 14–19.

In both Ives’s and Carter’s piano sonatas, the creation of original rhythmic procedures and complexities allow these works to stand apart from their European counterparts.

Ives’s deliberate cultivation of rhythmic complexity represented a break with tradition, aiding in his intent to create an “American” work. Carter’s rhythmic complexity draws upon both European and American inspirations, and though he does much to develop his own personal style, without supporting “American” influences, rhythm itself is not enough to claim it as an American style.

17 Michael H. Haberkorn, “A Study and Performance of the Piano Sonatas of Samuel Barber, Elliott Carter, and Aaron Copland” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1979), 49.

66 Influence of Jazz

Many of the rhythms found in Copland’s Piano Sonata also demonstrate a type of

“Americanism,” but instead of developing his own idiosyncratic rhythmic procedures, these rhythms are derived from jazz, with similar influences found in Barber’s and

Carter’s sonatas. This is not to suggest that every work that incorporates jazz rhythms is necessarily an American work. J. Bradford Robinson writes that numerous Austrian and

German composers in the early twentieth century, such as Arnold Schoenberg, Ernst

Krenek, Paul Hindemith, Kurt Weill, and Eugene d’Albert, were influenced by jazz18— but the incorporation of these influences adds strength to these works American style.

The second movement of Copland’s Piano Sonata bears the strongest influence of jazz. Copland later recalled, “The second movement scherzo is rhythmically American—

I never would have thought of those rhythms if I had not been familiar with jazz.”19 He was no stranger to this style and while growing up “in Brooklyn we used to hear jazz around all the time—it was just an ordinary thing.”20 This first began to manifest in his music from the 1920s, including the third movement of Trois Esquisses, Symphony for

Organ and Orchestra, An Immortality for women’s chorus, Music for Theatre, and his

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra.21

18 J. Bradford Robinson, “Jazz Reception in Weimar Germany: In Search of a Shimmy Figure,” in Music and Performance during the Weimar Republic, ed. Bryan Gilliam, Cambridge Studies in Performance Practice 3 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 107.

19 Aaron Copland and Vivian Perlis, Copland: 1900 through 1942 (New York: St. Martin’s/Marek, 1984), 332.

20 Howard Pollack, Aaron Copland: The Life of an Uncommon Man (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1999), 113.

21 Gail Levin and Judith Tick, eds., Aaron Copland’s America: A Cultural Perspective (New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2000), 143–44.

67 The scherzo rhythms in the second movement were a deliberate attempt at sounding “American” and manifested themselves through the “dependence on the eighth note as the basic rhythmic element…shift[ing] through 5/8, 6/8, 3/4, and 7/8”22 (see

Example 4.6).

Example 4.6 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, second movement, mm. 6–10.

The result of the quickly shifting meters is an angular and asymmetrical scherzo, far removed from the tradition where the genre arose. The polyrhythmic design stems from

Copland’s own understanding of jazz, where he “reduce[s] jazz to a single rhythmic device…it [jazz] contains no syncopation; it is instead a rhythm of four quarters split into eight eighths and is arranged thus: 1-2-3: 1-2-3-4-5, or even more precisely: 1-2-3: 1-2-3:

1-2.”23 Schiff notes that this is an incorrect and condescending interpretation of jazz rhythms,24 but can be easily seen in the rhythmic figures from his Piano Sonata’s second movement. The “1-2-3: 1-2-3: 1-2” measure was referred to by Copland as “the molecule of jazz,” and examples (with variations) of this rhythm can be found throughout the second movement (see Example 4.7).

22 Copland and Perlis, Copland: 1900 through 1942, 332.

23 David Schiff, “Copland and the ‘Jazz Boys,’” in Copland Connotations: Studies and Interviews, ed. Peter Dickinson (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2002), 16.

24 Ibid.

68 Example 4.7 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, second movement, mm. 116–18.

The second movement’s rhythms derive from Copland’s understanding of jazz as a clear attempt to establish an “American” music, forging a fusion between European and

American influences. Larry Starr describes Copland’s style as “characteristically himself.

In a truly American fashion, he developed an approach to style that was unmistakably individual,”25 synthesizing and absorbing different styles to create his own.

