"Austin's 'Universe' Score: Fundamental Flaws in his Realization." (Notes)

[D.G. Porter]

IVES: UNIVERSE SYMPHONY--NOTES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

I would like to express my particular thanks to Thomas M.
Brodhead for his patient and thorough critique of this article in its
various stages, well above and beyond the call of duty, and for his work
on preparing performance materials for the score's premiere. I also
wish to thank Gayle Sherwood for her work in dating the Universe
Symphony manuscripts. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the late John
Kirkpartick for his initial encouragement of my work investigating the
manuscripts of this and other Ives pieces. I would also like to thank
Gray Barrier, James B. Sinclair, Kenneth Singleton and Todd Vunderink
for their effort in making the premiere of my perforntance score a
possibility. And I offer my sincere thanks to those numerous others who
offered helpful suggestions towards the preparation of this article.

NOTES:

(1) Centaur CD no. CRC 2205, released 1994.

(2) "Charles Ives's Life pulse Prelude for Percussion Orchestra: A
Realization for Modern Performance from sketches for his Universe
Symphony," Percussive Notes Research Edition, September 1985, pp. 58-84.
This is an excerpt from a much longer paper that Austin wrote for Peer
Music's original concept for publication of the Symphony, where
photographs of each page of the manuscript would be printed with
diplomatic facsimiles prepared by John Mauceri facing opposite, and
commentaries on each page were to be included. Peer asked four people
to prepare commentaries on the manuscripts: Larry Austin, Lou Harrison,
John Kirkpatrick, and myself. The project was put on hold, but Peer
recently resurrected it. I have a copy of Austin's complete commentary
and rely on it for all quotes cited in this paper.

(3) Charles Edward Ives, Memos, edited by John Kirkpatrick, W.W. Norton
& Co., Inc., New York, 1972. Kirkpatrick explains his editing of
Ives's text in the RH margins of each page, explaining in his Preface
that Ives dictated the text to his secretary, Miss Florence Martin, who
took his words down in shorthand and typed a first set of pages from hor
notes. Ives would then add corrections or new text to these pages, and
some of these additions were dictated to Miss Martin, and she typed
these on a new set of pages. These corrections date from 1932-34.
Later, Ives made further additions to many of these pages which cannot
be dated precisely. My interpretation of Ives's adding to and changing
his description is based on Kirkpatrick's identification of these
sources.

(4) Ibid., pp. 106-108.

(5) Ibid., pp. 106-108.

(6) Ives's own List of Compositions (found in Memos, p.163) gives the
dates of 1911-16 for the composition of the Universe Symphony. The
Cowells date the piece as 1911-16 and 1927-28 in their book, Charles
Ives and His Music (see Footnote #7 below), with "a few notes...added
from time to time, at long intervals, up to 1951" (p. 233 of the 1955
printing). Mrs. Cowell also states that Ives "never abandoned
composition entirely, for on rare occasions he will add a few notes to
his Universe Symphony...." (p.126). I have found no evidence that any
notes were added to the manuscripts after the Quality Photoprint Studio
photostats were made (bewteen 1927-50 [see Footnote #8 below]; in fact,
the only additions found are ink page numbers on pages 1-7 of the
manuscript. However, several pages for the unfinished third movement of
the Third Orchestral Set (1919-26) have numerous additions made after
the photostats were made, and when these pages were rephotographed in
1955, Henry Cowell identified them, with written designations in the
margins of the negatives, as possibly part of the Universe Symphony. To
be fair, there is a reference on one of these pages (q2993=n3057) to a
"Top" orchestra and a "Lower" orchestra. But I believe that no notes
were added to the pages of the Universe Symphony that we have now, and
any pages with the additions described by Mrs. Cowell have not been
located. (She describes sessions between Henry Cowell and Ives where
such additions were made on p.209 of the 1969 paperback reprint of their
book, and in her article "IVESIANA: More Than Something Just Usual,"
High Fidelity/Musica1 America, Oct. 1974, p.16.)
[There is a further explanation for this confusion of the
manuscripts for the Third Orchestral Set with those of the Universe
Symphony. On the cover-page for the sketches for the Universe Symphony
(n3051/f1819), Mrs. Cowell has written a footnote stating that the "old"
Quality photostat numbers 60, 96 111 & 110 are parts of Universe. This
is not completely true. Item no. 60 consists of 22 photostated pages
for the Universe Symphony, and item no. 110, sketches for On the
Antipodes, is linked with the Universe materials by Ives' own
references. But item no. 111 is incorrectly designated by Ives himself
as part of the Universe materials when in reality it is a few sketch
pages for the song Aeschylus and Sophocles. And item no. 96 is plainly
defined in both Ives' handwritten entry and the subsequent typed entries
as being materials for the Third Orchestral Set. Mrs. Cowell's
erroneous identification on this cover-page may be the reason for her
stating that Ives continued to add to Universe over the years when in
reality he was adding to the movement of the Set.]

