Charles Ives - UNIVERSE SYMPHONY
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- čas přidán 8. 09. 2024
- American Festival of Microtonal Music
Johnny Reinhard - Director
UNIVERSE SYMPHONY by Charles Ives
Realized by Johnny Reinhard
Recording Produced by Michael Thorne, Stereo Society
Editing and Recording by James Rosenthal
Conducted by Johnny Reinhard for 120 tracks
2006, Stereo Society SS007
World Premiere was June 6, 1996 in Alice Tulley Hall, Lincoln Centre
Performers:
David Fedele, flute
Gerard Reuter, oboe
Michiyo Suzuki, clarinet
Johnny Reinhard, bassoon, contrabassoon, percussion
Tom Chiu, violin
Anastasia Solberg, viola
David Eggar, cello
Mat Fieldes, double bass
John Charles Thomas, trumpet
Greg Evans, French horn
Julie Josephson, trombone
David Grego, tuba
Nina Kellman, harp
Jon Cater, just intonation machine
Tom Goldstein, percussion
Don Conreaux, gong
Skip La Plante, low bell
Form:
Earth Fragment
Prelude #1: Pulse Of The Cosmos
Section A: Wide Valleys And Clouds
Prelude #2: Birth Of The Oceans
Section B: Earth and the Firmament
Prelude #3: And Lo, Now It Is Night
Section C: Earth Is Of The Heavens
This recording is in extended Pythagorean tuning. 120 tracks were used. All the music is Ives. No new notes or instruments were added. All of the directions given by Ives were obeyed to the letter. Nothing is missing from this piece. A once thought missing 4 measures by the composer was discovered to be substituted by a plug called Heaven and Earth on the last page of the sketches, at the very top, for piano. Other parts elided into and out of the plug.
It is in extended Pythagorean tuning, but there are written quartertones throughout. Also some eighthtones, just intonation.
Check out the AFMM website at: www.afmm.org
Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to the American Festival of Microtonal Music at: bit.ly/2d4KDXv
See Johnny Reinhard's home at the Stereo Society: stereosociety.c...
Johnny Reinhard's book about realizing this symphony just came out. It's called "The Ives Universe, A Symphonic Odyssey." I'm reading it, it's great. The publisher is Composers Edition.
I'd encourage anyone who's sceptical to read up on the work Reinhard did to realise Ives' manuscripts into a finished work. Johnny did some tremendous scholarship on his own part to bring us this incredible symphony.
Yup. Johnny’s a good egg.
Johnny's book about this just came out July 2024....called "The Ives Universe, A Symphonic Odyssey." I'm reading it, it's great. The publisher is Composers Edition.
One of the most enchanting
pieces I've ever listened to. I can't understand how Ives composed something like this in that year.
Am not necessarily disagreeing with you, but this piece seems a tad too austere to be called enchanting. No?
It took more than a year. It took decades, and Ives was never able to pull it together, due to lack of time and failing health. Which makes Mr. Reinhold's work all the more heroic. Who else would have known about that 'plug' and what its true purpose was?
"A symphony must be a world."--Gustav Mahler. "Hold my beer, Herr Mahler."--Charles Ives.
To which Charles Tournemire answers: "You SHOULD listen to my Seventh Symphony, The Dances of Life" czcams.com/video/eRWt1oizptQ/video.html
lol.
"I give up and I think I need a drink." --Jean Sibelius
"lol Tonal comformist" - Boulez.
Love it, Luther Adams- esque and this was written between 1911 and 1928 for God's sake. Should be better known. I would vouch that this is one of the most advanced thinking works of any composer ever - next to Cage Living Room music in early 40s. Very underappreciated, should be better known. Think about it - listening to this in 1928; listening to Living Room Music in 1943. These are modern works that could have been written in 2019. 100 years ahead of time. They don't rely on narrative approaches which is extraordinary.
I don t think living room music is in the same height...My respect to Cage, but this is another level...
This is a powerful work, and I'm glad it exists.
Ives' "the unanswered question" crawled into my subconscious mind many many years ago. I rediscovered it today and spontaneously began to noodle with a very primitive synth. Searching for more Ives related work, here the "question" theme comes up as a giant symphony. Outstanding and so inspiring. Thank you so much, Mr. Reinhard!