Traces of a jazz influence can also be found in the fourth movement of Samuel

Barber’s Piano Sonata. Barbara Heyman writes, “The Piano Sonata…lightly display[s] motoric jazz rhythms,”26 and “syncopated rhythms and ‘blue-note’ harmonies associated with American jazz are integrated in the fabric of the music.”27 Both the motoric rhythms and syncopations are displayed in the subject of the fugue, beginning on the second sixteenth note of the beat, containing numerous tied notes, and accents (both on and off the beat) (see Example 4.8).

25 Larry Starr, “Ives, Gershwin, and Copland: Reflections on the Strange History of American Art Music,” American Music 12 (1994): 181.

26 Barbara Heyman, Samuel Barber: The Composer and His Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 4.

27 Ibid., 309.

69 Example 4.8 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, fourth movement, mm. 1–3.

As the movement progresses, Barber incorporates these jazz-inspired rhythms into more than just the subject. They can be found in the countersubject, first presented at m.

4 (see Example 4.9); at m. 38, where accents in the accompanying left-hand rhythm stress beats two and four at m. 38 (see Example 4.10); and in the tenuto accents marked in the passage found at m. 66 (see Example 4.11).

Example 4.9 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, fourth movement, mm. 4–6.

70 Example 4.10 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, fourth movement, mm. 38–39.

Example 4.11 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, fourth movement, mm. 66–67.

These jazz influences are unique to this movement within Barber’s Piano Sonata.

He had originally intended to the end the sonata with the slow third movement, but added a fourth movement after Horowitz, upon initially hearing the sonata, suggested adding a brilliant finale.28 In an interview with Pierre Brévignon, pianist Marc-André Hamelin remarked that one could sense Barber’s intention of stopping after the third movement,

28 Ibid., 300.

71 but the fourth movement was inevitable.29 Perhaps the unintentional consequence of the fourth movement allowed Barber greater stylistic freedom, but whatever the reason, the jazz influences that pervade the finale are absent in the previous movements.

Jazz influences take on a different guise within Carter’s Piano Sonata, but again demonstrate how this American vernacular style permeated many works of American cultivated composers. David Schiff writes how part of Carter’s conception of jazz was how “the melodic line frequently has an independent rhythmic life” and how “Carter’s rhythmic polyphony seems to wed the abstract rhythmic rules of species counterpoint with the rhythmic impetus of jazz.”30 Carter’s understanding of jazz is found throughout the scorrevole sections of the first movement, which Schiff terms a “jazzy toccata” and where Carter cited the influence of stride and jazz pianists Fats Waller and Art Tatum.31

The independent melody is first found in sixteenth notes in m. 15, comprised of irregular groupings, motoric motion, and a syncopated eighth-note melody in the right hand (see Example 4.12). Similar textures can be found throughout the movement, with every return of the scorrevole texture.

29 Pierre Brévignon, Samuel Barber: Un nostalgique entre deux mondes (Paris: Hermann Éditeurs, 2011), 216.

30 Schiff, The Music of Elliott Carter, 22.

31 Ibid., 209.

72 Example 4.12 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 14–19.

In Carter’s second movement, there is a “jazzy interlude”32 for one of the fugal episodes, which closely resembles the methods by which Copland incorporated jazz into the second movement of his sonata (see Example 4.13).

32 Ibid., 210.

73 Example 4.13 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, second movement, 209–20.

Like Copland, Carter utilizes a rapidly shifting meter and changing groupings of eighth notes to affect jazz-like rhythms.

Rhythm is the one area where each of these four composers experimented with their “American voice,” whether through experimental and idiosyncratic rhythmic procedures or through the influence of jazz. In Carter’s and Barber’s piano sonatas, the influence of jazz rhythms plays a role in their individual style. Finding creative ways to synthesize American rhythmic influences with those European aspects of each sonata helps to create an original sound, helping these four sonatas be recognizably “American.”

74 Chapter 5

American Forms and Techniques

This chapter will examine those movements and compositional techniques that represent originality and experimentalism not previously discussed. Though the majority of the forms of these four piano sonatas have been shown to have a European basis, there remain three movements that do not fit into pre-existing forms. These are the first and fourth movements of the Concord Sonata, and the third movement of Copland’s Piano

Sonata. The lack of a template has resulted, in all three cases, in a free treatment of form.