(7) Henry and Sydney Cowell, Charles Ives and His Music, Oxford
University Press, New York, l955, p. 233. Paperback reprint, 1969, p.
203. The change in page numbers is due to the deletion of the original
list of compositions from the reprint, which was replaced by a list of
published works. (This later list is incomplete, and in my mind is a
poor substitute for the original list.) The original final paragraph of
the 1955 edition was rewritten to include the descriptive phrase quoted
here.

(8) Pages of the Ives manuscripts are commonly referred to by a set of
numbers preceded by letter-designations, given to photostat negatives
made for Ives from about 1927-50 at the Quality Photoprint Studio (q or
Q, depending on whether or not Ives added anything to the page after the
negative was made), photostat negatives made by Mrs. Cowell at the New
York Public Library in spring 1955 (n), photostat negatives made at Yale
since 1957 (y), and microfilm frames made at Yale in 1976 (f).
Photostat copies are rarely used nowadays but their use was standard
until the microfilm was shot. For convenience I give both negative and
microfilm frame numbers, since without the use of both it is not easy to
tell when some additons were made to some of the pages.

(9) The dating of manuscripts by handwriting is the work of Gayle
Sherwood, presently a doctoral candidat at Yale University.

(10) The first of these two is a page for Section C (Q4449/f1848,
identified as such on a photostat copy) which precedes page 2 of Section
A on their double-leaf, and the second a page labeled "Thoughts for 5th
Symphony" (Q3046/f1850), on a double-leaf including two pages for the
"end of Section C" [the Coda].

(11) The manuscript excerpts are quoted with permission of the copyright
holder, Peer Music, New York.

(12) Ives, Memos, p.107.

(13) Only one page of music seems to exist for this Prelude
(Q3011/f1843). There is another page that appears to be intended as a
cover sheet (n1219/f3481) with the memos, "for (B) Medium Chamber
Orchestra" ["Sec A Un Sym" crossed out], and "Prelude #2 U.s." [sic].

(14) This sketch for the song On the Antipodes, giving chord-types
to be linked with key words in the text (Q2907/f6980), has the memo,
"see Prelude #3 -- 2nd section 'Universe symphony' sketch." Chords of
this type are used in sketches for "Section B" of the orchestral
movement. Antipodes was included in Ives's own "Quality" lists of
groupings of photostat negatives (now apparently lost) as part of the
Universe Symphony (according to a memo by Sydney Cowell on the
now--missing title-page represented by n3051/fl8l9). A fragment of
score-sketch (n3050/f1844) in 3/4 time may belong to this Prelude--it
includes a part for 2 string orchestras (one tuned a 1/4-tone sharp as
in Section B) using these chord-types.

(15) John Kirkpatrick, A Temporary Mimeographed Catalogue of the Music
Manuscripts and Related Materials of Charles Edward Ives, 1874-1954,
typescript (Yale University, 1960, reprinted, without alteration, August
1973, microfilm concordance copy with additions and revisions, 1976),
pp. 26-28. This is the standard reference text in Ives-manuscript
research. The microfilm copy of the manuscripts was filmed according to
the ordering of the pages given in this catalogue. However, some of
Kirkpatrick's identifications are not correct, and pages belonging
together are not always grouped and filmed together. (Also, one of the
pages listed as for Section C (n3262/f1849) is actually for the string
group in the "Comedy" of the Fourth Symphony, m.38-43.)

