Ives / Baty / Berman / Gardner / Plenk / Trudel - Songs 2 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The songs of the American composer Charles Ives (1874 - 1954) have been well-served on CD, but they have never before been recorded in their entirety on a budget-priced tag or arranged, for recording purposes, in alphabetical order. The American Classics series of the budget Naxos tag is in the midst of doing both. This CD is the third of a complete recording of the Ives songs arranged, quixotically, in alphabetical order. The performers are a group of young musicians affiliated with the Yale University School of Music. They offer readings of Ives as varied, idiosyncratic, and unpredictable as the songs themselves. In 1922, Ives gathered 114 of his songs, arranged them in reverse chronological order, added comments, and self-published them in a book called simply Inch114 songsInch. All told, Ives composed about 200 songs. The songs dating from his early years frequently draw heavily upon German lieder, parlor music, or hymns. The songs of Ives's maturity are deeply complex, varied, and musically adventurous. Throughout his life, Ives freely shifted musical material between his songs and his other compositions. From the beginning to the end of his career as a composer, Ives drew heavily on other music, incorporating many quotations from both classical and popular sources. Album Tracks 1. Harpalus 2. He Is There! 3. Her Eyes 4. Her Gown Was of Vermilion Silk 5. His Exaltation 6. The Housatonic at Stockbridge 7. Hymn 8. Hymn of Trust 9. I Hear a Tone 10. I Knew and Loved a Maid 11. I Travelled Among Unknown Men 12. Ich Grolle Nicht 13. I'll Not Complain 14. Ilmenau 15. Immortality 16. In April-Tide 17. In Autumn 18. In Flanders Fields 19. In My Beloved's Eyes 20. In Summer Fields 21. In the Alley 22. In the Mornin' 23. The InchIncantationInch 24. The Indians 25. The Innate 26. Kären 27. The Last Reader 28. The L

When, in 1922, Charles Ives published a volume entitled 114 Songs, he was indirectly drawing attention to the fact that the genre played a central part in his output. 85 years on and, for all that his wider reputation may rest on orchestral, chamber and piano music, songs represent the heart of his creative thinking. Nor was that initial volume comprehensive; Ives having written nearly 200 songs, of which this edition includes all those he completed. The expressive variety is vast indeed, the gradual evolution of Ives's songwriting, from those drawing on Austro-German Lieder and English parlor-song traditions to ones that evince anarchic humor as keenly as others do profound vision, is analogous to the evolution of American music over the last quarter of the nineteenth and first quarter of the twentieth centuries. Although it would be possible to collate Ives's songs according to type, the alphabetic approach adopted by this edition ensures each volume (of which this disc is the fifth) contains a representative cross-section of his achievement. A wide range of poets is set, including a number of (mainly early) German settings as well as forays into French and Italian writers. The temporal distance (1887-1926) traversed by these songs is as little compared to their stylistic diversity or their emotional range. Album Tracks 1. Paracelsus 2. Peaks 3. A Perfect Day 4. Pictures 5. Premonitions 6. Qu'il M'irait Bien 7. The Rainbow (So May It Be!) 8. Religion 9. Remembrance 10. Requiem 11. Resolution 12. Rock of Ages 13. Romanzo (Di Central Park) 14. Rosamunde (1) 15. Rosamunde (2) 16. Rosenzweige 17. Rough Wind 18. A Scotch Lullaby 19. A Sea Dirge 20. The Sea of Sleep 21. The See'r 22. Sehnsucht 23. September 24. Serenity 25. The Side Show 26. Slow March 27. Slugging a Vampire 28. Soliloquy 29. A Son of a Gambol

When, in 1922, Charles Ives published a volume entitled 114 Songs, he was indirectly drawing attention to the fact that the genre had played a central part in his output. 85 years on and, for all that his wider reputation may now rest on his orchestral, chamber and piano music, songs represent the heart of his creative thinking. Nor was that initial volume comprehensive; Ives having written almost 200 songs, of which this present edition includes all those he completed. The expressive variety encountered is accordingly vast indeed, the gradual evolution of Ives's songwriting, from those drawing overtly on the Austro-German Lieder and English parlor-song traditions to ones that evince anarchic humor as keenly as others do a profound vision, is analogous to the evolution of American music over the last quarter of the nineteenth and the first quarter of the twentieth centuries. Although it would be possible to collate Ives's songs according to type, the alphabetic approach adopted by this edition ensures each volume (of which this is the sixth and last) contains a representative cross section of his achievement. A wide range of poets is set (Ives could be highly interventionist when it suited his purpose), including (mainly early) German settings as well as forays into French and Italian writers. Moreover, the temporal distance (1887-1926) traversed by the songs is as little compared to their stylistic diversity or their emotional range. The extent to which Ives reworked songs throughout his career is considerable, whether substituting a text or reworking the actual music. To this end, songs with a musical or textual connection are cross linked accordingly (i.e. in brackets at the end of the relevant paragraph). The setting of Rudyard Kipling's Tarrant Moss (1902) uses just two verses, treated in a peremptory fashion as if to suggest that the text was merely the nearest