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

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