Ives "Universe Symphony"

This is from the Charles Ives Yahoo List:

I received my Universe CD (Thank you, Amy, wherever you are) and I had
some new thoughts.

I, of course, heard it a number of times when it was downloadable in
toto directly from the Stereo Society Web Site, except with the
Internet version there were long pauses, even with broadband, between
the tracks as the next track downloaded, making a "continuous"
experience impossible. That is needed to make more sense of the work.

I think the idea of the Earth Fragment before the Pulse of the Cosmos
makes sense, but not simply because we are of the Earth, or this is a
tutorial on how to listen to the symphony, although those are both
valid explanations. What I notice is at about one and a half minutes
into wide valleys and clouds, there is an ascending scale in the
piano, followed by the same scale descending in the piano.

This comes at pretty much near the exact midpoint of the 64:47.

I am also a great fan of the music of Alban Berg, and one thing noted,
I believe, in the late Douglas Jarman's book is how Berg also puts
some kind of palindromic element in his major pieces. Either the
palindrome is made out of the beginning and ending measures of the
piece (as in the Violin Concerto), or occurs in the very center of the
piece (as in Wozzeck, Chamber Concerto, Lyric Suite, Der Wein and
Lulu). In fact the very center of the interlude between the two
scenes of the middle act of Lulu has a piano run that sounds exactly
like the one in "Universe."

Therefore, it strikes me there are at least several different
organizational schemes going on in the piece simultaneously:

one from the Pulse of the Cosmos to Earth is of the Heavens, marked by
a similar palindromic idea, the low bell at the beginning of one and
the end of the other;

one from the Earth Fragment to the Earth is of the Heavens, not
necessarily marked by any repeats of instrumentation or of themes, but
purely of time alone; and

a third that's harder to define.

The third one relates to what Johnny said in the interview about the
three orchestras occasionally coming together like an eclipse. The
Heavens, Cosmos and Earth (curiously, the same HCE used as a unifying
element in Finnegans Wake; does it really stand for the same thing?)
seem to not so much represent the sky, the atmosphere (or outer
space), and the Earth, arranged in a straight line, but more like
three planets or vectors arranged in a triangle.

We start off from Earth (movement I), then make a parabola shaped
flight around the cosmos (with an apogee and perigee, as the pulse of
the cosmos grows louder then recedes then grows louder then recedes)
then to the heavens (with the same oval shaped orbit) in movement II.

In III, the parabola goes between Heaven and Earth. The "orbits"
become increasingly complex through IV, V, and VI. Then in VII, the
Earth and Heavens recede, the Cosmos draws closer, then recedes, as
though we were being catapulted away from all three into deep space,
represented by the silence after the last sound, a silence that
technically is infinite in duration.

So we could say putting the Earth fragment beyond all else, represents
a kind of complex one way flight, from the Earth, through the known
universe (Heavens and Cosmos) to beyond.

I would disagree with the contention of Johnny's interviewer that this
is music without harmony or any seeming melodic structure. We
obviously have gigantic sections recapitulated, such as the Heavens
fragment and pulse of the cosmos, the recaps hidden under overlays of
music from "the other planets." I also hear occasional traditional
harmony. I mentioned (and Johnny confirmed) the minor triad near the
end of "Birth of the Oceans"; I'm fairly sure I heard a IV-I cadence
in brass in "Earth is of the Heavens," as well as other simple
harmonies in that section.

That section, to me, represents the understanding of order in the
apparent chaos of what came before. Once that is understood, we are
ready to move to new worlds.

I understand Johnny's comparison of this with RBO (I recently found a
nearly 30 year old cassette of mine of the Morton Gould version!). In
a less heterophonic way, we hear an independent percussion section in
the Allegros against a dense counterpoint of virtually all the
instruments (by the way, I always like the Faberman version, because
it brings forward the clarinet in the Allegros, playing figures that
sound very much like things from "Universe").

Of course, Symphony #4 has to come in mind. The Finale in some ways
seems like (in the Bergian sense) a "study" for Universe, which the
orchestra broken into three divisions quite similar to the three
divisions of the Universe "orchestra."

The last minute of the Finale sounds very much like a simpler version
of the last minute of Universe: all the pitched instruments melt away,
leaving the percussion moving in retrograde from how it began, with
one last deep sound to the end piece.

Also, all the different melodic ideas going on simultaneously, taken
individually, bear Ives's intervallic and rhythmic stamp of bits of
pieces from everything from "From the Steeples and the Mountains," to
the woodwinds in "Unanswered Question," to the layers of disjointed
texture in "Fourth of July" and "Hanover Square North."

To me, this sounds very much like the music of the man who composed
Orchestral Set No. 1, and Symphony #4, and seems the logical third
step in the progression from the first two.

Again, thank you, Johnny for your hard work as musicologist,
conductor, and musician.

P.S. My cat listened attentively to this (last work he paid this much
attention to was the Berg Violin Concerto), although he left during
"The Earth is of the Heavens." I think he was hungry. That's a cat
for you.