String Quartet No. 1 (Ives)
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String Quartet No. 1 is a musical composition by
Charles Ives Charles Edward Ives (; October 20, 1874May 19, 1954) was an American modernist composer, one of the first American composers of international renown. His music was largely ignored during his early career, and many of his works went unperformed f ...
. Music historian and theorist Robert P. Morgan wrote that the quartet "was Ives's first mature composition of extended length, and its extraordinary fluency gives ample evidence of his solid control of traditional musical techniques. Moreover, the work is considerably more than a facile exercise based on classical models; there are already indications of the Ives to come, in the extensive quotations and, above all, in the composer's ability to bend the form to suit the idiosyncrasies of his own musical inclinations."


Background

The quartet, subtitled "From the Salvation Army" and "A Revival Service," was written in 1896, while Ives was a sophomore at Yale, and was composed under the supervision of Ives's teacher
Horatio Parker Horatio William Parker (September 15, 1863 – December 18, 1919) was an American composer, organist and teacher. He was a central figure in musical life in New Haven, Connecticut in the late 19th century, and is best remembered as the undergradu ...
. Three of the movements have their origins in pieces for organ and strings originally played at a revival service, and were based on gospel hymns. After arranging these for string quartet, Ives prepended a fugue written for Parker's counterpoint class to create a four-movement work. In 1909, Ives removed the first movement and began orchestrating it for inclusion in what would become his Fourth Symphony. He also renumbered the remaining movements, originally II, III, and IV, as I, II, and III. Ives's work list dated 1937-50 lists the quartet in its three-movement form: "Prelude, Offertory, and Postlude." After Ives's death, John Kirkpatrick discovered the original opening movement in the collection of manuscripts bequeathed to Yale, and reattached it to the quartet. This alteration has not been met with universal approval: composer
Bernard Hermann Bernard Herrmann (born Maximillian Herman; June 29, 1911December 24, 1975) was an American composer and conductor best known for his work in composing for films. As a conductor, he championed the music of lesser-known composers. He is widely r ...
, who worked with Ives and conducted a number of his pieces, disagreed with Kirkpatrick's decision, stating: "I still don't know where Kirkpatrick got that fugue which he tacked on, but that's his business. It belongs to the ''Fourth Symphony.'' I don't think it fits the ''First Quartet'' at all." Ives biographer
Jan Swafford Jan Swafford (born September 10, 1946) is an American author and composer. He earned his Bachelor of Arts '' magna cum laude'' from Harvard College and his M.M.A. and D.M.A. from the Yale School of Music. His teachers included Earl Kim at Harvard, ...
wrote: "Ives was probably right to remove the fugue - except in the general sense of being based on a revival hymn, it has no stylistic or thematic connection with the other movements, and it throws off the overall key scheme... And Kirkpatrick was wrong to put it back - as if Ives had no right to revise, and improve, his own music. Performances of the quartet the way Ives intended it will reveal a tighter, more effective piece. The fugue, too spacious and sonorous for a string quartet anyway, belongs in the Fourth Symphony..." The first documented complete performance of the quartet took place at the
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
in New York City on April 24, 1957. It was played, in its three-movement form, by the Kohon String Quartet, who also issued the first recording of the work in 1963 (Vox STDL-501120). The quartet was first published in 1961 by Peer International, in a score which includes all four movements.


