Gotta love the Princeton Record Exchange five minutes from where I work.
Took at last the Ives plunge via used CDs (in case I absolutely hated
the stuff): Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the Chicago Symphony in the
New England Holiday Symphony, The Unanswered Question, and Central Park
in the Dark. The Lydian String Quartet performing Quartets 1 & 2 plus
Hymn and Hallowe'en.
This is inaccessible? Some of it is a bit harsh, yes, but some of it is
gorgeous by any measure; and the Decoration Day movement of New England
Holidays Symphony is wonderfully emotional and quite unlike what I
expected. I don't know if Ives was dealing in nostalgia or musical
translation as well as adapting and reading in old popular and patriotic
tunes--but the effect feels from here like a kind of memorial recovery
of something that may have once existed but is now gone.
It's moving and...a word I never thought I'd apply to a supposed
dissonant like Ives...lovely. Only I'm not sure how dissonant he is.
Which makes me both surprised and glad.
Nice to learn he was a former insurance salesman. I am too, one of my
multiple incarnations as a David Mamet character. Ives had a much
longer career at it than I did. He also wrote better music, and I don't
think Mamet would be interested in him.
Ken
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Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538
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