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"Buds the Infant Mind": Charles Ives's "The Celestial Country" and American Protestant ChorTraditionsAuthor(s): Gayle SherwoodSource: 19th-Century Music, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Autumn, 1999), pp. 163-189Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/746922Accessed: 26-01-2016 02:59 UTC
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7/25/2019 Ives Sherwood Article
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B u d s
t h e
I n f a n t M i n d :
C h a r l e s
I v e s ' s
h e Celestial
Country
a n d mer ican
rotestant
C h o r a l
Traditions
GAYLE SHERWOOD
Over the
past
two
decades our
view of the
American
composer
Charles Ives
has
changed
considerably.
Although
still seen as
a
rugged,
independent
pioneer,
Ives
has
emerged
as
a
far
more
complex
figure.
We now know
that the
Ives
described
by
Time
in
1938
as the "most
individual,
most
authentically
American
of
con-
temporary
U.S.
composers"
drew
heavily
on
the
European
tradition well into his mature
compositions.'
And the earlier
image
of the
isolated
and
neglected
artist described
by
crit-
ics
in
1965
now
coexists
with that of the self-
promoting
businessman
who
shrewdly
ad-
vanced
his own
music
by
funding
various con-
cert series and
publications.2
The
integration
of
these
seemingly
incompatible
traits has cre-
ated
a
more nuanced
profile
of
the man
and
his
music.
Ives's
song
On the
Antipodes
from the mid-
1920s dramatizes that conflict.3 In
this
work
Ives
presents
the world-"Nature"-as a series
of
dualities.
His
own text describes
the
unpredictability and contradictions of nature,
while the
music
underscores its
inevitability
through
overlapping,
irregularcyclic
patterns.4
In
one
passage
(ex.
1),
he
juxtaposes
a seem-
ingly
innocent
description
of nature with a
sar-
19th-Century
Music
XXIII/2 (Fall 1999). ? by
The
Regents
of
the
University
of
California.
I
am
grateful
to Naomi
Andr6,
Amy
Beal,
J.
Peter
Burkholder,
H.
Wiley
Hitchcock,
and
Jeffrey Magee
for
their
suggestions
and
encouragement
during
the
writing
of
this article. Earlier versions of this
paper
were
read
at
the
1996
meeting
of
the Sonneck
Society
in Falls
Church,
Virginia,
and at the
1995
American
Musicological
Society
meeting
in
New York.
I"Music,"
Time
32/1 (4 July
1938),
p.
20. Review
of
Charles
Ives:
Six
songs.
Mordecai Bauman
(baritone)
and
Albert
Hirsch
(piano)
in
New Music
Quarterly
Recordings,
Bennington
College, Bennington,
Vt. For extensive studies
of
Ives's use
of
the
European tradition,
see
J.
Peter
Burkholder,
All
Made
of
Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses
of
Musical
Borrowing (New Haven, Conn., 1995), idem,
Charles
Ives: The Ideas Behind the Music
(New
Haven,
Conn.,
1985),
and
idem,
The Evolution
of
Charles
Ives's
Music:
Aesthetics,
Quotation,
Technique (Ph.D. diss.,
Uni-
versity
of
Chicago,
1983).
For
the most
recent overview of
Ives
scholarship,
see
Burkholder,
"Ives
Today,"
in
Ives
Studies,
ed.
Philip
Lambert
(Cambridge,
1997), pp.
263-90.
2As recounted
in
Stuart
Feder,
Charles Ives:
"My
Father's
Song" (New Haven, Conn.,
1992),
pp.
320 and
325;
Gayle
Sherwood,
The Choral Works
of
Charles Ives: Chronol-
ogy, Style,
and
Reception
(Ph.D. diss.,
Yale
University,
1995), pp. 281-83;
Maynard
Solomon,
"Charles Ives:
Some
Questions
of
Veracity,"
Journal
of
the American
Musico-
logical Society
40
(1987),
463-64
and
passim.
3Ives dated
On the
Antipodes
"1915-23"
in
18
Songs (pub-
lished
1935):
the
song's
exclusion
from 114
Songs
of
1921
supports
the conclusion that
Ives
completed
it
between
1921
and
1935.
4For
a discussion of
cyclic
structures
in On the
Antipodes,
see
Philip Lambert,
The Music
of
Charles
Ives
(New
Ha-
ven, Conn.,
1997),
pp.
178-85.
163
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19TH
m u s i
14
Andante
grazioso
Some
-
times
Na
ture's
nice and
sweet.
as
a lit -
tle
pan
-
sy
8--------------
_I
L
Andante
grazioso
Presto or
Allegro
(between
a shout and a
drawl)
18
f f
ff
and. Some times "it ain't."
S3
loco
8--------loco
3
(as fast
as
it
will
go)
3
L3
Presto or
Allegro3
3
(as fast
as it will
go)
.- --? ,, 1 1, 0 ,
Example
1:
Charles
Ives,
On
the
Antipodes,
mm.
14-19.
Examples
1, 6,
and 10a
are used
by permission
of the
publisher.
?
Merion
Music,
Inc.
donic
disclaimer, accentuating
their
opposition
with
an extreme
musical contrast.
The inver-
sions of
text and
music
provide
a
revealing
portrait
of
Ives as
composer,
and
they
drama-
tize
the creative
tensions
that
recent scholar-
ship has reinforced.
Clearly,
the second
part
of this
passage
is
vintage
Charles Ives.
Crashing
dissonances
col-
lide
with a snide
parody
of the
sentimental
style
popular
at
the turn of
the
century.
Larry
Starr
described
the
first line as
"excessively
genteel,
banal
C-major
music,"
and
the second
line as
"ferociously
dissonant
music"
that cre-
ates
"a violent
and
wildly
humorous
effect."5
Yet
despite
its modernist
overtones,
this
pas-
sage
contains
a
surprising
quotation
from one
of Ives's
earlier,
less rebellious
compositions.
Measures
14-15
quote
a
moment
from the
third
movement of
Ives's cantata
The Celestial
Coun-
try,
"Seek
the
Things"
for
four-part
solo
quar-
sLarry
Starr,
A Union
of
Diversities
(New
York,
1992),
p.
87.
164
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[Tempo I]
81
rail.
9
For ward when in child hood
For ward
when
in
child
hood
For ward when in
child hood
For ward
when
in
child hood
For ward
when
in
child hood
rall.
84
3
f
marc.
Buds the in
fant,
in fant mind: All
through youth
and man
hood,
f
marc.
A3-
Buds the
in
fant,
in
-
fant mind: All
through youth
and
man
hood,
Not a
fmarc.
Buds the in
fant,
in
-
fant mind: All
through youth
and man
hood,
Not a
f
marc.
Buds the
in
fant,
in
-
fant
mind:
All
through
youth
and man
-
hood,
Not a
Example
2:
Charles
Ives,
The
Celestial
Country,
"Seek the
Things,"
mm.
81-87.
Examples
, 4, 7,
and 11 used
by permission.
?
1971
and
1973
by
Peer
nternational
orporation.
nternational
opyright
ecured.
tet
(ex.
2).6
The
original
text for the full
passage
in
"Seek the
Things"
reads as follows
(the
pas-
sage
used
in
On the
Antipodes
appears
n
ital-
ics):
"Forwardwhen in childhood
/
Buds the
infant
mind
/
All
through youth
and
manhood
/
Not a
thought
behind."
