Breaking Time's Arrow: Experiment and Expression in the Music of Charles Ives

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Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Ives and Time
Part I: Three Dualities
1. God/Man: I Come to Thee and Psalm 14
2. Community/individual: Sonata No. 1 for Piano and String Quartet No. 2
3. Intuition/expression: "Nov. 2, 1920" and "Grantchester"
Part II: Contexts and Methodologies
4. Elements of Narrative: The Unanswered Question
5. Ives and the Now: "The Things Our Fathers Loved"
6. Cumulative Composition: Ives's Emerson Music
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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Charles Ives (1874–1954) moved traditional compositional practice in new directions by incorporating modern and innovative techniques with nostalgic borrowings of 19th century American popular music and Protestant hymns. Matthew McDonald argues that the influence of Emerson and Thoreau on Ives's compositional style freed the composer from ordinary ideas of time and chronology, allowing him to recuperate the past as he reached for the musical unknown. McDonald links this concept of the multi-temporal in Ives's works to Transcendentalist understandings of eternity. His approach to Ives opens new avenues for inquiry into the composer's eclectic and complex style.

Reviews

Music and Letters

McDonald investigates both the temporal and spatial effects of multidirectional motion, as well as its ramifications for understanding some of the larger philosophical issues that are raised in Ives's music.May 2015

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