charles ives: the unanswered question

this past weekend was a melange of luscious high heat, report card writing, reading (maximum city: bombay lost and found by suketu mehta), household work, cooking and baking, drinking some wickedlovely beer and sunning out by the pool. i am a very lucky person!

this evening to bring this heady blend of experiences to some sort of peaceful conclusion i decided to dig deep into the golden fish music collection and emerged with a slightly dusty treasure in the form of a collection of works by charles ives.
hardly unknown and then also hardly known, charles lived between 1874 and 1954 bridging a massive experiential gulf in the history of the world and in my view, leaving just before things got especially interesting. however, his music created an extraordinary new space or opening for musicians after him as a result of his being “among the first composers to engage in a systematic program of experimental music , with musical techniques including polytonality, polyrhythm, tone clusters, aleatoric elements, and quarter tones, thus foreshadowing virtually every major musical innovation of the 20th century.” (wikipedia).

the first piece of music i heard by charles was entitled “the housatonic at stockbridge”. (the third element of ives’ three places in new england), the piece grew from a walk that ives took with his wife “we walked in the meadows along the river, and heard the distant singing from the church across the river. the mist had not entirely left the river bed, and the colors, the running water, the banks and elm trees were something that one would always remember.” to learn more about this remarkable music visit here.

at the time i first heard this piece of music i was in high school and going through a phase in which i righteously denied any interest in “classical” or “symphonic” music. this piece of music turned my head around and opened my mind a little bit more with its very obvious links to the free jazz and some of the more progressive rock i was immersed in at the time.

here’s a teaser from charles ives’ the housatonic at stockbridge.
tonight though i am immersed in a wonderful, wandering, wavering piece of atonality / tonality that dances precariously along the knife edge of beauty and harsh reality.
charles ives’ exquisite “the unanswered question” . . .