0:00 is a good place to start. And as Charles Ives once said to a guy "Open your ears like a man!"
Music for the future
Thank you for making this available. It should be heard widely
A true feat! Absolutely wonderful production. Last week I finished writing the 1st draft of my 3D Audio/Play titled: IVES@WORK. The 1st Act is devoted to and invokes the Universe Symphony. You and yr team could not have done a better job. I can't express enough how much of a treat it was to find this on CZcams (or anywhere).
A masterpiece in itself and good for The Shining too
Amazing, and what wonderful titles the symphony has.
Stunning music made approx 100 years ago.
No, not made - left unfinished and in a mostly sketchy state by 1951. Not only did Charles Ives not complete the work, he didn't even have an approximate idea of how it would sound like!
@@alleespach and we don't know how much of this work is close to his intentions and how much is the result of the interaction between him and the man who completed it (with all the music being made in between...). It would really be interesting to see the original sketches in order to understand how much difficult is to understand them ... who knows?
@@emilianoturazzi Does it matter to you if I tell you it is only music by Ives, and nothing of my own?
@@johnnyreinhard5279 thank you for your answer. It matters, but it's not enough...don't misunderstand me: I'm not questioning your integrity nor your intentions, but we (those who didn't see them) don't know the conditions of Ives' sketches. And we'll probably never know it. It would be interesting to have a neutral musicological study for haveing a better comprehension of this work.
But we'll never know what Ives would have really done with those sketches, we don't kow his intentions, we don't know why he didn't finish this piece (maybe you have more informations...)
I'm not a scholar, I'm simply a musician, I know the cndition of my own sketches, I know how many changes may occur form the last sketch to the actual score, I know that each musician has a different approach and sometimes sketches are completely defined...
no one could finish a piece of mine if I'd die tomorrow...whoever could use my sketches in order to do something...
I even don't know if the choice of just intonation was your own, or Ives' and if it was yours on what basis did you take it.
maybe you wrote something about your approach to this music, I'd be glad to read it (I'll do a search)
These problems always occurs whenever someone decides to complete an unfinished work.
I'm grateful you did this (huge) work, because you gave us impressive and problematic (in the highest meaning of the word) music.
(I planned to go to Koeln to hear its european premiére before covid chanfed all our life - Koel is not close to my home, so you can understand how much I'm interested in this work)
@@emilianoturazzi I wrote an unpublished book that details all your questions. There is a chapter on how Ives indicated his tuning, as well. There is no reason to place doubt. Charles Ives, to my knowledge, is the only composer to ever ask that a future composer finish the composition. And I found it was all there. Find me on FB and I will send you the book, "The Ives 'Universe.'" It contains all the sketches so you can see for yourself. My contribution was in putting it all together.
Great Performance, stunning piece , keep up the good work, a real addition to world history of Music!
I have no idea what is going on, not even sure I like it but it's making me feel something at least.
Your honesty is refreshing and most welcome. Thank you for giving this music a chance, which is more than 99% would do.
The title implies you're hitting the correct notes in your comment.
The work has been realized in two editions. They both call to my mind the Turangalîla-Symphonie by Messiaen.
Unexpectedly coherant,
well-done Johnny Reinhardt.
I'm trying to remember earlier
"completions" of this fairly
open-ended project.
Elliott Schwartze comes to mind,
but that's probably wrong...
Glorious.
This music is absolutely incredible!
Amazing stuff
Absolutely a stunner!!! Thank you, 3 times over!!!
Polymicrotonal and Polytempic, the proto-type, no other composers, except for electroacoustic and computer music composers, such as Gerard Pape, or Dan Stearns, have attempted this. No one has actually assigned a tempo and tuning to a specific part, or parts, nor has anyone deliberately created a polytempic polymicrotonal texture for acoustic instruments other than Ives.
Most composers are influenced by the past ives seems influenced by the future
That's actually a great comment
While I am very fond of much of Ives' other works, this is special. It is hard to even know how you yourself are reacting to it.
@Johnny Reinhard: I had read that Ives envisioned this music being performed by musicians located on several mountain tops. How was that supposed to be executed? And kudos- this is extraordinary, and extraordinarily well executed. It’s remarkably transparent; I can make out all the layers in this music.
Today it could be done. 1923 - not so much.
