One hundred-fifty years ago, a mild-mannered insurance man was born in the small Connecticut town of Danbury. On nights and weekends, he composed music, most of which went unperformed in his lifetime. His name is , and after he died in 1954, his reputation slowly grew as America鈥檚 first truly original composer.
To mark the anniversary, pianist has released the album IVES DENK, with violinist Stefan Jackiw. It contains Ives鈥� four violin sonatas and his two massive piano sonatas -- some of the composer鈥檚 most personal, thorny, confounding and beautiful music.
Ives was a free thinker who wrote music that sounds decades ahead of its time. His wildest ideas were inherited from his father George, a musical jack-of-all-trades and Danbury鈥檚 bandleader who instructed his son to sing songs in one key and play the accompaniment in another. In his memoirs, dictated to a secretary in 1930, Ives remembers his father saying, 鈥淚f you know how to write a fugue the right way, then I鈥檓 willing to have you try the wrong way.鈥�
So much of Ives鈥� music sounds, at least at first hearing, like it was indeed composed the 鈥渨rong way.鈥� Ives challenged traditional music theory. In his Violin Sonata No. 2, played with a singular controlled frenzy by Denk and Jackiw, the hymn 鈥淐ome thou Fount of Every Blessing鈥� barges in, ecstatic, above a piano gone bonkers.
Ives was obsessed with all of the music around him. You never know when snippets of popular church hymns, circus marches, parlor songs or ragtime ditties might weasel their way into a piece. In Ives鈥� day, his listeners might have thought he was simply playing off popular culture, but in his singular, rugged way, Ives is telling us these songs are part of the gravel that pours into the foundation of American music. In the ramshackle, ragtime-inflected middle movement of the Violin Sonata No. 3 you can hear Ives tinkering with the music, stopping and starting as if he鈥檚 trying out ideas on the spot.
His ideas didn鈥檛 always land favorably. About the First Violin Sonata, which premiered in San Francisco in 1928 at a concert series designed by Henry Cowell, Ives recalled the day when he invited an acclaimed violinist to his home to perform the piece. 鈥淗e didn鈥檛 even get through the first page,鈥� Ives wrote in his memoir. 鈥淗e was all bothered with the rhythms and the notes, and he got mad. He said, 鈥楾his cannot be played. It is not music. It makes no sense.鈥欌�� Denk places the sonata among Ives鈥� most aspiring works and describes its eerie central movement in the album liner notes as 鈥渁 jagged musical reflection on the Civil War.鈥�
There鈥檚 a kind of freewheeling, 鈥淲atch me build it,鈥� swagger in Ives鈥� music that sounds unmistakably American. Although these pieces were composed over 100 years ago, they sound surprisingly contemporary.
Ives began working on his Piano Sonata No. 1 around 1915, but it would have to wait another 34 years for its public debut. The crepuscular opening movement sounds innocent enough, like something might have written had he lived another dozen years. Ives quotes both a hymn and a cowboy song -- in Ives the sacred and profane often collide. Some 25 minutes later, just before the ominous final movement, the music couldn鈥檛 sound more contrary as the hymn 鈥淏ringing in the Sheaves鈥� stumbles in, dangerously belligerent. Denk鈥檚 performance is deliciously unhinged.
Ives believed in the utopian possibilities of music. So it鈥檚 no surprise that his Piano Sonata No. 2, subtitled 鈥淐oncord, Mass., 1840-1860,鈥� is inspired by American transcendentalists. It鈥檚 a mammoth, all-encompassing work 鈥� separate portraits of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorn, and the Alcotts.
Yet common threads are woven through. Right off the bat, at the opening of the 鈥淓merson鈥� movement, there鈥檚 a nod to Beethoven鈥檚 5th heard low in the left hand. That da-da-da-daaa theme will eventually evolve into some of Ives鈥� most tender music in the movement titled 鈥淭he Alcotts.鈥� At another point in the sonata鈥檚 鈥淗awthorn鈥� section, Ives specifies that a narrow wooden board, exactly 14 -3/4 inches long, be used to depress multiple keys at once. The result is a mysterious cloud of notes in the right hand that floats in opposition to a melody of arpeggiated chords in the left. It could have been just a gimmick, but Ives makes it work beautifully.
These performances by Denk and Jackiw are both delicate and muscular --like Ives鈥� music, which is filled with contradictions, failure, grace and vision. And it would be difficult to find more satisfying liner notes than those by Denk, whose 2022 memoir Every Good Boy Does Fine offers the same blend of perception and wit. For this album, he sums up the composer for us in 2024, saying that Ives is 鈥渙ptimistic but always messy, always falling apart at the seams. His music suggests America will just have to muddle through, and wrestle with its own failure.鈥�
An album of Ives music, especially one as well played and thought provoking as Ives Denk, is worth engaging with at any time, regardless of the sesquicentennial. That it has been released during an election season fraught with opposing views of what it means to be an American adds a distinct gravitas.
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