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?