I will analyze the movements from the Concord Sonata as “cumulative forms,” an improvisatory form with very loose connections to Liszt and thematic transformation.1

In addition to original forms, compositional techniques apart from rhythm will be examined. These include the extended techniques found in Ives’s and Carter’s piano sonatas, such as the unorthodox inclusion of other instruments and a wooden block in the

Concord Sonata and the exploiting of the harmonic overtones used throughout Carter’s

Piano Sonata, and Ives’s creation of “cumulative setting.” Last, I will investigate the influence that American ultra-modernists had on the harmonies used throughout Carter’s

Piano Sonata, resulting in a work that is neither twelve-tone nor tonal.

American Forms

The form of the first and fourth movements of Ives’s Concord Sonata use what

Burkholder described as “cumulative form.” David Hertz sums up this type of organization as a reverse of sonata form, writing:

In Europe, the musical ideas of the sonata were presented first and then developed in a clear system. They were then repeated in a distinct summation, which lucidly

1 J. Peter Burkholder, ed., Charles Ives and His World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 88.

75 reiterates ideas presented earlier. In one of his typical movements written in cumulative form, Ives does away with this pattern of organization, and instead presents the development first, saving the statement of the main theme until the end.2

In addition to the reversing of the order of the introduction and development of themes, the theme in this form “accumulates” over the course of a movement, with previous statements of thematic material appearing in smaller fragments and paraphrases.3

A number of authors have drawn a parallel between Ives’s cumulative form to previous European traditions. Geoffrey Block suggests that though Ives deliberately avoids classical sonata form, he “does preserve the nineteenth-century structural and aesthetic principles of cyclic form, thematic transformation, developing variation, and a philosophic and narrative programmaticism.”4 Elliott Carter dismissively suggests that cumulative form is closely related to Liszt’s Sonata in B minor, “full of the paraphernalia of the overdressy sonata school, cyclical themes, contrapuntal development sections that lead nowhere, constant harmonic movement which does not clarify the form, and dramatic rather than rhythmical effects.”5 Keith C. Ward suggests that Ives’s cumulative form contains many similarities to Schoenberg’s “developing variation” technique, writing “Schoenberg’s basic premise of developing variation stipulates that principal

2 David Hertz, “Ives’s Concord Sonata and the Texture of Music,” in Charles Ives and His World, ed. J. Peter Burkholder (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 77.

3 J. Peter Burkholder, “Ives and the European Tradition,” in Charles Ives and the Classical Tradition, ed. J. Peter Burkholder and Geoffrey Block (New Haven: Yale University Press), 28.

4 Geoffrey Block, Ives: Concord Sonata (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 42.

5 Elliott Carter, “The Case of Mr. Ives,” in The Writings of Elliott Carter, ed. Else Stone and Kurt Stone (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 50.

76 themes grow out of a basic idea, whereas with Ives they grow into it, culminating in an unambiguous, resolute presentation of the original melody.”6

Burkholder acknowledges that cumulative form shares similarities to previous forms, requiring the presentation and development of thematic material, but that the innovation in the order of presentation compels it to be viewed as a new formal structure.7 Cumulative form may then be seen as another example of “Americanism” in music coming as a synthesis of old and new, reworking traditional formal techniques into something new.

The opening of “Emerson” does not open with a clear statement of the theme, but rather a cadenza-like figure, introducing fragments of themes (see Example 5.1). This movement contains many cadenza-like figurations, dating from its original conception as a concerto for piano and orchestra.8

6 Keith C. Ward, “Ives, Schoenberg, and the Musical Ideal,” in Charles Ives and the Classical Tradition, ed. J. Peter Burkholder and Geoffrey Block (New Haven: Yale University Press), 100.

7 J. Peter Burkholder, All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses of Musical Borrowing (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 199.

8 Ibid., 351.

77 Example 5.1 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No 2, “Concord,” “Emerson,” 4/1.

These motives are developed throughout the work, with the “Emerson” theme receiving its fullest statement in the coda (see Example 5.2). Presenting the theme at the end changes the role of this motivic development from simple variations on a theme to the variations themselves seeming to create the theme, reversing the traditional sonata structure.