The
melody, pitch
level,
and
rhythmic
accents are
quoted
almost
exactly,
and the
harmony
is
virtually
identical
in both cases. Ives's allusion to this earlierwork
unites the secular modernist
On the
Antipodes
with its opposite: a conservative religious can-
tata that
premiered
in
1902.
Ives's
quotation
from his own
cantata
sug-
gests
several
interpretations.Perhaps
his is self-
criticism,
a
dismissal of his own
earlier,
conser-
vative work. It could
be an
in-joke perpetrated
by
the Ives of the
1920s,
the
increasingly
vener-
ated modernist
winking
at his unknown
con-
servative efforts.
Or,
the
key may
lie in
the can-
tata itself. This
previously unrecognized quota-
tion
offers,
in
microcosm,
clues
regarding
both
Ives's
relationship
to American Protestantcho-
ral traditions at the turn of the century and his
later interaction with those traditions
into the
1920s.
Viewed from
this
perspective,
On the
Antipodes
emerges
not as a
self-parody
but as a
self-portrait,
one
grounded
n
a careful reconsid-
eration of the
source
work,
The Celestial Coun-
try,
and its
place
within Ives's
early
career.
165
6My
identification
of this
quotation
was
first
reported
in
Burkholder,
All
Made
of
Tunes,
p.
476n.56.
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THE
CELESTIALCOUNTRY
The Celestial
Country
was first
performed
on
18
April
1902
at Central
Presbyterian
Church
in
Manhattan,
where Ives was choir director
and
organist.
It then
disappeared
or seven de-
cades-until 1972-when the GreggSmith Sing-
ers
performed
it at
Columbia
University.
In
1974-the
Ives centennial
year-Peer published
John
Kirkpatrick's
piano-vocal
edition of the
cantata,
and the work was treated to
two re-
cordings:
one
in
Columbia's five-disc box
set;
and
the other
in
Harold
Farberman's
ecording
for
ComposersRecordings.7
The
recordings
re-
ceived much
critical
attention,
the
majority
of
it
negative,
including
a
highly
unfavorable re-
view
by
Victor
Fell Yellin
in
Musical
Quar-
terly
and several lukewarm
assessments
in
the
New YorkTimes and Records
and
Recordings.8
The context of these published evaluations are
significant
because of their
far-reaching
mpact
on
scholarship
to the
present.
The most
significant objection
to
the can-
tata has
perennially
involved its
relationship
to
the
style
of Horatio Parker
(1863-1919),
Ives's
teacher at Yale between
1894
and
1898.
Since
1974,
critics have
consistently
and
unfavorably
compared
The Celestial
Country
with
Parker's
1893
oratorio
Hora Novissima.
As
John
Kirkpatrick
and others have
noted,
the
most
obvious influence of
Hora Novissima
occurs in
the
second, third,
and sixth
movements of The
Celestial
Country,
where
passages
are modeled
on Parker's
bass
solo,
"Spe
modo
vivitur"
(ex-
cerpted
in
ex.
3).9
Ives's
cantata,
for
instance,
uses
the same metrical alternations
as Parker's
bass solo
in the second movement
baritone
solo,
"Naught
that
country needeth,"
in the
third
movement
quartet,
"Seek the
Things,"
and
briefly
in the sixth movement tenor
solo
"Forward lock of
Jesus" (ex.
4a-c). Assessing
its relationship to Hora Novissima, Victor
Yellin
concluded that Ives's cantata was "an
essay
in
conformity
to
late-nineteenth-century
taste in Protestant
church music
in
unabashed
imitation
of his teacher. Even
by
those stan-
dards
The
Celestial
Country
seems
insipid."'1
Some of the
anti-Parkerfervor
in
1974
was
surely
due to the
recently published
collection
of the
Memos,
which
presented
Ives's
bitter
memories of his
battles with the
conservative
Parker. These
anecdotes served as a
nucleus
around which
scholars
began
to
paraphrase,
embellish,
and distort
Ives's
representation
of
Parker,always to the effect of vindicating Ives
the
American
experimentalist
against
his tra-
dition-bound,
European-trainedprofessor.
For
example,
in
his recollections of
the First
Sym-
phony,
Ives
stated that "Parkermade me
write
another first movement. ...
(And
also he didn't
like the
original
slow
movement. . .
[so]
I
wrote a nice
formal one-but the first is
bet-
ter )."" Throughout
1974
writers
parlayed
this
memory
into
a detailed
vignette
that
scorned
Parker's conservativism and exonerated Ives.
Thus Adrian
Jack
criticized Parkerfor not rec-
ognizing
Ives's
brilliance, stating
that
the
First
Symphony
"is
a well
brought-up
work
(yet
not
well
enough
to
satisfy
Ives's
teacher,
Horatio
Parker).""
More
general
reproaches
n
1974
in-
cluded Robert Crunden's
condemnation of
Parker or
"snorting"
at
hymn
tunes,
Harold C.
Schonberg's
statement that Ives's
experiments
7Kirkpatrick's
vocal and
piano
edition was re-released
by
Peer
in
1974
(it
was
originally
copyrighted
in
1972).
The
cantata was revived
in
March
1972
by
the
Gregg
Smith
Singers
at
Columbia
University
in
New York
(cited
in
[unsigned],
"Things
You Should
Know,"
Music
Journal
30/
5
[May
1972],
50)
and recorded on
13-14
March
1972
by
the same
organization (Kirkpatrick,
liner notes to "Charles
Ives: The
100th
Anniversary"
[unpaginated]).
The
Gregg
Smith Singers also performed the cantata in 1975 in Frank-
furt. Cited
recordings
are "Charles Ives: The
100th
Anni-
versary,"
various works and
artists,
Columbia
(Col
M4
32504);
and Harold
Farberman,
London
Symphony
Orches-
tra and Schutz
Choir,
Composers
Recordings
(CRI
SD-
314).
8Victor
Fell
Yellin,
review of
The Celestial
Country
by
Charles
Ives,
Musical
Quarterly
60
(July
1974),
500-08.
9Burkholder,
All
Made
of
Tunes,
pp.
36-37.
10Yellin,
review of
The Celestial
Country,
p.
506.
Yellin
noted other
general similarities,
including
thematic rela-
tionships
between the
movements,
and
symmetrical
ar-
rangements
of the movements. Feder also noted that both
texts deal with similar themes
and
images
of
heavenly
redemption (Feder, Charles Ives, p. 171). All of these fac-
tors, however,
are also
present
in
many
other
religious
cantatas of this
period:
see below for a discussion of one
such work
by
Dudley
Buck.
"Ives,
Memos,
ed.
John
Kirkpatrick
(New York, 1972),
p.
51.
12Adrian
Jack,
review of
Ives,
First
Symphony,
Philadel-
phia
Orchestra,
Eugene Ormandy,
cond.,
CBS
77424,
Records and
Recording 18/1 (October 1974),
47.
166
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31
poco cresc.
a
tri
-
a
splen
-
di-da,
Ter ra
-
que
flo
-
rida,
i be
-
ra,
A
poco
cresc.
pizz.
PP
37
14-
spi
Parinis,
i
splbe
-
ra
spi
da,inis
Pa
flow
rious,
Love hath pre
pared forsers,
t,
Thorn
less
thy
low
ers
O
1Z
I.elli1
.,-
.,. + _ ,
W
, W.. .I
V
10k?J I:
.
