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Listening report – Charles Ives:

 Prof. Dr. Herzogenrath

The Future of Avantgarde-Music

Blaha, Malte C.

Matrikelnummer 7509502

 

Listening report – Charles Ives:

 

It is outstanding that Ives firstly approaches music on a very rhythmical base. In the beginning of the songs Concorde Sonata/ The Alcotts, and The Unanswered Question, there is a feelingly musical and rhythmical order. Ives illustrates perfect accords. The accords fill up the space with a mystical vibe that is accomplished with deep mol-tones. The transcendentalism-influence is clearly visible, as it is expressed through an unexplored harmony instead of conveying the received sounds as disturbance.

It is characteristic that Ives mixes the given rhythmical order and start, with -what could be perceived as- disorder. Shorter notes are added and complement other meaning to the still clearly hearable rhythmical order. The idea of mixing order with disorder and therefore delivering a completely new element of sound, is also visible throughout the untypical notes like: “hold back a little”, or “slower and quietly” instead of making use of regular and common signs like forte or pianissimo. Further, as in Transcendentalism there is not such thing as disturbance, there needs to be the understanding, that the musical pieces of Ives where also made in that sense. To me, it seems as if he is forcing the listener to understand that “untypical” music is still not disturbance, but rather a new creation that also deserves recognition.

The song Central Park in the Dark expresses the idea of orderly disorder even further. The melodic beginning and rhythmical order is again influenced with later appearing asymmetrical and skew sounding tones. If you would concentrate on solely whether the musical part, or the background part, then it seems off. But if you concentrate on both, the melody and the background tones, then there is again an order, that does not sound like randomness, but rather room and space filling. Nowadays, one could argue that that is the stuff that horror movies are made off. The disorder that turns into order as soon as you conceive both, the rhythmical and the melodic, is especially recognizable in Central Park in the Dark at 6:50 min to 7:00 min, the disorder turns into a completion of musical order.
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