Serenity score -- piano

PIANO --

In this arrangement of Charles Ives' "Serenity," I recast the piano
part into a twenty equal tuning. To notate this I've used a pretty
much self-explanatory ASCII adaptation where the numbers correspond to
the equal division of the octave, though only C' through C" are
notated 0 through 20, so an A3 for example -- a 15/20ths of an octave
at 900� -- would be notated as a -5... and an Eb5 -- 5/20ths of an
octave at 300� -- would be notated as a 25 (etc.). The part is simple
enough that I think it can support this somewhat awkward use of
numbers less than zero and greater than twenty without taking on yet
another off-putting notational encumbrance.

INTERTWINED IN THE COSMIC ADVENTURE --

I've often referred to Charles Ives as a sort of Sigurd Olson of
music. This is how David Backes ends his wonderful article on Olson,
"The Land Beyond the Rim: Sigurd Olson's Wilderness Theology":

Olson's wilderness theology was, in essence, a sacramental vision of
life and of evolution itself. If the whole of earth and the universe
beyond is an extension of God, then humans are obliged to love all
life, human and nonhuman, because all life is intertwined in the
cosmic adventure. Olson's argument for wilderness preservation focused
primarily on the human psychological and spiritual benefits, but he
believed that these individual benefits would, in turn, lead to a more
biocentric perspective. In wilderness we could rediscover the
timeless, creative force of the universe, regain a sense of being part
of that force, and, in so doing, glimpse "the land beyond the rim."
With such an experience, it would be impossible to maintain a purely
anthropocentric world view. To Olson, this was reason enough for
preserving wilderness. "No longer can [wilderness] be saved from the
standpoint of physical enjoyment but only as a stepping stone to
cosmic understanding," he wrote in 1966. "In a world confused and
strident, a world where all the old verities are being questioned,
this is the final answer."

Rather than trying to recreate, or mimic the gentle, timeless quality
of Ives two serenity chords -- b4 f5 a5 c6, and c#4 g5 b5 e6 -- I've
instead opted to try and recast their mood and shape in a way that
tends to reflect some of my own feelings for this piece. And a lot of
my approach to arranging Ives is influenced and colored by my feelings
about Ives and Olson - the similar exalted, heartfelt threads that run
through them. When Olson wrote, "no longer can wilderness be saved
from the standpoint of physical enjoyment but only as a stepping stone
to cosmic understanding," he was expressing an ideal exactly
analogous -- and certainly no less doomed to failure and ridicule --
than Ives visions of music and humanity's great anagogic potential.

In his Ives biography _A Life With Music_, Jan Swafford wrote this of
"Serenity": "Over a quite, slow-cycling chordal ostinato that seems to
stop time in its course, the voice chants John Greenleaf Whittier's
prayer for inner peace, which is surely Ives's prayer as well."

O, Sabbath rest of Galilee!
O, calm of hills above,
Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee
the silence of eternity
Interpreted by love

Drop thy still dews of quietness,
till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess,
The beauty of Thy peace.

Sigurd Olson died while snowshoeing near his home in Ely, Minnesota,
in January of 1982. Olson's son Robert wrote about his father's death
in an introduction to _The Collected Works of Sigurd F. Olson: The
Early Writings: 1921-1934_. He closes the introduction with these
thoughts: "He died literally with his boots on, on a cold January day,
snowshoeing his favorite trail around the bog behind the house. The
usual arrangements followed. But I wished we could have left him
there, let the snow fall to cover him until he was only a mound
beneath. We should have let nature have its way with his remains, to
break him down into the soil of the forest. His body would have joined
his spirit in the flow of life that had nourished him for over 80
years. In the fall, his shroud would have been a blanket of autumn
leaves, his anthem the far calling of strings of geese heading south,
the low organ tones of the winter winds. It would have been fitting, I
think, and a far, far better thing."

SERENITY
Charles Ives -- [arrangement, D. Stearns]

PIANO
very slowly, pp

6/8 ,/. ,/.
| *```````````*``````````` | | | | | | | |
| 16 20 | % | % | % | % | % | % | % |
| 13 15 | | | | | | | |
| 9 11 | | | | | | | |
| 3 -7 | | | | | | | |
\_________/

6/8 3/8 ,/. 6/8 ,/ ,/` ,/ ,/`
| | | *``````````` | *```````*```*```````*``; |
| % | % | 16 | 21(o/.) |
| | | 13 | 13 13 14 13 |
| | | 9 | 4 5 6 4 |
| | | 3 | -3 -3 -3(,/.) |
\_____________________________________,

1/8 ,/` 6/8 ,/. ,/.
| r``` | *```````````*``````````` | | | | | |
| 16 20 | % | % | % | % | % |
| 13 15 | | | | | |
| 9 11 | | | | | |
| 3 -7 | | | | | |
\_________/

(,/`=,/`) (,/`=,/`)

3/4 ,/ ,/ ,/ 6/8 ,/. ,/.
| *```````*```````*``````` | *```````````*``````````` |
| 16 20 16 | 20 16 |
| 13 15 13 | 15 13 |
| 9 11 9 | 11 9 |
| 3 -7 3 | -7 3 |
\_________/

6/8 ,/ ,/` ,/ ,/` 1/8 ,/`
| | | *```````*```*```````*``; | r``` |
| % | % | 23(o/.) |
| | | 15(,/.) 16 15 |
| | | 6 7 8 6 |
| | | -1 -1 -1 -1 |
\_____________________,

6/8 ,/. ,/.
| *```````````*``````````` | |
| 20 16 | % |
| 15 13 | |
| 11 9 | |
| -7 -3 | |
\_________/

^
6/8 o/. o/.
| *~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~> | *~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~>|]
| 16 |;14 |]
| 13 | 11 |]
| 11 | 9 |]
| 7 | 5 |]
| 4 | 2 |]
| 1 | -1 |]
| -1 | -3 |]
| -5 | -7 |]
| -8 |-10 |]
\____________________/ rit.==================->
\____________________/

Dan Stearns