'
i
'4'4
Example
3: Horatio
Parker,
Hora
Novissima,
"Spe
modo
vivitur,"
mm.
31-40.
167
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19TH
a.
"Naught
that
country
needeth."
13
Where
the
God
-
head dwell
-
eth,
where the God
-
head dwell
-
eth,
Temrn
-
pie
there is
-44
b. "Seek the
Things."
I A
des
ert,
for
-
ward
through
the toil and
fight,
3
33-
3
-3
-3--
33-
-
3
--3-3
c. "Forward flock of
Jesus."
rall.
f
-P
a tempo
lov
-
ing
ray.
___
Sick,
they
ask for heal
f
collavoce
-
:,Vn j
__ Vla.
Example
4:
Ives,
The Celestial
Country:
Modelings
on
Parker,
Hora Novissima.
"disturbed the
academician,"
and Herbert
Kupferberg's
description
of Parker as "horri-
fied"
by
Ives's
experiments.13
Variations on
these well-worn themes are still
common,
as
in
Alan Rich's
mythological
recent
account of
the First
Symphony:
Not
surprisingly,
Horatio Parkerwas
aghast
at the
first
draft.
..
Parker
waxed
even more
furious at
the
"reprehensible"ending
of
the
work
(in-horror -a
'3Robert
Crunden,
"Charles
Ives:
The
Man
and His
Mu-
sic,"
Choral
Journal
15
(December
1974),
7.
Harold
Schonberg,
"Natural
American,
Natural
Rebel,
Natural
Avant-gardist,"
New York
Times
Magazine,
21
April
1974,
p.
12. Herbert
Kupferberg,
"Ives Centennial Hits Cre-
scendo,"
National
Observer,
26 October
1974,
[n.p.].
Horatio
Parker
is almost
entirely
excluded
from
Neely
Bruce's dis-
cussion of Ives and the American music tradition.
An
Ives
Celebration:
Papers
and Panels
of
the Charles
Ives
Cen-
tennial
Festival-Conference,
ed.
H:
Wiley
Hitchcock and
Vivian Perlis
(Urbana,
Ill.,
1977), pp.
38 and 41.
168
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key
other
han
the
one at the
start),
nd
orderedves
to rewrite
it. This time Ives refused.
.
.
On
his
own,
removed
rom he
disapprovinglare
of Yale'smusic
faculty,
he
collegian
ves
composed rolifically.14
Compounding
its
problematic
links
to
Parker, The Celestial Country resurfaced at a
most
inauspicious
time,
when the "Ives
leg-
end" was at its
height.
As
promulgated
by
Ives
and
codified
by
the American modernist circle
and
subsequent
writers,
the
legend
claimed that
Ives was an
exclusively
experimental composer;
that
he was
already
composing
modernist works
at the turn of the
century;
and that he
was
uninfluenced
by
other
European
or
European-
trained
composers.'1
These
themes
had
domi-
nated Ives
reception
for the half
century
lead-
ing
up
to the
composer's
centennial,
and
they
influenced not
only
scholarship
but also
pub-
lished editions, premieres, and recordings.The
most
frequently performed,
recorded,
and
stud-
ied works-the so-called Ives
canon-used mod-
ernist
techniques
and relied on
identifiably
American
quotations
for
their musical mate-
rial.
In
this
way,
Ives's
modernist
works
were
linked to his
identity
as a
specifically
Ameri-
can modernist
composer:
an
identity
manifest
in
the numerous concert
series,
published
ar-
ticles
(both
academic and
popular),
and
record-
ings during
the centennial
year.16
The Celestial
Country-a
large
conservative cantata that
sounded neither modernist nor
obviously
American-served
only
to contradict the
leg-
end. It could thus not
be
admitted
to the canon.
In
sum,
The
Celestial
Country
re-emerged
within a climate
overtly
hostile to Parker
and
intolerant
of the conservative tradition in
gen-
eral. The
unfavorable review from
1974
in
the
New York Times revealed these two biases and
even
suggested
that the
piece
had been
written
underduress:"[TheCelestial Country was] de-
signed
to
please
Ives's
conservative
composi-
tion
teacher,
Horatio
Parker,
and
subsequently
of less
interest to
us. Ives seems to be
making
one of his rarebows to 'the nice old
ladies' here
and the
sanctimonious tone tends to
get
a bit
irritating."17
All
reviews
agreed
that
the
piece
was
not
significant
enough
to
warrant inclu-
sion
in
the Ives
canon,
describing
it
as
"banal,"
"no
great discovery,"
or
"surprisingly
conven-
tional."18
Many
reviews
emphasized
that Ives
had
already
written
mature
experimental
works
such as Psalm
67,
excusing
the cantata as
the
publicly
conservative effort of a
privately
mod-
ernist
composer.19
The
ongoing
discourse of
modernism
relegated
The Celestial
Country
to
the
status
of
a mere
"novelty"
or an
anomaly
("not
a
typical
piece")
within the
output
of the
great
American
experimenter.20
Because
The
Celestial
Country
offered evidence of
Ives's
in-
dependent,
willing participation
in
the conser-
vative
tradition as late as
1902,
that
is,
well
14Alan
Rich,
American Pioneers: Ives to
Cage
and
Beyond
(London,
1995),
pp.
37-38.
'5For
an
overview of the
legend,
see
my
"Questions
and
Veracities:
Reassessing
the
Chronology
of
Ives's Choral
Works,"
Musical
Quarterly
78
(1994),
429-30.
16Ives
the nationalist remains an
important
icon
for
con-
temporary
American
composers
to this
day.
Duckworth,
Talking
Music:
Conversations
...
Five Generations
of
American
Experimental
Composers
(New
York, 1995)
con-
tains
transcripts
of
interviews
with
Pauline
Oliveros,
Steve
Reich,
Philip
Glass,
and
John
Zorn,
all of whom
all
recog-
nize Ives as an influence. Reich states, "I believe that it
helps
the classical
music
and the
popular
music of a
pe-
riod
to
have some kind of a
discourse.
Charles
Ives,
George
Gershwin,
and Aaron
Copland,
everything
we consider
great
American music has had
either a
great
or small
amount of
that in
it,
because that's a
particularly
Ameri-
can truth"
(p.
317,
emphasis added).
Zorn
states,
"There's
a
very
deep
element
of
quotation
in
my music,
which is
something
that relates
to Ives
very
directly" (p.
470).
'7Peter
Davis,
"The Ives Boom on
Disk:
Every
Sketch,
Scrap
and
Masterpiece,"
New
York
Times,
20 October
1974,
sec. D, p. 26.
'8sack
described
the work as
"breezily
banal,
cosily
senti-
mental and sometimes
perversely abrupt.
.
.
. No
great
discovery
here,
perhaps,
but fun as a
novelty,"
while
Donal
Henahan found the cantata
"surprisingly
conventional."
Jack,
review of
Ives,
The
Celestial
Country,
recorded
by
the London
Symphony Orchestra,
London
Schutz
Choir,
Harold Farberman
cond.,
CRI
SD
314,
Records and Re-
cording
18/6
(March
1975),
p.
62;
Henahan,
"On
Listening
to
Mahler,
Ravel and Ives
Play
Their Own
Music,"
New
York
Times,
14
July
1974,
sec.
2,
13.
'9Feder maintains that Ives
was
composing larger
and
more
progressive
works
alongside
The
Celestial
Country,
in-
cluding
The Yale-Princeton
Football Game and the Sec-
ond
Symphony.