78 Example 5.2 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2, “Concord,” “Emerson,” 20/1/2–20/2.

The effect on the listener is profound, as “the significance of the motives interwoven there is likely to be understood only in retrospect, after one has heard or played the movement often enough to become familiar with the themes.”9 This effect is exactly what Ives was hoping to achieve with this reordering. In his Essays Before a

Sonata, he writes:

A critic has to listen to a thousand concerts a year, in which there is much repetition, relations of tones, cadences, progressions, etc. There is present a certain routine series of image-necessity-stimulants…. The unity of a sonata movement has long been associated with its form, and to a greater extent than is necessary…. Mr. Richter or Mr. Parker may tell us that all this is natural, for it is based on the classic-song form, but in spite of your teachers a vague feeling sometimes creeps over you that the form-nature of the song has been stretched out into deformity.10

9 Ibid.

10 Charles Ives, Essays Before a Sonata, in Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,” ed. Stephen Drury (New York: Dover Publications, 2012), xliii–xliv.

79 This reversing of European sonata form results in the difficulty of classifying this movement as rondo or sonata-allegro, which was explored in Chapter 1. The Concord

Sonata has its own unique form, flowing from development to exposition.

The Concord Sonata’s fourth movement utilizes a similar idea, beginning with complex figurations and the clearest iteration of the theme not appearing until near the end of the work (see Example 5.3).

Example 5.3 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord,” “Thoreau,” 63/3–4.

Even for Ives, the Concord Sonata offers a unique realization of his cumulative form. Hertz suggests, “The Concord Sonata is written in a type of cumulative form slightly more hybrid in its nature than the purer examples of the form… the thematic accumulation involves all four movements, not just one, and the theme emerges with greatest clarity at the conclusion of ‘The Alcotts’”….11 In All Made of Tunes, Burkholder claims that “The Alcotts” theme is the unifying theme throughout all the movements and

“is the only theme or motive that is used prominently in all four movements.”12 The

“Emerson” theme is clearly derived from “The Alcotts” theme, where the “Emerson” theme is shown by ‘a’ (see Example 5.4).

11 Hertz, “Texture of Music,” 78.

12 Burkholder, All Made of Tunes, 350.

80 Example 5.4 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2, “Concord,” “The Alcotts,” 56/4–5.

This type of unification between the movements has a historical precedent in works such as Liszt’s Sonata in B minor. Both sonatas are generated from motivic ideas introduced in the opening phrase, and “Liszt’s material at first appears in fragmentary form and then accrues greater wholeness and visibility while the meaning of the ideas becomes more apparent as the piece proceeds.”13 Hertz suggests it is Ives’s fragmentation and density of the introduction of motives and other material that separates the Concord

Sonata from Liszt’s B minor sonata.14 Ives’s cumulative form is his own creation, but again can be seen to be a melding of innovation and European influences.

The third movement of Copland’s Piano Sonata also represents a departure from traditional form. In an interview with Leo Smit, Copland described this movement as

13 Hertz, “Texture of Music,” 88.

14 Ibid., 96.

81 “free.”15 Larry Starr suggests that this unusual form for the final movement is striking due to the preceding movement’s traditional form, and highlights the unusual ending as the work “gradually yield[s] to stillness.”16

This movement’s form can be understood as four motivic gestures, varied throughout, and a cyclical return to material from the first movement. The first gesture is a descending three-chord gesture found at the opening of the movement (A) (see

Example 5.5). The second motive is a simple melody, first introduced at m. 6 before becoming the prominent material at m. 19 (B) (see Example 5.6). The third motive is a leaping gesture with an offbeat melody in the middle voice, first introduced at m. 46 (C)

(see Example 5.7), while the fourth is a four-chord gesture first heard at m. 55 (D) (see

Example 5.8). The cyclical material is returns to the opening three-chord gesture from the first movement, found at m. 89 and m. 148 (E).

Example 5.5 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, third movement, mm. 1–2.

15 Aaron Copland and Vivian Perlis, Copland: 1900 through 1942 (New York: St. Martin’s/Marek, 1984), 332.

16 Larry Starr, “War Drums, Tolling Bells, and Copland’s Piano Sonata,” in Aaron Copland and His World, ed. Carol Oja and Judith Tick (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 236.

