CHARLES EDWARD IVES

CONCORD, MASS., 18401860

Second Pianoforte Sonata

A S T R U C T U R A L A N A LY S I S

The writer thinks it is necessary to give a short background on Charles Ives specifically his
connection to the late Romantic literary figures: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Henry David Thoreau and the Alcotts family, particularly Bronson Alcott, because they are
not only part of the 4 movements of the Concord, Mass., (1840-1890) piano sonata but
because they are New England Transcendentalists. Ives was an optimist, a believer in the
innate goodness of man and a moralist. In his Essays before a Sonata,1 he provided insights
into his philosophy of music, of composition and performance, at the same time pointing out
suggestions present in the work; Concord, Mass., Sonata. He felt that music was of two
kinds: that having substance and that having manner. Substance has something to do with
character. When a tune has substance, it comes from the soul. Manner has nothing to do at
all.2 The sonata was not written just because of the feelings or impression of Ives, rather it
was pre-conceived and incubated in his cerebral moments, attempting to present one
person's impression of the spirit in a more personal and idiosyncratic manner. From 18401860, this was revised a lot of times bringing forth the utmost desire of the composer to
express in music what these prolific writers have written in their books and what they have
believed and lived.

Movement 1: Emerson
It has no time signature for the first 7 pages, but there are barlines that divide notes that are
to be played according to Ivess instruction. Thus,
Movement 2: Hawthorne
The "Hawthorne" movement from the Concord Sonata may serve as an example of a piece
in which the derived materials (stylistic parody as well as direct quotation) serve, inter alia,
to connote a generalized American experience. Even without Ives's notes,5 we understand

1 Ives, Essays before a Sonata, ed. Howard Boatwright (New York, 1962).
2 Ibid., p. 77

the movement as a kind of fantasy. It is characterized by an incessant, crazy whirling

motion, which gathers into its vortex a number of familiar derived images ragtime, blues,
march style, hymn style, patriotic melody ("Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean"). These
images swim in and out of view as the music renders the world fantastic, with all the
transience and the capacity to transmogrify its images that so .uniquely characterize
fantasy. The derived images tell us that this is Concord or rather, American
experience,6 but perceived through the distorting prism of a fantastic consciousness.
Whether this is a child's consciousness (see Ives's notes in Essays before a Sonata),
Hawthorne's, a drunken ragtime pianist's, a sleeper's or indeed ours seems not to matter.
This remarkable movement leaves us wondering whether the (American) experience
perceived through the fantastic distorting prism is real or unreal; whether what we perceive
as distortion may not in fact give us a deeper, more realistic access to the truth than do the
conventions of ordinary consciousness. Such a possibility is, after all, in keeping with what
Santayana called the "systematic subjectivism" of (Concord) Transcendentalist thought. The
derived images, then, locate the experience for us by stamping it as American; they also act
as norms by which we can readily comprehend the distortions wreaked upon
reality by the movement's own fantastic consciousness.