Ives / Baty / Carfizzi / Howell / Macpherson - Complete Songs 5 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Charles Ives wrote almost two hundred songs. Although his reputation rests on orchestral, chamber and piano music, it is Ives's songs that represent the heart of his creative thinking. The expressive variety encountered is accordingly vast indeed, the gradual evolution of Ives's songwriting is analogous to the wider evolution of American music during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This new edition includes all the songs that Ives completed. The alphabetic approach ensures that each volume (of which this disc is the fourth of six) contains a representative cross-section. Album Tracks 1. A. Very Pleasant 2. B. Rather Sad

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

This second volume of the series features 26 Ives's songs beginning alphabetically with InchDecemberInch (1913) and concluding with InchGrassInch (1896). The performers include 14 singers, four pianists, and an organist. The organ appears on chronologically the earliest song on this CD, the hymn- like InchFar From My Heav'nly HomeInch (1893). Ives's early and late, traditional and revolutionary are each represented. The highlight of this CD is Ives's 1914 setting of Vachel Lindsay's InchGeneral William Booth Enters into HeavenInch a poem in it's character and enthusiasm made for Ives. Lindsay's poem and Ives's song capture the spirit of the founder of the Salvation Army as he ascends into heaven accompanied by the poor, the lost and the damned that Booth has brought to salvation. InchAre you washed in the blood of the Lamb?Inch the songs asks. In it's raw liveliness, enthusiasm, changes of mood, and transcendentalism, this song is one of Ives's greatest efforts in the form. The bass David Pittsinger gives a convincing performance accompanied by pianist Douglas Dickson. Album Tracks 1. December 2. Disclosure 3. Down East 4. Dreams 5. Du Alte Mutter 6. Du Bist Wie Eine Blume 7. Elegie 8. The Ending Year 9. Evening 10. Evidence 11. Eyes So Dark (Weil' Auf Mir) 12. Far from My Heav'nly Home 13. Far in the Wood 14. A Farewell to Land 15. La Fede 16. Feldeinsamkeit 17. Flag Song 18. Forward Into Light 19. Friendship 20. Frühlingslied 21. General William Booth Enters Into Eaven 22. God Bless and Keep Thee 23. Grace 24. Grantchester 25. The Greatest Man 26. Gruss