82 Example 5.6 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, third movement, mm. 19–21.

Example 5.7 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, third movement, mm. 45–47.

Example 5.8 Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, third movement, mm. 55–56.

Using these motives as guideposts, including several sections where Copland combines these different motives, the form of the movement can best be described as free (see

Figure 5.1).

83 Figure 5.1 Free Form in Aaron Copland, Piano Sonata, third movement.

m. 1 m. 19 m. 46 m. 55 m. 79 m. 89 A B C D+B+C D1 E m. 99 m. 119 m. 127 m. 136 m. 147 m. 155 D2 C D+B+C C1+D E C2 (coda)

The resulting form of Copland’s third movement does not resemble any traditional form and adds to his experimental and deliberate attempt to create an “American” style.

American Compositional Techniques

Ives’s use of borrowed materials, though showing his knowledge of European repertoire, is one of the most recognizable aspects of his style. Burkholder identifies several types of borrowing that are virtually unique to Ives in All Made of Tunes. As discussed above, “cumulative setting” plays a prominent role in the Concord Sonata.

Distinct from a cumulative form, which uses original thematic material in addition to dictating the form of the movement, a cumulative setting describes only the melodic treatment. Burkholder outlines four main characteristics of a “cumulative setting”:

(1) the principal theme is a borrowed tune or a melody paraphrased from borrowed material; (2) it appears complete for the first time in the final section; (3) it is joined there by a countermelody paraphrased from the same or another tune; and (4) this is preceded by sections that develop fragments from both theme and countermelody, that paraphrase or partially present the theme, and that present the complete countermelody without the theme.17

“The Alcotts” is a sub-type, fulfilling the first, second, and fourth characteristics of a cumulative setting. “The Alcotts” theme is comprised of four different pieces: the opening motive of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 (a); the opening theme of Beethoven’s

Sonata No. 30, “Hammerklavier,” Op. 106 (b); Charles Zeuner’s Missionary Chant H37

17 Burkholder, All Made of Tunes, 161–62.

84 “Ye Christian Heralds” (c); and Simeon B Marsh’s Martyn H35 “Jesus, Lover of My

Soul” (d) (see Example 5.9).18

Example 5.9 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2, “Concord,” “The Alcotts,” 56/4–5.

The first and fourth borrowings were previously explored as part of the cumulative form.

Ives’s creation of “cumulative setting” once again combines old and new in his pursuit of an American style.

Ives’s Concord Sonata, like much of his oeuvre, was composed in “near-total isolation” and contains a number of innovations, such as “unprecedented dissonance, densely heterogeneous textures…unusual means of playing the piano keyboard, classical appropriation of ragtime…simultaneous tunes played in different tempos, and widespread

18 Ibid., 195.

85 quotation of folk music, popular music, and hymns.”19 One of these innovations that I have not previously discussed is Ives’s extended techniques and other unusual features of the Concord Sonata, such as the inclusion of other instruments in what is otherwise a solo piano sonata.

The most unusual extended technique in this work is found in “Hawthorne,” where Ives calls for specific tone clusters up of to eleven notes, spanning over two octaves (see Example 5.10). This is accomplished “by using a strip of board 14 ¾ ins. long and heavy enough to press the keys down without striking.”20 Though extended piano techniques originated during the nineteenth century, with works such as in the

“Paganini” movement of Schumann’s Carnaval, Op. 9, they became a staple of American experimental music, found in works by Harry Partch, Henry Cowell, John Cage, and

David Tudor.

19 Kyle Gann, American Music in the Twentieth Century (New York: Schirmer Books, 1997), 8.

20 Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2, 26.

86 Example 5.10 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2, “Concord,” “Hawthorne,” 26/1/1–2.

The Concord Sonata also contains two small instrumental parts: a viola part (not included in all editions) near the end of “Emerson,” and a flute part near the end of

“Thoreau.” Though many recordings and editions exist that either omit these instrumental parts or incorporate them into the piano part, their inclusion in the sonata highlights the

Concord Sonata’s experimental nature.

