A possible unauthorized performance...

TO THE EDGE OF TIME
> Actually, the LaMonte Young piece was scrapped from the program because he
didn't respond to over 6 months of attempts at communication. Southwest also
tried to substitute any other work of his choice on the program, but again
got no response. So, we are instead doing an Ives group: several of the
songs, plus the 4th violin sonata (no alternate tunings there; no
lawyers...!)

[U�tu guno�men] . . . would I were
In Grantchester, in Grantchester! -- -
Some, it may be, can get in touch
With Nature there, or Earth, or such.
And clever modern men have seen
A Faun a-peeping through the green,
And felt the Classics were not dead,
To glimpse a Naiad's reedy head,
Or hear the Goat-foot piping low: . . .
But these are things I do not know.
I only know that you may lie
Day long and watch the Cambridge sky,
And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass,
Hear the cool lapse of hours pass,
Until the centuries blend and blur
In Grantchester, in Grantchester. . . .

When I first heard Ives recasting of these words so many years ago, I felt a
familiar wrench at the pit of my stomach� And though I had little doubt then
(nor do I now) that arts often non-linear �detachments from the physically
exact� hinge on a threadbare kinship of conjunct interpretation (subject to
all the myriad anthropocentric contrarieties and vagaries of the general
matter-of-course�), that Ives could so clearly _hear_ HIS music in this very
particular excerpt from Rupert Brooke�s (curious) poem* spoke volumes to me
as a young man about the confident navigation of certain fundamental
antilogies of intellect and creativity; of understanding and attentive
misunderstand� For the most part I stopped listening to much music (apart
from that which I am personally in the process of working on) some time
ago - and yet I often find myself returning to Ives� For his music has
remained with me as a consistent _and remarkably flexible_ source of
inspiration.** The great SOBERING jolts I'd known since I was a very young
boy sitting on the fence in his backyard under nothing more than the
palliating athwart of an altostratus sky hung over Proctor School early one
summer Sunday evening after dinner have seldom found a more confident
reinforcement than the type I would glean from the 'Grantchester coda.�***

THE PEACE OF GOD IN FIVE FLATS
In the original context of Rupert Brooke's curious poem,

"hear the cool lapse of hours pass,
until the centuries blend and blur�"

unquestionably 'jumps of the page�� Yet it is through the unique prism of
Ives genius, that the equilibrium is altogether recast. And like another of
Ives songs, Autumn (while plenty inspiriting enough in its straightforward
interwoven historical testimony of two persons love and indelible
understanding�), the great sobering close brings more than the linear sum of
its quantifiable components [i.e., more than "the peace of God�" in five
flats!]� Charlie and Harmony's Autumn---Gods Autumn---Natures
Autumn------TIMES Autumn.

IN SOME DEEP CURRENT OF THE SUNLIT BROWN
When I look into the darkness of the dense trees I may only see the shadows
and de-articulating blur of trunks and branches... But I feel something
else. Focus and openness are in often antagonistic denial of each other. (To
the extent that taking a forceful position for one so often seems to obviate
the salient attributes of the other, and more often than not leads to some
oddly inattentive extremity of strident pedantic arrogance or numinous
_dogmatic_ unbosoming�). Confident reinforcement of the sort I would glean
from the music of Charles Ives certainly helped me... And the more I look
back on it -- the more grateful I am.

"Contented river!
And yet over-shy
To mask thy beauty from the eager eye;
Hast thou a thought to hide from field and town?
In some deep current of the sunlit brown��" [Robert Underwood Johnson]

Respectfully,
Dan

*The Old Vicarage, Grantchester

**Pieces such as The (orchestral) Housatonic and the fourth symphony finale
unquestionably lead me directly towards a more decisive and thoroughgoing
commitment to �microtonality.�

***From "I only know that��"

THANKS DAN!
-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
www.anaphoria.com

Thank you, Dan, for a beautiful and informative homage to Ives. I would
like to say that, in expressing my disappointment that the Young piece was
replaced with Ives pieces, I meant no disrespect to Ives, whom I admire and
whose music I love. Fortunately, I am able to hear Ives's work in live
performance (and recording, for that matter), well, if not frequently,
certainly not rarely. The same is unfortunately not true of music in
alternate tunings, which is why I was disappointed.

Bill

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^ Bill Alves email: alves@hmc.edu ^
^ Harvey Mudd College URL: http://www2.hmc.edu/~alves/ ^
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