More
recently, Kyle
Gann
continues the
tradition of
dismissing
the cantata as "a work
patterned
after
Parker's
highly
esteemed Hora
Novissima,
and
one
far more conservative than other pieces Ives had already
written"
(Gann,
American Music
in
the
Twentieth Cen-
tury
[New
York,
1997], p.
9).
20This
point
is
underscored
in
a review of a
performance
of
the cantata in
Frankfurt
on
19
February
1975,
where it is
noted that for a
revolutionary
composer
like Ives the
can-
tata
"really
is
not
a
typical
piece"
(Gerhard
R.
Koch,
"Das
Paradies
liegt
hinter
Danbury,"
Frankfurter
allgemeine
Zeitung,
19
February
1975,
p.
23).
169
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9/28
after his
graduation
from Yale and his
escape
from
Parker's
immediate
influence,
it
was
abruptly
dismissed.21
A
quarter century
after the Ives
centennial,
the
views from the
1970s
of
The Celestial Coun-
try
persist:
that its
originality
suffers as
an
imi-
tation of Parker'sHoraNovissima, and that its
conservative
style
is
anomalous in
Ives's
pre-
dominantly
modernist
output.
Feder's 1992
study
of Ives discussed the textual
and
psycho-
logical
relationships
between
The
Celestial
Country
and
Hora
Novissima
at
length,
but
included
only
scant references to the music of
the cantata. Feder concluded that Ives's music
was
"uncharacteristically
erivative"of Parker's
and
emphasized
that the cantata
"represents
only
one facet
of
[Ives's]
creative work"
at
this
time.22
But these evaluations
contain
several funda-
mental
oversights,
all
relating
to Ives's musical
environment at the turn of the
century.
Al-
though
a
central
figure
in
Ives's
biography
and
a
significant composer,
Parkerwas
by
no means
the
dominant
composer
of American
choral
music at the end of the nineteenth
century.
In
fact,
Parker's
academic,
European-inspired
ho-
ral
writing
constituted
only
a small
part
of
the
mainstream of American choral music
at
the
time.
Moreover,
The
Celestial
Country
had a
wealth
of
predecessors
in
Ives's
own
service
music and anthems:
a
body
of work almost
completely
unknown in
performances
and re-
cordings
and little
represented
in
Ives scholar-
ship.
By
reawakening
the
multilayered reality
of American choral music
during
the
1890s,
we
can hear
The
Celestial
Country
as a
more
com-
plex and daring composition than previous
evaluations have shown. And the
redating
of
several of Ives's earlier anthems
suggests
that
The
Celestial
Country,
far
from
being
a
compo-
sitional
anomaly,
stands as the culmination of
years
of
work
within an
alternate and
currently
misjudged
choral
style.
IVES'S
CONSERVATIVE CHORAL
PERIOD
My
revised
chronology
of Ives's
early,
nonmodernist
choral
works
sheds
light
on
his
cantata
by placing
it
alongside
its immediate
predecessors.
The revised
chronology
follows
the methods for music
paper dating
and
hand-
writing analysis
outlined
in
my
dissertation
and earlier
publications.23
Redatedchoral
works
through
to
1903 are
presented
in
Table
1.24
Following
the revised
datings,
the
conservative
works
fall
into clear
chronological groupings,
demonstrating
a
strong
relationship
between
Ives's church
positions
and his choral
output
to
1902.
In
sum,
Ives functioned
as a
pragmatic
church
composer through
the
1890s,
composing
for
the unique circumstances of each congregation,
choir,
and denomination.
As
outlined
in
Table
1,
works intended for each church
are consis-
tent in
their text
sources,
performing
forces,
and
liturgical
function. Most sources redated
to
1893-94
are
service
music,
including
the
Benedictus,
the Communion
service,
and
the
Nine
Experimental
Canticle
phrases.
This
pe-
riod
corresponds
exactly
to Ives's
appointment
21These
harsh
criticisms
of the
cantata are
also
significant
given
the
warmer
reception
of
Ives's other
early
conserva-
tive
work,
the
First
Symphony.
Critics
saw the
symphony
as
a
symbol
of rebellion in Parker's class and
valued
the
work as
part
of Ives's
ongoing
vindication.
For
example,
in
1966
Theodore
Strongin portrayed
Ives
outclassing
his
teacher in the
First
Symphony:
"Ives's
originality
was
only
temporarily
dimmed
by
the
gentlemanly teaching
of
Horatio Parker.
....
Ives is
superamiable throughout
the
symphony's
four
movements;
perhaps,
out
of
deference to
academic
standing,
he
hid
most of his muscle. .
.
.
The
climax
[of
the second
movement]
is almost trite-could
Ives have been
teasing
his
teacher set?"
(Theodore
Strongin,
"When
Charles Ives
Was at
Yale,"
review of
Ives,
First
Symphony,
recorded
by
the
Chicago Symphony,
Morton
Gould
cond.,
RCA Victor
LM2893/LSC
2893,
New
York
Times, 5 June 1966, sec. 2, 19). Part of the difference may
lie
in
the
symphony's
conformity
to
the
Ives
canon
in its
nineteenth-century
genre
and use
of
quotation
in
its
themes.
Furthermore,
Ives's active
defense of the
sym-
phony
in
Memos,
in
his
extensive
recollections of
battling
Parker over the
work,
placed
it in a
much more
sympa-
thetic
light
than the cantata
that was
composed indepen-
dent of course
requirements.
22Feder,
Charles
Ives,
pp.
171
and
173.
23See
my
Choral Works
of
Ives,
"Questions
and Veraci-
ties,"
and
my
"Redating
Ives's Choral
Sources,"
in
Ives
Studies.
24Kirkpatrick's
dates are taken from the 1960
catalog
un-
less
followed
by
"REVCAT"
(from Kirkpatrick's
revisions
to
the
catalog)
or "AMGROVE"
(from
the
Ives
article in
American
Grove).
Ives's dates are taken
primarily
from
the
lists
as
published
in
Memos,
pp.
147-66. Dates
pre-
ceded
by
a
question
mark indicate
problematic
or
contra-
dictory
dates from
Ives,
either
in the lists or
manuscript
memos.
170
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7/25/2019 Ives Sherwood Article
10/28
at St.
Thomas's
Episcopal
Church in
New Ha-
ven,
where
he
worked from
7
May
1893
until
29
April
1894.25
The formal
services of that
Episcopalian
church
probablyencouraged
these
liturgical
settings,
which
could
not
have been
used
at
Ives's
previous
or later
churches.
After leaving St.Thomas's, Ives held apresti-
gious position
as
organist
at
Center
Church
on
the
Green,
New
Haven,
between 1894 and
1898,
where he
composed
several sacred anthems
in-
cluding
Easter
Carol,
Crossing
the
Bar,
andTurn
Ye,
Turn Ye.26
At
this time he
received encour-
aging
support
from the
choir
director,
Dr.
John
Cornelius
Griggs.
Griggs's
choir offered Ives an
accessible
group
of
performers
in
the church
choir. Ives's anthems set
hymn
texts and
senti-
mental
religious
poetry
not
only
common
to
the
period
but also
specific
to
the choir's for-
mat,
more of
which
will
be discussed
shortly.
Surviving
choral sources from 1898-1902 are
again
related to
Ives's
changing
church
positions
as well as
to
his
graduation
from Yale
in
1898.
