A Descriptive Catalogue of the Music of Charles Ives

794 Pages·1999·153.097 MB·English

by  James B. Sinclair

A DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE
OF THE MUSIC OF
CHARLES IVES

A DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE
OF THE MUSIC OF
CHARLES IVES
James B. Sinclair
Yale University Press
New Haven & London
Published with assistance from the National Endowment for the Humanities,
an independent federal agency, and The Charles Ives Society, Inc.
Figures 1-7 courtesy of the Charles Ives Papers, Yale University Music Library.
Copyright© 1999 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be
reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that
copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and
except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the
publishers.
Designed and typeset by the author.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Sinclair, James B.
A descriptive catalogue of the music of Charles Ives I James B. Sinclair
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 691) and indexes.
ISBN 0-300-07601-0 (cloth: alk.paper)
I. Ives, Charles, 1874-1954-Bibliography. I. Title.
ML 134.19S56 1999
0!6.78'092-dc21
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of
the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council
on Library Resources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
In memory of
JOHN KIRKPATRICK
(1905-1991)
and
PAUL C. ECHOLS
(1944-1994)
CONTENTS
PREFACE ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xvi
USING THIS CATALOGUE xviii
GENERAL ABBREVIATIONS xxiv
Illustrations follow page xxv
THE MUSIC OF CHARLES IVES
I. Works for Orchestra
A. Symphonies
B. Sets
i. Orchestral Sets 37
ii. Sets for Chamber Orchestra 50
C. Overtures 85
D. Marches 95
E. Other Works 102
II. Works for Band 132
III. Works for Chamber Ensemble
A. String Quartets 137
B. Violin Sonatas 143
C. Other Works 158
IV. Works for Piano
A. Sonatas 186
B. Studies 198
C. Marches 215
D. Other Works 220
E. Duets 233
V. Works for Organ 238
VI. Works for Choral Ensemble
A. Sacred Works
i. Multi-Movement Works 250
ii. Psalms 264
iii. Other Works for Choral Ensemble 276
B. Secular Works
i. Chorus with Instrumental Ensemble 299
ii. Partsongs 318
VII. Works for the Stage
A. Projected Operas 328
B. Fraternity Shows 328
VIII. Songs 330
IX. Exercises
A. Strict Exercises 554
B. Polytonal and Burlesque Exercises 562
X. Arrangements of Works by Other Composers 574
XI. Unidentified Fragments 580
XII. Lost or Projected Works
A. Works for Orchestra 588
B. Works for Band 603
C. Works for Chamber Ensemble 605
D. Works for Piano 612
E. Works for Organ 615
F. Works for Choral Ensemble
L Sacred Works 622
ii. Secular Works 625
G. Works for the Stage
i. Projected Operas 626
ii. Fraternity Shows 627
H. Songs 629
I. Work for Unknown Medium 631
Appendix 1: Ives's Work-lists 633
Appendix 2: "Quality" Lists of Works Photostated 647
Appendix 3: Song Collections 657
Appendix 4: Chronology of Significant Events in lves's Life 664
Appendix 5: Sound Recordings Made by lves 684
Appendix 6: Publishers/Copyright-Holders oflves's Music 686
Appendix 7: John Kirkpatrick's "Envoi" (in Kirkpatrick's Temporary Catalogue) 688
Bibliography 691
Concordance 1: Kirkpatrick's Temporary Catalogue Numbers to Sinclair Numbers 700
Concordance 2: AmeriGrove Numbers to Sinclair Numbers 703
Concordance 3: Numbers oflves Manuscript-Page Microfilms to Catalogue Sources 705
Index 1: Musical Models and Borrowing 715
Index 2: lves's Addresses 722
Index 3: Names 724
Index 4: Titles, Subtitles, Other Titles, and First Lines 740
PROEM
Music is one of the many ways God has of beating in on man
his lifes, his deaths, his hope, his everything -
an inner something, a spiritual storm,
a something else that stirs man
in all ofhis parts [and] consciousness, and "all at once"
we roughly call these parts (as a kind of entity) "soul"-
it acts thro or vibrates or couples up to human sensations
in ways (or mediums) man may hear and know:
that is, he knows he hears them
and says (or thinks or feels) he knows them.-
further than this,
what this inner something is which begets all this
is something no one knows -
especially those who define it
and use it, primarily, to make a living. -
all this means almost nothing to those who will think about it -
music - that no one knows what it is -
and the less he knows he knows what it is
the nearer it is to music-probably.
Charles E. lves
Memo on notepaper of the St. James's Palace Hotel, London, June 1924 (now in Diary 9).
Edited by John Kirkpatrick and slightly amended by H. Wiley Hitchcock.
PREFACE
Genesis of This Catalogue
After printing his Temporary Mimeographed Catalogue oft he Music Manuscripts and
Related Materials ofC harles Edward lves 1874 -1954 in August 1960, Jolm Kirkpatrick worked
toward publishing a perfected version. In 1972, I joined him in New Haven to further the editing
oflves's works. Kirkpatrick's fondest dream was to work together on a new catalogue. We
sought in vain for adequate support to allow me to work full-time on the project. A significant
step forward was made in 1975-76 when, with the aid ofKenneth Singleton, I microfilmed all the
music manuscripts in what we then called the "Ives Collection." This gave the public reasonable
access to the complete music holdings and yielded a new, rational system of reference numbers. In
1981 a stroke set Kirkpatrick back; there was little question that he himself could complete a new
catalogue. (He used the best remaining days editing his beloved Sonata No. 2 for Piano: Con
cord, Mass.-an edition that evolved from one "as played by Jolm Kirkpatrick" to one represent
ing his conclusions as the earliest and best state of the "Concord" materials.)
In the late 1980s the Charles Ives Society took the initiative to oversee the preparation of
a new catalogue. With funding first from the Society, then from the National Endowment for the
Humanities, Paul Echols began collecting data and formulating a plan for a readable, rational, and
comprehensive catalogue. His plan was applauded by all: avoid too many cryptic abbreviations
and sigla, and focus the presentation by omitting some of the information in Kirkpatrick's 1960
catalogue that threatens to bury the more universally sought data. Thus, omitted here is Kirk
