Ives' Universe Symphony



Growing up with the visionary music of Charles Ives, I'd heard much about his unfinished Universe Symphony, and that was about it. For years it was considered not just unfinished, but existing as a fragmentary mess, with sketches that were incomplete, on scraps of music paper, etc. The composer Larry Austin made a realization of the sketches, but these were never really accepted as Ives but rather as Austin channelling Ives. The situation changed a bit when Johnny Reinhard, who is a very active microtonal devotee, took up the study of the fragments of the Universe Symphony and eventually found that the situation wasn't quite as bleak as the word on the street would have it. He started to grasp the obscure notes Ives had made indicating how various fragments should be put together, although the challenge probably rivaled figuring out how thousands of small DNA fragments should be put back together as accomplished with the Human Genome Project.

So I downloaded the Reinhard version from Amazon (no DRM, unlike iTunes...I like that) and have been listening to it for several days, including right now. While the entire endeavor has become somewhat politicized, despite an endorsement from the Ives Society, I personally like the work. No, it's not much, if anything, like the Fourth Symphony or any of Ives' other works. It's also fragmented; one thing I don't like about the recording is that there is absolutely no space at the end of each section. At least on the mp3 version, there are just no gaps between tracks. But the music is great anyway. I really like the long movement that is essentially just unpitched percussion for 20 minutes followed by about 10 minutes of music with the addition of non-percussion instruments. This predated Varese's Ionization and Cage's Construction in Metal by years. But at the same time, it is very much unlike Ives, at least the Ives that we knew through his other works.

What is particularly interesting about the Universe Symphony, apart from the idea of having different orchestras playing on separate mountaintops, is that Universe was meant to be worked on by one or more composers besides Ives. In other words, Ives had no qualms whatsoever about someone coming along, taking his music, and running with it. In effect, Ives anticipated the Creative Commons music by almost a century.

So is it Ives? Mostly Ives? Halfway there? Who cares? I find it really enjoyable to listen to and, just as with the Deryck Cooke version of Mahler's Tenth Symphony, I'm glad someone took the time to finalize music that otherwise would never have been heard.

Posted: Sat - February 16, 2008 at 11:10 AM          

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