A final extended technique in this work can be found at the end of “Emerson,” where the high left-hand chords are “to be heard as a kind of an overtone”21 (see Example

5.11). Here Ives is attempting to exploit the natural overtones of the piano, creating different overtones with each iteration of the left-hand part over the changing bass chords.

21 Ibid., 21.

87 Example 5.11 Charles Ives, Piano Sonata No. 2, “Concord,” “Emerson,” 21/4/1–2.

Elliott Carter’s Piano Sonata also exploits the harmonics of the piano, sounding specific overtones as a melody over a bass accompaniment. This technique is first found in the first movement (see Example 5.13), but can also be found in the second movement at m. 68, m. 329, m. 339, and m. 338. In Carter’s case, utilizing overtones showcases the influence that American ultra-modernist composers, such as Henry Cowell, had on his sonata.

Example 5.12 Elliott Carter, Piano Sonata, first movement, mm. 122–28.

88 Much of Carter’s early music was influenced by the American ultra-modernists that he had admired during the 1920s. Ives’s opinion that the established European composers such as Debussy, Stravinsky, and Prokofiev were “only superficially modern” and his critiques of many others also made a powerful impression on Carter.22 Ives’s idea that music must be complex to be meaningful was especially influential on both the rhythm and the harmony in Carter’s Piano Sonata.

Many early writers on Carter’s Piano Sonata claimed that its complex harmonies must somehow derive from twelve-tone or serialist music, a claim refuted by Carter. In his article “Shop Talk by an American Composer,” Carter writes, “Some critics have said that I do [write in the twelve-tone system], but since I have never analyzed my works from this point of view, I assume that if I am not conscious of it, I do not.”23 In fact,

Carter’s harmonic complexity does not derive from any one school, but rather demonstrates a free flowing atonality. In the same article, Carter describes his approach to harmony:

Such a formula as the Impressionists’ parallel ninth chords, for instance, wore itself out in the tedious arrangements of popular music current until recently. Each of the trends of our recent past—primitivism, machinisim, neo-Classicism, Gebrauchsmusik, the styles of Bartók and Berg and now those of Schoenberg and Webern—has left and will leave in its trail numbers of really gifted composers whose music, skilful and effective as it is, is suffocated, at least for a bit of time, but its similarity to other music of the same type…. The popularity of modern harmonic systems is, unfortunately, easy to understand. Textbooks led music students to think of harmony as a well-ordered routine, and when they found it to be less and less so…they were much troubled…. For mature composers, lack of

22 David Schiff and Mark D. Porcaro, “Carter, Elliott,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, accessed February 15, 2016, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.libraries.uc.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/A2257467.

23 Elliott Carter, “Shop Talk by an American Composer,” in The Writings of Elliott Carter, ed. Else Stone and Kurt Stone (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 206.

89 system is usually not much of a problem since they write, as they probably always have, what sounds right to them.24

From this, a number of Carter’s ideas about harmony arise. First is that closely following a single style of music can be detrimental. Second are those modern harmonic systems that promote routine and order do not exist as clearly outside of academic studies, and third are that teaching students as such can be harmful. And last is that mature composers must find their own voice, not following a system, but rather their own musical intuition.

The result for Carter was a harmonic language that utilized both tonal and atonal trappings, avoided dodecaphonic techniques and traditional harmonic gestures. David

Schiff suggests that Carter’s work is a summation of his explorations into pandiatonicism,25 while Benjamin Woods proposes that Carter combines traditional harmonic gestures with an atonal-based language, creating his own recognizable harmonies.26 Carter deliberately cultivated his own musical language within this work, setting this piece apart from European precedents.

Barber cultivated similar ideals in his Piano Sonata. Schiff writes, “While working on the Sonata he [Carter] discussed his concern for the development of a new grand piano style with Samuel Barber who was writing his Sonata at the same time and had similar goals.”27 This “grand piano style” was meant to be a move away from the neo-Classicism of Stravinsky and Hindemith and a partial return to the “grand piano

24 Ibid., 201.

25 Schiff, The Music of Elliott Carter, 203.

26 Benjamin Woods, “The North American Piano Sonata in Transition from Tonal to Atonal Styles” (DMA thesis, Midwestern State University, 1972), 33.