patrick's information identifYing the paper types for each leaf, "other music," the "see" references
for the physical location of a given page in the Ives Papers, and the old negative photostat num
bers.
In 1990, Echols began the project in earnest, engaging assistants and filling in templates
with masses of information. A significant problem presented itself: how to cite information hidden
in the large unindexed collection oflves's correspondence. Echols tackled the huge task of read
ing through the complete collection, locating and transcribing every reference to an Ives work.
With much ofthe information gathered, Echols began writing and polishing, beginning with the
large orchestral-music section. None of us was prepared for the news in August 1994 that he had
passed away. The Charles Ives Society asked me to take over. In May 1995, I re-organized the
catalogue alphabetically rather than chronologically and identified the tasks for expanding and
completing the project-then estimated as requiring some months (but it was rather some years).
To Kirkpatrick's pioneering efforts this catalogue adds much information hitherto un
known or scattered, including the listing of all the various titles that Ives used in reference to his
works, their exact orchestrational requirements, time durations, incipits, premiere performances,
and first recordings. In addition, the sources are described in a reasonably comprehendible fash
ion and reordered according to the most recent research; publication information and Ives's varied
borrowings from existing music are brought up to date; and information on the dating of the
works, literature about them, and discography are finally all in one place. In the Comment sub
entry, this catalogue includes or expands on many issues of interest. In the appendixes the reader
will find handy reference to some important, previously unpublished Ives documents and lists.
Through the concordances one can connect to the previous cataloguing oflves's titles and the
manuscript pages themselves. In the indexes there is a new listing oflves's use of existing music
PREFACE X
and complete citation of addresses, names, and titles.
Even before Kirkpatrick's important catalogue there were several halting attempts, by Ives
himself and by others immediately following his death, to make sense out of the notorious chaos
of his music manuscripts. The first attempt was Ives's own-a youthful assignment of opus num
bers to at least his first four works. More significant was his project to photostat many of his
manuscripts, started in early 1928 at Quality Photoprint Studio in New York City, an expensive
but curatorially effective process. For this, Ives collected related sketches and scores and had the
numerous groups of photostats stored at the Quality shop under his own numbering system. (Two
oflves's lists relating to this system are reprinted in Appendix 2.) This produced 177 item num
bers (with some duplication of titles and a few skipped numbers). At about the same time, Ives
began, fitfully, a separate process of trying to list or at least characterize his output of music.
These lists became more thorough in 1935, probably as the result oflves's project, commencing
in October 1934, to put his music in some order in a huge built-in cabinet, newly constructed for
him in a former horse stall in the barn ofhis country house at West Redding, Connecticut. (An
early and a late version of these lists are reprinted in Appendix 1.) But Ives's "system" for Qual
ity Photoprint Studio deteriorated into a state of chronic confusion, probably because no one
there could read music. Ray Green, the new executive secretary of the American Music Center,
reported to Harmony Ives on 25 May 1950 that "the master sheets [photostats] of Mr. Ives'
works are in an extremely chaotic condition. As a matter of filet, a careful and thorough job of
indexing needs to be done by a competent, reliable and trained musician and researcher."
Immediately following Ives's death, John Kirkpatrick and the composer Henry Cowell
began jointly to bring all the manuscripts into one place (drawing on their own holdings and on
Ives's in his New York apartment and the West Redding music room and its barn). Alas, Ives's
filing system, even with supplementary file cabinets, had become woefully jumbled. In his cata
logue, Kirkpatrick descnbes the disorder he found in June 1954: "Evidently he was used to rum
maging for things, pulling out whole fistfuls from underneath which then became the top layer, so
that each drawer had been shufiled many times." Some identifications of manuscripts were made
quickly by the two men, but a huge task lay ahead.
A struggle for control of the collection ensued. It was destined for the Library of Congress
before Kirkpatrick stepped in and convinced Mrs. Ives in January 1955 that Yale University was
the more appropriate repository (partly because it was near Kirkpatrick's summer home in
Georgetown, Connecticut, and because Yale agreed to devote a separate "I ves Room" to the
storage of the manuscripts). However, the mass of nearly seven thousand pages was moved tem
porarily to Edith Ives's apartment in New York. There, Dr. Joseph Braunstein of the New York
Public Library staff began sorting and listing. Evidence of his rudimentary system can be found
written at the top of a few manuscript pages. Sidney Cowell, Henry Cowell's wife, presided over
a general photostating of those pages that she believed were not covered by the Quality photostat
holdings (which resulted in significant duplications). At Yale, over the following years, the extant
photostat negatives were stamped on the back with a sequential numbering, and the photostating
continued as Kirkpatrick identified pages that had been missed. (All these photostat numbers are
listed in Kirkpatrick's Temporary Catalogue, pp. 247-63.)
In the summer of 1955, Kirkpatrick took control of the project from the Cowells and
Braunstein. As he politely puts it in his catalogue (p. v), "I gratefully took advantage of all that
Dr. Braunstein had done, and gradually coordinated everything into a First List." An inveterate
organizer with a pathological love for jigsaw puzzles, Kirkpatrick trusted no one else's work but
his own. He started over with his own notes, rejoined portions of manuscripts that had been tom