Search - Charles Ives, Michael Stern, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbrücken :: Universe Symphony / Symphony 2

The Fascination of "Might Have Been"

Christopher Forbes | Brooklyn,, NY | 04/05/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"There is a fascination in works left incomplete by composers at the time of their deaths. For years people have toyed around with finishing the sketches for Beethoven's "Tenth", Schubert's Unfinished, the Elgar 3rd and many other such works. Some of these pieces, such as the Mahler 10th, exist nearly complete, at least in short score. Others are destined to remain an exercise in pure speculation. One such work I'm afraid is the Ives Universe Symphony. Grandiose in scope beyond reason, this work was to remain in the composer's mind throughout his long silent decline after 1920. Though he never really gave up on the work, he also never worked hard or seriously on it during his final years and at his death the work remained only in tantalizing fragments and in descriptions in Henry Cowell's biography of the composer. In 1974 composer Larry Austin started studying the Ives sketches for Universe, ostentibly to use them as material for his own compositions (Ives had explicitely sanctioned this.) Over 20 years of study, Austin finally produced what he considered a working realization of Ives' final Symphony. Whether or not it is successful is still an open question to me.



Ives' Universe Symphony bears an uncanny resemblance to another famous grandiose and unfinished work, the Mysterium of Alexandre Scriabin. Like the Scriabin work, Ives looked on this symphony as something more than music. It was a grand mystical description of all of nature, life and the universe, infused with Ives' lifelong devotion to Trancendentalism and radically inclusive progressive democracy. Early on the work was planned for a large number of orchestras placed in separate geographical areas. In fact some pages of the sketches suggest an orchestra of over 4,000 players. But most of the workable sketches that Ives ended up with scale down the size of the work considerably. It is structured in three large parts, representing Past, Present and Future, with music to represent mountains, waters, the Universe, a chord for the Earth, the pulse of life and many other extramusical concerns. If Ives included his trademark vernacular quotations, they are buried even more deeply than in the Fourth Symphony. The piece begins with "life pulse" music for percussion alone. Gradually as the percussion continue (and indeed are present in a fascinating, varied and yet unchangable pattern) other instruments enter with snatches of melody and color. The work has no development to speak of, nor even any real change. Rather the material of the piece unfolds in a way that oddly prefigures the late scores of Morton Feldman. The work is fascinating, tantalizing, thoroughly Ivesian, and yet at the same time unfulfilling.



The performance, by the RundfunkSinfonieorchester Saarbrucken under the direction of Michael Stern does an admirable job with the material. The piece has a cumlative power that the original recording by the Cincinatti orchestra was missing. Also, the Germans make the work less "American" and more Universal. This is even more the case in the reading of the Ives Second Symphony which accompanies the Universe Symphony. Ives' Second Symphony is arguably his most popular. It is in a similar Brahmsian/Elgarian idiom that was used in the First Symphony but the melodies are stronger and the sense of form more sure. If the First Symphony was a student work, the Second is the work of a fine early American Symphonist in the Chadwick tradition. The quotational material is there, but as in most early Ives it is hinted at rather than ostensibly quoted. This is particularly the case in this German reading of the work, in which the vernacular elements are treated as themetic material, rather than the quaint "Americanisms" that they sometimes sound like when conductors like Bernstein play this music.



On the whole this is a recommended CD, both for a really good Brahmsian reading of the Second Symphony and a strong Universe Symphony. But the Universe Symphony is the real reason to get the CD. Even if it is not entirely successful, it is a fascinating glimpse into what "might have been".



Chris Forbes

In Memory of Bob Zeidler - who is now getting Charlie to tell him how the Universe Symphony really goes"

It isn't an "unknowable" but who misunderstands it the least

David Gray Porter | Anaheim, California | 12/04/2005

(1 out of 5 stars)

"First off, I've been working with/on the sketches for ths piece for 21 years now. I'm still not 100% sure of what is there for some of the "musics." But now we have both this "version" and one by Johnny Reinhard, and niether of them shows the slightest understanding of what Ives was intending when he started this piece off. (Instead we get a lot of personal interpretations based on the realizers' _own_ aesthetics.) The most tangible and complete section, the "Formation from Chaos," was nearly complete in 1915 and then Ives lost a couple of pages which he never bothered to reconstruct. But even this chunk of music paper is seemingly beyond the creator of the two versions now available on CD. They don't know what they have to work with!



If you're going to "realize" an unfinished piece, then you have to understand what you've got. Otherwise you're just blowing smoke. Deryck Cooke transcribed all of the sketches for Mahler's Tenth befor he began making any kind of a "presentation" score for his radio series. HE FIGURED OUT WHAT WAS THERE FIRST.



I'd have no problem with some future "realizer" "adding notes to Ives" if they'd bother first to find ot what Ives was doing in what we have of the piece. Until then we're getting nothing but Charles Kibote's commentary to "Pale Fire" or a new edition of Piltdown Man in either of the available "Universe" recordings.

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