Between
1898
and
1900
Ives held a
position
at
the Bloomfield
Presbyterian
Church
in
Bloomfield,
New
Jersey,
and from
1900 to
1902
he
worked
at
Central
Presbyterian
Church in
New York.27
t
was
only
during
these
four
years
that Ives
held
positions
as
both
organist
and
choir
director.28
This was
a
significant change
from his
previous experiences. Working
under
other choir
directors,
Ives had had little or no
choice of choral repertoireand only limited ac-
cess to the
performing
ensemble itself. Both the
New
Jersey
and New York
positions
presented
significant advantages
because Ives
could now
try
out his own
compositions
as
he wrote them.
This factor
may
well
have
proved
crucial to the
development
of Ives's
progressive
choral
style,
since the choral
sources from
this
period
in-
cludethe most
experimentalwriting
to that
time.
Ives's traditional
choral
works
(service
mu-
sic and
anthems), then,
do not
significantly
overlap
with such sources
for substantial
ex-
perimental
compositions
as
Psalm
67.
The
prac-
tical division
between conservative and mod-
ernist sources is
approximately
1898-the
year
Ives graduatedfrom Yale and the earliest date
of
compositional
work on
The
Celestial Coun-
try.
What this
suggests,
of
course,
is that
Ives's
cantatais most
obviously
connected to a
clearly
delineated
group
of
earlier,
nonmodernist
works.
The Celestial
Country
is best viewed
as
the
last and
largest composition
in
this conven-
tional
style,
which Ives had been
pursuing
for
over a decade.
Rather than
being
an
anomaly,
the cantata
is
fully
consistent with
Ives's efforts of the
pre-
ceding years
and
yet
was written
at about
the
time that Ives
began
serious
experimentation
in the choral
genre.
Because
they
formed the
immediate
backdrop
to Ives's cantata
and
pro-
vided a context for
Ives's own
sacred anthems
and those of his
contemporaries,
the
1894-98
Center
Church anthems merit closer
attention.
IvEs's
QUARTET-CHOIR
ANTHEMS, 1894-98
Ives's
description
of
the Center Church
anthems
placed
them
within
a
specific
historical
tradi-
tion. His
1929
list
included the
entry,
"about
20-25
anthems,
responses
and
hymn-anthems
(alla[sic] HarryRowe Shelley andDudley Buck)
during
four
years
at
Center Church." Turn
Ye,
Turn
Ye,
Crossing
the
Bar,
I
Come
to
Thee,
All-Forgiving,
and
The
Light
that Is
Felt are all
within this
group following
the revised chro-
nology.
The list is
significant
for
its
explicit
acknowledgement
of
Buck
(1838-1909),
and
his
lesser-known student
Shelley
(1858-1947).
Trained in
Germany,
Buck
enjoyed
a
success-
ful
career
in
Boston and
New York. His
Cen-
tennial
Cantata was
commissioned
by
the
United States
government
for
the
1876
celebra-
tions and received its premiere at the Centen-
nial
Exposition
in
Philadelphia
amid
great pub-
licity
and media
coverage.
Buck's
organ
works
were also
widely performed
and
published
in
the
United States. Around
1894,
Ives studied
briefly
with Buck and
Shelley
and
played many
of Buck's
organ
works over the first decade of
171
2"Ives,
Memos,
p.
326.
26Ives's
predecessor
at Center
Church
was
Harry
B.
Jepson,
organ
teacher
at
Yale
(Memos,
p.
183),
while his
successor,
David Stanley Smith, followed Parker as head of the Yale
School of Music. Elizabeth
Goode,
David
Stanley
Smith
and His Music
(Ph.D. diss.,
University
of
Cincinnati,
1978),
p.
29.
27Although
little
is
known about the choir at
Bloomfield,
it is
intriguing
to note that two of
Ives's
surviving
compo-
sitions from this
period,
Psalm
67
and Psalm
150,
use
boys'
choirs as well as mixed
chorus.
28Ives,
Memos,
pp.
57, 68, 237,
262,
and
327-28.
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7/25/2019 Ives Sherwood Article
11/28
19TH
MUSIC
Table
1
Selected Revised
Datings
of
Ives's
Choral
Works,
1891-1901
REVISED CHRONOLOGY
KIRKPATRICK/IVES
IVES'S
CHURCH
POSITIONS
1891 5C16
Be Thou
(1891-92)
5C7
Crossing
Danbury Baptist
5C17 Oh God
My
(1891-92)
5C12
Communion
1889-93
5C13 Benedictus
5C14 Bread
(AMGR)
5D2 Seranade
5D3
Partsong
5C6 Nine
Exper. (1891-92)
5C15 Search Me
(1891-92)
1892 5C3 Ps.
42
5C16 Be Thou
5D1
The Year's
5C17
On God
My
5C4 Gloria
(1892-93)
5C18
I
Come to Thee
5C13
Benedictus
(1892-93)
5C19 ?Easter Carol
5C15 Search Me
1893 5C9 Benedictus (1893-94) 5C20 Life of
5C12 Communion
(1893-94)
5C21 Lord
God
(1893-94)
St.
Thomas's
Episcopalian
5C14
Bread
(1893-94)
1893-94
1894 5C6 Nine
Exper.
5C24
?Ps.
67
5C7
Crossing
5C26 Ps. 150
(REVCAT)
5C27
Ps.
54
(REVCAT)
Center Church on the
5C30
Ps.
24
(REVCAT)
Green
Congregational
5D4 Love
(1894-95)
1894-98
1895 5C10
I Think
(1895-96)
5C25
Light
That
5D2
Serenade
5D5
The
Boys
5D6
Partsong
5C7 For You
(1895-96)
1896
5C11
Turn Ye 5D8
Age of
Gold
5C19 Easter Carol 5D9 Partsong
5C20
Life of
5D10
Song of
5C18 I Come to
(1896-97)
5D5
The
Boys
(1896-97)
5D6
Partsong (1896-97)
5D10
Song
of
(1896-97)
1897
5D3
Partsong (1897-98)
5C28
Kyrie
5D8
Age of
Gold
(1897-98)
5C34 ?Ps. 23
5D9
Partsong
(1897-98)
5D11 Bells
of
(1897-98) (AMGR)
5D12
O
Maiden
(1897-98)
1898
5A1
Celestial
(1898-99, sketches)
5C31
All-Forgiving
5C24
Ps.
67
5D13
My
Sweet
5C25
Light
That 5C33 Ps. 100
(1898-99)
5C26 Ps. 150 5C34 Ps. 23 (1898-99) Bloomfield Presbyterian
5C31
All-Forgiving
1898-1900
5D11
Bells
of
1899
5D12
O
Maiden
(1899-1900)
5C35 Ps.
14
(AMGR)
5C13
My
Sweet
(1899-1900)
5C29
Ps. 25
(1899-1900) (REVCAT)
5C36
Ps.
135
(1899-1900)
5C37 Ps. 90
(1899-1900)
172
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Table
1
(cont.)
Selected Revised
Datings
of Ives's Choral
Works,
1891-1901
REVISED CHRONOLOGY
KIRKPATRICK/IVES
IVES'S CHURCH
POSITIONS
1900 5C29
Ps. 25
5C36
Ps.