This remember me to "Popol vuh: Creation of Mayan World", by Alberto Ginastera. Wonderful argentine composer!
Dumbfounding how amazing this work is! Astonishing work to reconstruct this.
Im Anfang war der Rhythmus' was the credo of Hans von Bülow, and Ives is demonstrating it here. Most intriguing.If this is genuinely Ives' music then it predates the complete avant-garde of the second half of the 20th century. Varèse's 'Ionisation' immediately springs to mind btw, also Xenakis and Ligeti's 'Atmosphères'. I see a relation as well with the theories of Helmholtz (Ives father had a copy of his book 'On the sensation of tone' I believe):a gigantic sound wave starting with sound below the human auditory threshold resulting in a rhythmic pulse, the same principle used by Stockhausen later on in 'Gruppen' (a spatial work as well). Anyway, it is fascinating, thank you for making this publicly available.
Debió haber conocido o frecuentado a Nikola Tesla, son casi de la misma época.. contemporaneos ???
@@isabelt5673 I see, interesting remark, who knows? And what do you think that Tesla has said/theory is related to this piece?
I wrote in one of my poems a line "like the pulsing passion/that made the worlds". It seems Ives heard it long before I thought of it!
Alguien sabrá..???
Me pregunto si Charles, en algún momento de su vida a podido conocer a NIkola Tesla .???
Ya que Tesla habria tenido la corazonada de que
🔎 EL UNIVERSO ERA UNA SINFONÍA DE CORRIENTES ALTERNAS...ARMONIAS QUE RECORRIAN UNA VASTA SERIE DE OCTAVAS...
ESTUDIABA LAS ONDAS LUMINOSAS
ESTABA MUY INTERESADO EN LA SINFONÍA DEL COSMOS
Speechless..just speechless
Conceiving a random sequence of annoying sounds is not difficult, perversely enjoying them is quite fun, the hard part is to actually notate them, and to get people to execute the notation. Hats off to all involved!
Actually not random but well thought out- even if it hurts your ears
Kind of an Apocalypse Now sound with the percussion and the timpani. The scene where Ctp. Benjamin confronts Col'. Kurtz for the first time. And the conclusion with airstrike on the Kurtz compound. The end of the river alright.
Well, as Led Zeppelin would say "The song remains the same man!"
UNSURPASSIBLE
This should have been the soundtrack to Terence Malick's The Tree of Life.
Partch’s Castor and Pollux on a symphonic scale.
Where do I get full score for this?
write me for a score
I think Ives' breakdown issues are very sad indeed. What was the issue? Was it physical, a series of strokes, or purely psychological? That he could not wrote for so long long prior to his death is really tragic and strange. I love the mans music
It was diabetes, long untreated.
Siounds like something from Apocalypse Now and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
if you folks like this, check out Icelandic music
:) xxx
Ives reloaded?
I've been meaning to convey the meaning of reality through discord and harmony but it seems as if though I might have been beaten to the punch.
The point was made after five minutes.
Thank God the work is longer than 5 minutes. There's more to explore and to enjoy.
I doubt you got the point at all.
now what is the difference between Johnny Reinhard's rendition here and Larry Austin's?
According to Jan Swafford (Charles Ives: A Life With Music) Larry Austin's is a hybrid version, roughly half Austin and half Ives.
@@andrewwilliams9599 And Austin's is only half as long, which also counts as a difference, I suppose.
@@alleespach I don't know how much of Ives' material Austin had on hand or had access to when he composed his 'performing version' of the Universe Symphony. I know that Henry and Sydney Cowell had amassed many pages of music that Ives had indicated were to be part of this symphony, and I have no idea if/when this material became available.
@@andrewwilliams9599 it would be necessary to see the material in order to evaluate their contribution to Ives' work...
One is an attempt by someone untalented and who even misunderstood Ives's tempo directions, and the other (Reinhard's) is a legitimate effort to realize the materials left by Ives as they stand.
I appreciate this piece - but question the instrumentation
MIxed this with Radiohead's Pyramid Song 800% slower. Trippy as fuck.
Kinda has an early 70s Pink Floyd vibe in parts......
Or actually around 1968-1969. This pre-dates the studio album of Ummagumma and some of the odd soundtracks they recorded during that era.
He was heavily influenced by pink floyd.