Music

The piece is composed for the standard
string quartet The term string quartet can refer to either a type of musical composition or a group of four people who play them. Many composers from the mid-18th century onwards wrote string quartets. The associated musical ensemble consists of two violinists ...
of two violins, viola, and cello. The four published movements are:
Jan Swafford Jan Swafford (born September 10, 1946) is an American author and composer. He earned his Bachelor of Arts '' magna cum laude'' from Harvard College and his M.M.A. and D.M.A. from the Yale School of Music. His teachers included Earl Kim at Harvard, ...
wrote: "the First Quartet is 'cyclic' - melodic lines recur from movement to movement, a nineteenth-century formal device going back to Berlioz and Schumann." Regarding movements II, III, and IV, which were intended as I, II, and III as per Ives' 1909 revision, Ives scholar
J. Peter Burkholder J. Peter Burkholder (born June 17, 1954) is an American musicologist and author. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Musicology at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. He has written numerous monographs, essays, and journal artic ...
stated: "There is an extraordinary motivic unity among these three movements, due to innate similarities among the source tunes - similarities Ives carefully exploits - and to the appearance in each movement of material that appears in the others." The first movement (''Chorale'') is
fugal In music, a fugue () is a contrapuntal compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject (a musical theme) that is introduced at the beginning in imitation (repetition at different pitches) and which recurs frequently in the c ...
in form. Its subject is based on
Lowell Mason Lowell Mason (January 8, 1792 – August 11, 1872) was an American music director and banker who was a leading figure in 19th-century American church music. Lowell composed over 1600 hymn tunes, many of which are often sung today. His best-known ...
's "Missionary Hymn" ("From Greenland's Icy Mountains"), while the countersubject is based on
Oliver Holden Oliver Holden (September 18, 1765 – September 4, 1844) was an American composer and compiler of hymns. Biography He was born in Shirley, Massachusetts. During the American Revolutionary War, he was a marine for a year (1782–1783) on the US ...
's "
Coronation A coronation is the act of placement or bestowal of a coronation crown, crown upon a monarch's head. The term also generally refers not only to the physical crowning but to the whole ceremony wherein the act of crowning occurs, along with the ...
" ("All hail the power of Jesus' name!"). Burkholder noted that "over the course of the movement, all four phrases of the hymn tune appear in order... this is much more a paraphrase in fugal style than it is a genuine fugue, shaped more directly by its source tune than by the usual fugal expositions and episodes." He concluded that "the presentation of the hymn tune is the focus of the movement. In this sense, it is like the chorale preludes and chorale fantasias of J. S. Bach, and indeed Ives called it 'a kind of Chorale-Prelude,' showing his awareness of Bach's procedures." The second movement (''Prelude'') is in
ABA form ABA may refer to: Businesses and organizations Broadcasting * Alabama Broadcasters Association, United States * Asahi Broadcasting Aomori, Japanese television station * Australian Broadcasting Authority Education * Académie des Beaux-A ...
. The A section is based on the hymn " Beulah Land" by John R. Sweney, although, according to Burkholder, " en listeners who know "Beulah Land" are less likely to recognize the opening period as being derived from the hymn than they are to hear it as vaguely familiar." Burkholder cites Ives' use of this tune as an example of how he "reshapes a melody to fit a new function and in the process changes its style as well." The B section of the second movement is based on "Shining Shore" by
George Frederick Root George Frederick Root (August 30, 1820August 6, 1895) was an American songwriter, who found particular fame during the American Civil War, with songs such as "Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!" and " The Battle Cry of Freedom". He is regarded as the first A ...
, transformations of which serve as the basis of the B sections of movements III and IV. The third movement (''Offertory'') is also in
ABA form ABA may refer to: Businesses and organizations Broadcasting * Alabama Broadcasters Association, United States * Asahi Broadcasting Aomori, Japanese television station * Australian Broadcasting Authority Education * Académie des Beaux-A ...
. The primary theme of the A section is based on the hymn " Nettleton" ("Come thou Fount of every blessing"), attributed to Asahel Nettleton or
John Wyeth John Wyeth (1770–1858) was a printer in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania who is best-known for printing ''Wyeth's Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second'' (Harrisburg, PA: 1813), which marks an important transition in American music. Like the original ...
. In his ''Memos'', Ives wrote: "'Nettleton' was one of the Gospel and Camp Meeting Hymns, and down in the Redding Camp Meetings I heard it sung... I used it, or partly suggested it, in a string quartet..." The B section is again based largely on transformations of "Shining Shore". The fourth movement (''Postlude'') is again in
ABA form ABA may refer to: Businesses and organizations Broadcasting * Alabama Broadcasters Association, United States * Asahi Broadcasting Aomori, Japanese television station * Australian Broadcasting Authority Education * Académie des Beaux-A ...
. The primary theme of its A section is based on "
Webb Webb most often refers to James Webb Space Telescope which is named after James E. Webb, second Administrator of NASA. It may also refer to: Places Antarctica * Webb Glacier (South Georgia) * Webb Glacier (Victoria Land) *Webb Névé, Victoria ...
" ("Stand up, stand up for Jesus") by
George James Webb George James Webb, born on June 24, 1803 near Salisbury in Wiltshire, England, died on October 7, 1887 in Orange, New Jersey was an English-American composer. He was known for writing "Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus "Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus ...
as well as "Coronation" and "Shining Shore", while its B section is again derived from "Shining Shore". It features one of Ives' first uses of
polymeter In music, metre ( Commonwealth spelling) or meter (American spelling) refers to regularly recurring patterns and accents such as bars and beats. Unlike rhythm, metric onsets are not necessarily sounded, but are nevertheless implied by the perfo ...
: composing in over time. Regarding the pervasive use of "Shining Shore" as source material, Burkholder wrote: "When Ives... consistently and obviously presents fragments from a tune, he draws attention to that tune as an idea and makes us expect to hear more of it. In almost every instance where this happens in his music, the tune has a greater importance for the work than we may realize at first." He also noted that "Shining Shore" is "present in all three movements and linked through melodic transformation or resemblance to the... other source tunes. In each movement, it is the main source for the middle-section theme, and its opening motive appears explicitly at some point. Whenever two or more tunes are mixed, it is present..." Burkholder stated that Ives' use of cyclic forms "is apparent not only in his obvious concern to unify this quartet through such means, but also in the many works written over the next two decades that use cyclic unification, including the first three symphonies, the two piano sonatas, and the Third Violin Sonata."


References

{{Authority control Ives, Charles, 1 Compositions by Charles Ives