135
(AMGR)
5C30
Ps. 24
5C21 Lord God
(1900-01)
Central
Presbyterian
5C28
Kyrie(1900-01)
1900-02
1901
5B2
Harvest
II
(before
1902)
5B2
Harvest
III
(before 1902)
5C38
?Procession
1902
5A1
Celestial
County (parts)
5B2
Harvest
I
5B2
Harvest
I
5B2
Harvest
II
5C27
Ps. 54
(1902-03)
5C33
Ps. 100
(1902-03)
5C35
Ps.
14
(1902-03)
5C36
Ps.
135
(1902-03)
5C38
Processional
(1902-03)
his
career.
Buck's Variations on "Home Sweet
Home"
for
organ
served as
a
prototype
for
Ives's
own Variations on "America"
of
1892.29
n
fact,
many
of Buck's works
including
the Star
Spangled
Banner
Overture
blended
Germanic
Romantic
orchestral traditions with American
sources and
sentiments,
and
they may
have
influenced
Ives's later efforts
in
the
same
vein.
Although forgotten
today,
Buck was
widely
known as
a
choral
composer,
and
his anthems
and
cantatas were
popular
with church choirs
well
into
the twentieth
century.30
Buck wrote
engaging, approachable
music for
the
most
widely
used choir format of the
time,
the
quar-
tet choir. The
quartet
choir consisted of
a
paid,
trained solo
quartet (SATB),
around which was
built
an
unpaid,
untrained
chorus.31
The solo
quartet
never blended
with
the
chorus,
and in-
stead
sang
solos, duos,
trios,
or
quartet
sections
within
larger
anthems,
or on their own.
Solo
quartets
became
so
popular
that some
congregations
relied almost
entirely
on them.
Although many
critics
disparaged
he solo
quar-
tet as a descendent ofsecular
glee singing popu-
lar in
America
in
the
early
nineteenth
century,
congregations enjoyed
the
polished
sound and
"personal
touch" of the soloists
in
a mixed
quartet.32Meanwhile,
the chorus offered ama-
teur
singers
in the
congregation
an
opportunity
to
participate
in
sacred
music
making.
By
the
last decade of the
century
the
quartet
choir
was
the most common ensemble in
American
Prot-
estant
churches,
and the
solo
quartet
was
given
significant
attention in church
advertisements.
A
survey
of the
Easter service
listings
in
the
New York Times from
1889-98
verifies that
the
large majority
of churches in Manhattan
29Laurence David
Wallach,
The
New
England
Education
of
Charles Ives
(Ph.D.
diss.,
Columbia
University, 1973),
pp.
147-48
and 152.
30John
Tasker
Howard,
Our American Music
(3rd
edn. New
York,
1946), p.
592.
31Summarized
from
Leonard
Ellinwood,
The
History of
American Church Music
(New York,
1953), pp.
72-75.
32It
is
listed
in the
United States as
early
as
1861,
in
The
American Musical
Directory,
1861.
Also
discussed
in Wil-
liam
Kearns,
Horatio Parker 1863-1919:
His
Life,
Music
and Ideas
(Metuchen, N.J., 1990),
pp.
193-94.
173
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and
Brooklyn
listed the individual
quartet
sing-
ers in their
advertisements.33
Dudley
Buck's
anthems were the
most
suc-
cessful
compositions
for
quartet
choir and
rep-
resented
the
choral
mainstream.
If
the Easter
listings
provide
a reliable
gauge,
Buck and
Shelley were the only American composers
whose works were heard
regularly
n
New York
churches. Buck's
preeminence
as
a
composer
of
music for
quartet
choir
remained
strong
de-
cades after
his death. As late
as
1946,
John
Tasker Howard
wrote,
"As
a
choir
director and
composer
[Buck] helped
to
develop
our
litera-
ture for the
church,
and since he was fond of
the mixed
quartet
which has been a feature
of
American
worship,
and sometimes its
curse,
he
had
a
profound
influence on our
choir
mu-
sic.
"34
In
keeping
with the American
Protestant
musical mainstream, Ives's choir at Center
Church was a
quartet
choir.
One member of
the
choir,
Lewis
Bronson,
later described the
division
of labor
between the
professional
solo
quartet
and amateur
chorus,
both directed
by
John
Cornelius
Griggs:
Center Church
...
at that time
[1896]
had the best
church
quartet
that
I
knew about
....
At
first,
they
simply
had the
quartet
at
the
morning
ervice
and
the
four o'clock service on
Sundays.
Then
Griggs
made
up
his mind
that
he
wanted
to do
a little
broader
work,
andhe decided
o
get
in a small cho-
rus which he was able to pull togetherby offering
vocal lessons
....
The chorus
sang only
at the four
o'clock
ervice,
but
we
hadchoirrehearsals nd
gave
some
fairly
substantial
ieces
with Mr.
Ives
playing
the
organ
nd he
quartet
ndchorusdirected
y
Dr.
Griggs.
We
had
a
rehearsal
very
week,
and he mem-
bers
of
the
chorus
eceived essons
n
return.
We
had
a
good quartet,
so
that
we
could
really
do
some
pretty
elaborate
ieces.35
Griggs,
whom
Ives seems to have
regarded
as a
surrogate
father
(his
own
father,
of
course,
had
died
in
1894),
endorsed this
peculiarly
Ameri-
can
ensemble in
his doctoral
dissertation,
in
which he
asserted that it
"represents
he
people
and in
no manner
represents
the
priesthood
or
any
other
specially
ordained
class."36
On 25
October
1895,
Griggs
even delivered a
lecture
to the Yale
Divinity
School that included mu-
sical
examplesperformedby
the Center Church
Choir with
Ives
on the
organ.
In
this
lecture,
Griggs
discussed both the "Limitations
and
Ad-
vantages"
of the
quartet
choir and
apparently
offered
some further endorsement of the en-
semble in general. Survivingcalendarsdemon-
strate that the Center
Church
choir
regularly
performed
Buck's
anthems for
quartet
choir.37
Given
Center Church's choir format and
Griggs's
approval
of the
quartet
choir,
it is not
surprising
hat
virtually
all of
Ives's
sacredcom-
positions
from
1894
to
98
feature
quartet
solo-
ists
backed
by
an
amateur chorus.
Moreover,
Ives's
compositions
for this
ensemble
clearly
resemble the most
popularcontemporary
works
for
quartet
choir:
those
by Dudley
Buck. One
feature of
the
quartet-choir
anthem,
for in-
stance,
was its awareness
of the
limitations of
the amateurchoir; nstead,these anthems show-
cased the solo
singers. Larger
anthems
typi-
cally
begin
and end with
homophonic
sections
for
full choir
and
include more
complex music,
written for some combination
of
quartet
solo-
ists,
in
the middle
sections.38
Alternatively,
the
entire
work could be
sung
by
the
quartet
sing-
ers
alone,
without the chorus.
Accompaniment
33Listings vary
in
detail,
with the most extensive entries
for
1889-90,
and
1894-98:
general prose descriptions
are
found in 1888 and
1899-1900,
while the
remaining
years
have no music
listings.
For
example,
of the
twenty
churches
in Manhattan that
identify
their musical ensembles
in
1895,
sixteen list the
members of
their
mixed
SATB
quar-
tet by name and voice,.and many of these specify the
number
of
voices
in
the
accompanying
chorus. "Glad
Mu-
sic for
Easter,"
New York
Times,
14
April
1895,
pp.
17,
19.
In addition to the sixteen churches
with
mixed
quartet,
one church lists
a
quintet
without names
(Trinity
Episco-
pal
Church),
another identifies
a male
quartet
(Madison
Avenue
Presbyterian),
and two list
male
choirs. Five other
churches include insufficient
information.