Ah yes, little did we know that pink floyd Influenced the development of microtonal music 50 years before they existed, what a great insight
Rather Pink Floyd "borrowed" from IVES.
@@ethanhill9460 Pink Floyd never even heard of Ives. Besides, to compare Ives with a rock 'n roll group is about as limited in understanding as I am in brain surgery.
An unfinished work, maybe less than half written. Maybe Ives attempted too much. To mean anything the last movement must contain a chorale of some description, but there is nothing to hang meaning on.
My take is that Ives thought better of using human voices because the use of words would have negated his form of the universe, having people (as the voices would suggest). Rather, the last movement as it is extant from the sketches of Charles Ives is in fact the most beautiful, the most radiant of all of the piece, comparable to anything ever written.
Sorry, I dislike the piece, it sounds like sketches to other pieces like the 4th Symphony or the Robert Browning overture, which I both love. I just don't feel it adds anything to his work, it feels sort of empty, soulless, that I never have with any piece within the official canon of Ives.
It feels like just notes on paper and though I can clearly hear details that have Ives elements in it, it is equally obvious to me the unfinished nature of the piece, especially missing the breath of life.
I patiently listened through it, but it was hard work not to stop after a few minutes, which I never had with any piece by Ives and its not the complexity or "modernity", whatever that may mean, it's just a soulless vehicle to me and it saddens me.
I guess it just doesn't fit you that well.
Maybe give it another chance?
@@segmentsAndCurves Sure. I will
You should see the interpreters.
The notes are Ives. The music isn't.
And you would know this how?
True.
I have analyzed this score and ll of Ives's sketches in detail; you can read about the symphony in my book "Charles Ives's Musical Universe." I can assure you that the music IS Ives's. The notes are no less what the piece is about than they are with any musical work. Reinhard's performers play it to a tee.
@@antonycooke6402 thank you. I like Ives but this was an exception. Maybe my disappointment played a part in my previous response. Kind regards from the Netherlands!
@@VuykArie Ives placed no ego to put his influence on the universe, but to humbly paint the creation. If you do not feel the presence of Ives as represented by all of his preceding work, then Mr. Ives was most successful.
It sounds like Mr. Ives never got past writing anything but the percussion parts. Fifteen minutes of this monotony was all I could take, and I'm a MAJOR Ives fan, otherwise.
Tom Carr, I agree. I usually only listen to this work in 5 minute segments. But the universe is not Kubrick’s “2001”. There is no string section in the primordial vastness of the universe. It’s violence and indifference and explosion. Humanity is full of expressive layers and expression which in Ives other works he handles with genius and creates emotion from chaos. Unlike the Unanswered Question, I think Ives knew the answer to the universe and it’s not harmonious, it’s not a factory, it’s chaos and clanking and impossible to grip or phantom. It’s unsettling because that’s the nature of his subject.
If memory serves me right, the first movement was going to be a massive movement for percussion only with it then going on to form the basis of the rest of the orchestral groupings.
Young Charles Ives, at age 5, was discovered by his father George banging percussive tone clusters on the family piano. He began his musical career as a percussionist in his father's marching band. Also consider that Ives' Fourth requires a conductor just for the percussion session. I suggest viewing The Tree of LIfe to get the idea. Further, deponent sayeth not.
That's the sound of what we call gears at work in what we call the universe.
Obviously you loathe late 20th century
avant garde jazz and it's art music counterpart. I champion both. This work might be father to both genres.
You need to listen on. You never made it to the orchestral tuttis. And there is MUCH more to the percussion segment than you have noticed, it would seem.
Ye gods this is dreadful. I've heard 2 other 'completions' of this work, the slow dreary one by Gerard Schwarz and the Cincinnati Orchestra and the generally excellent (if somewhat percussion-heavy) performance by the Saarbrucken Sym Orch. This meandering pish is one of the most boring and repetitive noises I've ever heard. Bloody hell, it makes Morton Feldman sound exciting by comparison. Do you really believe this is what Mr Ives had in mind?
Look, I realise Mr Reinhard and his chamber forces must have worked intensively on this piece and I do not doubt their genuine commitment to trying to complete this strange work but for me, this is simply not convincing. The ensemble is too small and the music lacks any drama or tension.
It was written in 1923, but concieves many years before. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe_Symphony_(Ives)