Thursday, July 17, 2014

Transcendentalists and the Concord Sonata

One of my favorite Ives compositions is his “Concord Sonata.” In addition to the various compositional approaches mentioned earlier this week, Ives was also influenced by the Transcendentalist thinkers, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, and Henry David Thoreau. In his “Concord Sonata,” Ives names each movement after a Transcendentalist. Listen here as Jeremy Denk performs “The Alcotts” from this sonata:  



This piece was later orchestrated by Henry Brant and recorded in 2011 by Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony. You can hear “The Alcotts” performed in the orchestrated version on July 18 at 8:33am on 90.9 WGUC.


Do you hear any musical quotations from other famous works in this movement?