34Howard,
Our
American
Music,
p.
592.
35Interview
with
Lewis
Bronson,
28
July 1969,
transcribed
in
Perlis,
Charles Ives Remembered:
An
Oral
History (New
Haven, Conn., 1974), pp. 20-21.
36Ives,
Memos,
p.
254.
37Ives
Papers,
box
51,
folder 1.
38Kearns,
Horatio Parker 1863-1919:
A
Study
of
His
Life
and
Music
(Ph.D.
diss.,
University
of
Illinois, 1965),
p.
585. In
fact,
some of Ives's
early
experimental psalms
adapt
this
form
as
well.
Psalm
67,
despite
its
bitonality,
adapts
a
hornophonic
texture
in
the outer sections with
a
fugato
in
the
middle.
174
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is limited
to
piano
or
organ,
which
doubles
the
chorus
sections
as an aid to the amateur
singer.
In his choral works
from
the Yale
period,
Ives
uses
a harmonic
language
similar
to
that
of
Buck,
as
shown
in ex. 5.
Both
composers
feature
the
close,
chromatic harmonies
that
showcase the solo quartet (andthat may have
been associated
with
contemporary
barbershop
singing).
Most notable are the constant
chro-
matic
motion and use of diminished
sevenths,
often
used
in
conjunction
(ex. 5a,
where
chro-
matic
motion
in
the
bass creates
a
diminished
seventh
on
C#;
and ex.
5b,
where
a
suspension
and
a chromatic
appoggiatura
create
a momen-
tary
diminished seventh
in
2
position
over
F),
and
parallel
chromatic
motion
in sixths and
thirds
(ex.
5c
and
5d).
All
of these
features are
evident
in a
passage
from
Turn Ye, Turn
Ye
of
1896
(ex. 6),
where
Ives accentuates
the dra-
matic character of the text
through
constant
slippery
chromaticism
(including
in
m. 16
the
double chromatic
motion to a diminished sev-
enth
on
B),
echoes,
and
pauses
as the voices
twist
and
turn, finally returning
"home" to
rest
in m. 15.
In
his
anthems Ives demonstrated
the
same
pragmatic
attitude
evident
in
his earlier service
music.
The anthems accommodated
the
per-
forming
ensemble at
his
disposal
and the de-
nominational
demands of
his
position.
More
than
thirty years
after
leaving
Center
Church,
Ives acknowledged the influence of Buck on
these works
in the
1929
list mentioned
above.
It is
striking
that after
a decade of
promoting
himself as
an
exclusively
modernist
composer,
Ives
clearly
allied himself with a
forgotten
nine-
teenth-century
composer
for
quartet
choir.
But
perhaps
this
open
admission is more
under-
standable
when we
recall Ives's declaration
at
the
top
of
the
list: "for
my
own
information,
not for
publication."39
IVES,
PARKER,
AND
BUCK:
A
COMPARISON
The quartet-choir heritage is crucial for under-
standing
The Celestial
Country,
a work that
Ives
began composing
at the end of his Center
Church
period.
Thus the
quartet-choir legacy
constitutes
a second
stylistic
influence in that
cantata,
albeit
one
that has been
eclipsed
by
excessive
emphasis
on its
borrowings
rom Hora
Novissima.
The
interrelationships
between
the
musical
styles
of
Ives,
Parker,
and Buck are
best
illustrated
through
a
comparison
of a con-
temporaryquartet-choir antataby Buck,Christ
the Victor
of
1896,
alongside
The Celestial
Country
and its
acknowledged
model,
Hora
Novissima.
Table
2
(p.
179)
summarizes
many
of the
pri-
mary
features of these
works,
including
overall
structure,
language,
accompaniment,
chorus
size,
and
duration. These
factors,
considered
along
with the level of
difficulty
of
the choral
writing,
indicate that The
Celestial
Country
more
clearly
resembles Buck's
quartet-choir
cantata
style
than
it
does Parker's
grand
orato-
rio Hora Novissima. Such a conclusion is rein-
forced
by
a
study
of the initial
impetus, pre-
mieres,
and
early performances
of
the works.
The cantatas
by
Ives and
Buck
were written with
the limitations of
congregational
choirs
in mind
and accommodated the
unique
features of the
quartet
choir.
According
to
William
Gallo,
five
of Buck's cantatas
published during
the
1890s
(including
Christ
the
Victor)
were written
"at
the
request
of
Rudolph
Schirmer
to fill
the cur-
rent need for works
of
about an hour's duration
and
of moderate
difficulty
to
be
performed
at
evening
musical
services."
John
Tasker Howard
described the same Buck cantatasas "not diffi-
cult to
perform,
and
any
one of them
may
be
performed
in connection with a Christmas or
Easter
service.'"40
Both
Gallo's
and Howard's
de-
scriptions
fit
The Celestial
Country
closely.
Ives's cantata received its
premiere
by
the
small
amateur chorus of seventeen that he directed
at
Central
Presbyterian
church,
plus
the standard
solo
quartet.41
he work lasts under an
hour
and
39Ives,
Memos,
p.
147.
40William K.
Gallo,
The
Life
and
Church Music
of Dudley
Buck
(Ph.D. diss.,
Catholic
University
of
America, 1968),
p. 101. The cantatas included Christ the Victor (1896),
Coming of
the
King
(1895),
The
Story of
the Cross
(1892),
and The
Triumph
of
David
(1892).
Howard,
Our American
Music,
p.
594.
41Ives's
choir at Central
Presbyterian
Church
in
New
York
included seventeen
voices
altogether
in the
chorus,
plus
a
solo SATB
quartet.
The chorus was
certainly
amateur,
since
Ives's nonmusical roommates were recruited
to
sing
in
the
choir on occasion.
175
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a.
Ives, Crossing
the Bar
(5C7,
1894).
one
clear call for me
And
may
there be
no
moan-ing
of the
bar,
When
one clear call for me No moan ing _ of the bar, When
---
-
-- --- --
--
one clear call for me No moan -
ing.. .
of the
bar,
When
one clear call for me No moan
ing
......
of the
bar,
When
Glo
ry, glo
-
ry
be to
the
Fa
-
ther,
B.
-L
Example
5:
Comparison
of
quartet-choir writing
by
Ives and Buck.
Examples
5a and c
reprintedby permission.
? 1974 and 1983 by Associated Music Publishers,Inc. (BMI).
constituted
only
half of the
evening's program
at its
premiere,
which
took
place
in
a
church.
More
importantly,
The
Celestial
Country
and
Christ the Victor
reveal
their
intended
perform-
ers-the amateur chorus and
professional
quar-
tet standard
in
American
churches-through
the choral
writing,
which is "of moderate diffi-
culty"
for the amateur chorus. Both works use
the chorus
sparingly,
and then
only
in
simpler
textures: most choral
writing
is
homophonic,
doubled by the organ, and even in unison and
octaves,
as in the final movement of The
Celes-
tial
Country
(ex.
7)
and
in
the ninth
movement
of
Christ
the Victor
(ex.
8).
In The Celestial
Country,
the chorus
sings
only
in the
outer
movements
(one
and
seven),
while Buck's work
is
distributed
among
unison or
two-part
cho-
ruses
(divided
between men and
women),
the
quartet
soloists, and,
in
a
truly
inclusive
ges-
ture,
the
congregation.
