Ives’ Orchestral Set No. 2
Notes by TŌN violinist Haley Schricker
Ives frequently had a roundabout way of stitching together his musical ideas into their final forms, and his Orchestral Set No. 2 is no exception. It was conceived of not as a single narrative, but as three distinct pieces, written in the 1910s and assembled around 1919. Each movement is a sort of vignette composed of melodic fragments, giving off an intentionally disjunct impression.
The first movement, “An Elegy to Our Forefathers”, begins with an atmosphere of otherworldly sounds, produced by an offstage ensemble scored for zither, harp, chimes, and bells. It sounds so ahead of its time that when I first heard the opening of this piece, I couldn’t believe I was hearing something written over 100 years ago! This eerie beginning is followed by indistinct paraphrases of Stephen Foster melodies and hymn tunes, along with a snippet from the African American spiritual “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.”
The rambunctious second movement, “The Rockstrewn Hills Join in the People’s Outdoor Meeting”, reflects the camp-revival meetings Ives attended in his youth. It features a collage of hymn tunes like “Bringing In the Sheaves” along with folk songs such as “The Girl I Left Behind Me” and “Rock-a-bye Baby”, all reimagined as ragtimes. If a ragtime “Rock-a-bye Baby” wasn’t enough of a surprise, the middle section of the movement features some of Ives’ most strikingly dissonant music—and that is a high bar! After all the calamity, the movement concludes with a gentle coda.
Can you imagine commuting to work as usual when suddenly those around you spontaneously join their voices in song? This moment that Ives experienced was a reaction to the news having broken out of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania by the German Navy on May 7, 1915. Ives was so moved by the reaction of the crowd that day that it inspired the final movement of this set, “From Hanover Square North, at the End of a Tragic Day, the Voice of the People Again Arose”. The choir intones the Te Deum at the beginning, followed by snippets of other melodies intertwining until “In the Sweet By and By” is clearly heard. A solo accordion finishes the melody and fades away, until all that remains is the “background noise” effect created by a separate smaller ensemble.