27 Schiff, The Music of Elliott Carter, 203.

90 sonority of nineteenth-century piano writing.”28 For Barber, this generally meant a return to the European tradition (as explored in Chapters 1 and 2). However, the first movement contains a moment of striking harmonic contrast, which shows that Barber’s American contemporaries also influenced his harmonic language.

The highly chromatic and twelve-tone derived exposition is abruptly interrupted at m. 45. The opening of the closing theme is dominated by open intervals and the first appearance of traditional tonality (see Example 5.13). This theme serves as the basis of much of the development, providing a sort of relief from the harsh chromaticism of the first and second themes.

Example 5.13 Samuel Barber, Piano Sonata, Op. 26, first movement, mm. 45–46.

This departure recalls sonorities and textures that typify Copland’s “Americana” style and his Piano Sonata, much of which was composed in the decade immediately prior to

Barber’s Piano Sonata. Though Barber did not set out to write an American sonata, his intention to create a twentieth-century equivalent to the grand piano sonatas of the nineteenth-century found him turning to his American contemporaries for inspiration.

28 Ibid.

91 None of these American composers composed their piano sonatas in a vacuum; each found himself drawing upon his colleagues for inspiration. The unique “American” forms and techniques that resulted are why the sonatas by Ives and Copland can be considered American, while both Barber and Carter drew upon American influences in their developments of a “new grand piano style,” whether that was a return to the nineteenth-century tradition or an embrace of modern harmony.

92 Conclusion

Though one cannot divorce American music from the Western European tradition, it is equally evident that there can be a recognizable American style. Partially through their innovations and the integration of American influences, Ives and Copland created a style related to, but distinct, from the European tradition. This becomes more evident when compared with the works of Barber and Carter, who both integrated

American traits into their sonatas but did so as part of their attempt at a “new grand piano style” rather than the creation of a distinctive American style.

The first three chapters examined those techniques and ideas that could be directly traced back to the European tradition. Chapter 1 examined each composer’s relationship and use of form, beginning with the large-scale structure of each sonata. By Beethoven, the number of movements within a sonata had become so variable that subsequent composers had a certain latitude in the cycle of movements. Copland, Carter, and Barber all explicitly used the sonata principle (if modified) in the opening movement, recalling this particular tradition. Though the form’s relationship to tonality was not strictly adhered to (because of the developing nature of tonality used within each work), the thematic development and form is clearly audible. Each of these composers also had traditional compositional training, accounting for his adherence to tradition. Even within

Ives’s Concord Sonata, it was shown how his cumulative form still bears a marked resemblance to both rondo and ternary forms.

Chapter 2 examined the various composition techniques that the composers drew on in these sonatas, focusing on the motivic development that is heard in the works of

Ives, Copland, Carter, and Barber. Each of these composers studied with conservative

93 teachers (Parker, Goldmark, and Boulanger; Boulanger; and Scalero, respectively), and their influences can be felt in these sonatas. Each work (and movement in the case of

Barber) opens by introducing the main motivic material that is to be developed throughout the movement or work. It is both the motivic material itself and (for Ives) where the material is drawn from that helps these composers fuse their training as organists that helped define the American style they are creating.

The fugue plays an important role in the sonatas by Carter and Barber, and the incorporation of a fugal movement has precedent in many works, including those by F. J.

Haydn, W. A. Mozart, Beethoven, and Liszt. Both Carter’s and Barber’s fugues are, in fact, highly traditional in their development; it is the fugal subject that gives these works a distinctive character, as I demonstrated in Chapter 4 with Barber’s use of syncopation derived from jazz. Another European technique that appears in Barber’s Piano Sonata,

Op. 26, is twelve-tone technique. Appearing in both the first and third movements, the technique itself shows Barber’s relationship to tradition. It is the manner in which he utilizes it—differentiating the second theme in the first movement, and creating a passacaglia bass in the third movement—that again demonstrates Barber’s originality.