In
Buck's
work,
the full
chorus
usually
leads the
congregation
in a
fa-
miliar
hymn,
thus
underlining
the
religious
con-
text
of the work while
accommodating
the ama-
teur choristers
as
well as the entire church
population.42
Both
cantatas feature soloists ex-
tensively,
in
smaller ensembles
and
against
the
amateur chorus.
Hora Novissima stands apart from the two
other works in both
style
and function. Parker's
oratorio was first
performed
on
3
May
1893
by
420nly
movements
III, V,
VI,
and XI use full
chorus,
and
then
only sparingly.
176
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c.
Ives,
I
Come to
Thee
(5C18,
1896-97).
rpt.
oco
rt.
f
a tempo
rock,
my
shield,
In
-
to
Thy
hands
my
soul
I
yield,
my
life,
my
poco
A
rit.
f
a tempo
Srit.
I
-
fa
teIpo
shield,
In
Thy
hands
my
soul
I
yield, my
life,
my
poco
t.
f
a
tempo
shield,
In
-
to
Thy
hands
my
soul
I
yield, my
life,
my
d.
Buck,
Festival
Te Deum
in
E6,
op.
63,
no. 1.
Thou ...
hadst__
o
-
ver
T.
,0'6
-
.
.
-
o
-
ver
B.
When Thou hadst
fr
6.
"L
Example
5
(continued)
the
Church Choral
Society
of
New
York at
the
Church
of the
Holy Trinity:
it
was
the
only
work on the
program.
According
to Parker's
biographer
William
Kearns,
this
was "the most
important performance
n
[Parker's]
areer"due
to the
high profile
of the
performing
ensemble,
the
growing reputation
of
the
composer,
and
the expectations of New York critics that Hora
Novissima would be "the
major
effort
in
the
field of American oratorio
up
to that
time."43
The
Church Choral
Society
was
a
formally
trained ensemble that
met the
nineteenth-cen-
tury
demand for
religious
content and
culti-
vated
context,
and that
counted
among
its
pa-
trons the wealthiest and
most visible
Manhattanites,
such
as
J.
Pierpont
Morgan
and
the
Vanderbilts.44
ounded
n
1888,
the
society
was
organized
"for the
purpose
of
holding
mu-
sical services in the largerchurches where the
sacred
compositions
of
the
great
musicians
43Kearns,
Horatio Parker:
Life,
Music and
Ideas,
pp.
18,
19.
44Reviews and announcements of
Church Choral
Society
concerts are from the
New York Times on the
following
dates: 4
May
1893;
20 December
1893;
19
January
1894;
19
December
1894;
21 December
1894;
22
February
1895.
177
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Slow
ALf
pp
p
(
P
f
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T.
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do",,
Example
6:
Ives,
Turn
Ye,
Turn
Ye,
mm.
7-16.
could be
properly
rendered."45
To
this
end,
its
programsincluded works by Dvohik, Mozart,
Liszt, Mendelssohn,
and
Wagner.
According
to
Parker,
Hora
Novissima
was
written
for this
socially
and
musically signifi-
cant ensemble that
presented
concerts "of
a
veryhigh order."46 ut despite its excellent cre-
dentials,
the Church Choral
Society
did not
adequatelyperform
Hora
Novissima.
Critic
Wil-
liam
J.
Henderson lamented the
"inadequacy
of
45New York
Times,
20 December
1893, p.
12. 46Ibid.
178
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Table 2
Comparative Summary
of Parker's
Hora Novissima
(1893),
Ives's
The
Celestial
Country
(1898-99)
and
Buck's
Christ the
Victor
(1896)
PARKER,
HORA
NOVISSIMA IVES,
THE
CELESTIAL
COUNTRY BUCK,
CHRIST THE
VICTOR
Movements: 1.
Introduction and
Chorus
1.
Chorus
1.
Solo
(Baritone)
2.
Quartet
2. Aria
(Baritone)
2.
Chorus
(Women)
3. Aria
(Bass)
3.
Quartet
3. Chorus
(Men)
4.
Chorus
4.
String
Quartet
Intermezzo 4.
Quartet
and
Chorus
5.
Aria
(Soprano)
5.
Double
Quartet
a
cappella
5.
Chorus,
Solo
(Tenor),
Hymn
(Congregation)
6.
Quartet
and
Chorus 6.
Aria
(Tenor)
6.
Chorus
(Men)
7. Solo
(Tenor)
7. Chorus
7.
Chorus
(Women),Trio,
Hymn
(Congregation)
8. Double
Chorus
8. Duet
(Alto
and
Baritone)
9. Solo
(Alto)
9. Chorus
10. Chorus a
cappella
10.
Hymn
(Congregation)
11. Quartetand Chorus
Text
Language
Latin,
12th-century poem
English,
19th-century
English,
19th-century
and
Source:
by
Bernardof
Cluny
hymn by
Alford
hymns
(var.)
and
Bible
passages
Accompaniment:
Full
Orchestra
plus
organ
Organ, String
Quartet,
2
horns
Organ
Chorus Size:
Choral
Society,
unknown
Central
Presbyterian
No
premiere
on
record
Handel and
Haydn
Society:
ChurchChoir:
17 voices
383
voices
Approximate
84
minutes
50 minutes
45
minutes
Duration:
the chorus" and
stated
that
"the work
ought
to
be
given by
a
chorus
of
300 or
400
voices
to
get
full
justice."47
This
obstacle
was
overcome with
the 4
February
1894
performance
by
the
Handel
and
Haydn
Society
in
Boston
Symphony
Hall.48
In
this
much-anticipated
concert
by
an even
more
venerated
ensemble,
the choir
consisted
of
383
voices
accompanied
by
an
orchestra of
fifty-seven.
The size and
quality
of this
perfor-
mance
removes
Parker's
work from
the modest
amateur context in
which
Ives's
cantata
first
appeared.49
Furthermore, the musical style of Hora
Novissima-the choral
writing-was
obviously
suited
to a trained ensemble
such as the
Church
Choral
Society
or the Boston Handel
and
Haydn
Society.
As H.
Wiley
Hitchcock
noted,
the
cho-
ral movements
"are
the
pillars
of
the
work":
indeed,
the
full
chorus is
used
in six
of
the
eleven
movements
including
a
double
chorus
("Stant
Syon
atria,"
movement
8)
and the
a
cappella penultimate
movement
"Urbs
Syon
Unica"
(ex.
9).
The
difficulty
of the
part writing
in "Urbs
Syon
Unica" was
acknowledged
at
the time
by
critic
Louis
Elson,
who
wrote,
"That
an
American
can write
such
music is
some-
thing that we should be
proud of;
that the
Handel and
Haydn
Chorus
could
sing
it
(unac-
companied)
is
something
to
congratulate
them
upon."
50Parker's
demanding
score
incorporates
47New
York
Times,
4
May 1893,
p.
5.
48Kearns,
HoratioParker:
Life,
Music and
Ideas,
p.
22.
49Historyof
the
Handel and
Haydn
Society,
2
vols.
(Bos-
ton,
1883-1913;
rpt.
New
York, 1977-79),
II,
37.
SOIbid,
.
38.
179
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19TH
MUSIC
114
A
----
hon or done In to ..
hon
or
done, In
to.......
A
,-If-
---
hon or
done,
In
to
.
hon or
done,
In to
116
tri
-
umph,
In
to