Chapters 4 and 5 considered those elements of these piano sonatas that had no clear European precedent, instead looking to personal innovation and American influences. Ives’s Concord Sonata demonstrates incredible rhythmic complexity, relying on unusual notation and unmeasured music to convey the rubato that Ives desired for this work. Carter’s Piano Sonata also contains new ideas about rhythm, influenced by his desire to explore a new system of rhythmic complexity, manifesting itself in his Piano

Sonata as the beginning of metric modulation. Jazz and its influence was also considered,

94 ranging from Copland’s limited understanding of syncopation, the influence of Fats

Waller and Art Tatum, and improvisation in Carter’s work, to the blue-note harmonies and rhythms that appear in the fugue of Barber’s Piano Sonata, Op. 26.

The final chapter returned full circle to form and technique, this time highlighting those American forms and techniques. Ives’s creation of cumulative form was examined and shown that despite its similarities to nineteenth-century forms, is truly a deliberate reversal of traditional forms. Copland’s free-form fantasy third movement was shown to be his own creation, avoiding any relationship to existing forms to end his sonata.

Techniques such as Ives’s cumulative setting and quotation, extended techniques, and exploitation of the harmonic series, and the unusual inclusion of other instruments into a solo piano sonata were also examined, as well as unusual harmonies and use of atonality.

Each of these sonatas, considered to be quintessential American works, draws heavily upon European syntax and harmonies, as well as native influences. However, simply incorporating American influences into the music is insufficient to signal the creation of an American style, as demonstrated by the sonatas of Barber and Carter. It requires the deliberate intent observed in both Ives’s and Copland’s sonatas. By integrating American influences, they truly created an “American style.”

95 Bibliography

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100 Appendix

American Sonatas composed between 1939 and 1949

Alstone, Alex – Sonata (1946)

Antheil, George – Sonata No. 3 (1947) and Sonata No. 4 (1948)

Cazden, Norman – Sonata for Piano, Op. 12 (1941)

Dello Joio, Norman – Piano Sonata No. 1 (1943); Sonata No. 2 (1943); and

Sonata No. 3 (1947)

Diamond, David – Piano Sonata (1947)

Eccles, Henry – Sonata in G minor (1948)

Finney, Ross Lee – Piano Sonata No. 4 in E Major (1945)

Fuleihan, Anis – Sonata No. 1 (1940)

Gianneo, Luis – Sonata (1949)

Gruen, Rudolph – Sonata, Op. 29 (1940)

Haieff, Alexei – Sonata (1948)

Helm, Everett – Sonata Brevis (1945)

Hovhaness, Alan – Lake of Van Sonata, Op. 175 (1947, rev. 1959) and

Madras Sonata, Op. 176 (1946, rev. 1960)

Imbrie, Andrew – Sonata (1947)

Johnson, Hunter – Piano Sonata (1949)

Johnson, Lockrem – Sonata No. 5, Op. 34 (1949)

Jones, Charles – Sonata (1946)

Kay, Ulysses – Sonata (1941)

Kerr, Harrison – Piano Sonata No. 2 (1947)

101 Kirchner, Leon – Piano Sonata (1948)

Kubik, Gail – Sonata (1947)

Kupferman, Meyer – Little Sonata (1947)

Lessard, John – Sonata for Piano (1940)

Lopatnikoff, Nikolai – Sonata in E Major, Op. 29 (1943)

Luening, Otto – First Short Sonata (1940)

Mills, Charles – Sonata No. 2 (1942)

Persechetti, Vincent – Piano Sonata No. 1 (1939); Piano Sonata No. 2 (1939);

Third Piano Sonata (1945); Sonata No. 4, Op. 36 (1949); and

Sonata No. 5, Op. 37 (1949)

Rorem, Ned – Piano Sonata No. 2 (1949)

Rozsa, Miklos – Sonata, Op. 20 (1948)

Sessions, Roger – Piano Sonata No. 2 (1946)

Shapero, Harold – Sonata in F minor (1948) and Three Sonatas (1944)

Siegmeister, Ellie – American Sonata (1945)

Sowerby, Leo – Sonata for Piano (1948)

Starer, Robert – Sonata (1949)

Stevens, Halsey – Sonata No. 3 (1947–48)

Stravinsky, Soulima – Sonata in Bb major (1947)

Talma, Louise – Sonata No. 1 (1943) and Sonata No. 2 (1945–55)

Thomson, Virgil – Piano Sonata No. 3 (1943) and Sonata No. 4 (1946)

Turner, Godfrey – Sonata No. 1 (1946)

102