(16) Ibid., p. 100. See also Thomas M. Brodhead, "Ives's Celestial
Railroad and His Fourth Symphony," American Music, Winter 1994, p. 398.
This piece is a transcription for solo of the lost "Hawthorne Concerto"
and became the prototype for the "Comedy" movement of the Fourth
Symphony as revised before 1927. This page of the Universe manuscripts
is listed under the CRR manuscripts following Kirkpatrick's practice of
listing pages by their earliest music. The first entry on this page
seems to be an ink patch for Ives's ink copy of the piano piece, and is
nearly identical to one he made for the copyist's copy made by George
Price.

(17) Since the lower group is in the middle of a two-measure theme at
this point, it seems logical for the lower group to keep to the original
tempo. Another version of this theme is found on the page for Section C
already mentioned (04449/f1848), and on a sheet with two patches
(Q3047/f1833). A change of tempo In mid-theme is highly unlikely and is
not found anywhere else in the manuscript.

(18) This page of Austin's score (Example #3a) is printed on p. 79 in
his article in Percussive Notes Research Edition, September 1985, cited
in Footnote #2 above.

(19) Austin's realization of the metric entrances is quite interestingly
based on barlines found in a space to the left of a diagram-sketch on
another page (Q3021/f1828), with (the metric entrances in Austin's score
based on the staggered entrances of the "Earth Formation" chords. [See
Example #3b, giving this diagram, and compare it with Example #3a, the
first two measures of Austin's score as given in his article. This
sketch has a single measure of 4/2 in the style of the Prelude, with
materials (chord-types and themes) for Section B added later on staves
not used for the percussion notes. His conclusion may derive from
Ives's dual use of this diagram for both the Prelude's multi-metering of
the parts and the multi-metering of parts for his plan of the layout of
the "Earth group" in Section B.

(20) This quotation and those following are from pp. 72-73 of Austin's
article cited in Footnote #2 above.

(21) This term ("B.U.") ["Beat Unit"?] is also found in the full score
for chorus and orchestra of Verse #5 of The Majority [left out in the
song arrangement] and in the Finale of the Fourth symphony at m. 66. On
Q3026/f1823 the "BU" is defined as the (four) half-note beats making up
a measure of 4/2 (defining the beat-pattern, as it is used in these two
other pieces cited above), but in the Prelude it is used to define the
ten-second space of a 4/2 "super-measure," delineated by the low bell
and subdivided into the submeters [2 & 3 (each written in 4/4), 5 & 7
(each written in 2/4), 11 (written in 1/4) and 13 (written in 3/16). See
the opening statement in the description on negs. n3025/f1820: "The B.U.
[equals the] lowest vibration of & basis Of each cycle---& stands as the
representation of the eternal pulse & planetary motion &
[representation] of the earth as with the universe [and] as the motion
and cycles of the earth, the sun, all planets & known occurances of the
firmament or universe."

(22) In his writings Ives disparages the automatically-assumed notion
that note-values are fixed and unyielding. See Memos, p.193 for an
example of his thinking: Writing about reactions to the Second Piano
Sonata, Ives parodies his critics, such as "when the raised solemn-brows
say....'He says four 32nds is not twice as fast as four l6ths--he
certainly does not understand musical notation....He simply does not
understand music!'" Ives was influenced by his father's article on
music theory where the incongruities and limitations of our present
notational system are discussed. (This article is listed on p. 216 of
the Kirkpatrick Catalogue and excerpts have been published in
Perspectives of New Music.)

(23) Memos, p. 107: "The part of the orchestra representing the Heavens
has its own chord system, but its counterpoint is chordal....On the
lower corner of the 2nd page of the sketch, this chordal counterpoint is
broken by long chords, but stays this way for only a short time." Ives
describes here a point where the 4 groups of violins and flutes act as a
single mass, each group (with its own chord-type) playing one note
apiece within a single melody (quoting from the hymn "Nearer My God to
Thee"). On pages 7 and 9 this counterpoint is again "broken by long
chords," but in these instances the 4 chord-types ("A"-"D") are
sustained against one another for a space equivalent in time to one
measure.

(24) The most notable or these memos is found on page 11, the first page
of the Coda for Section C (Q3041/f1851), above the sketch: "these page
numbers are only what is kept...p[ages] 8-9-11 of [the] orig[inal]
sketch & [pages] 12 & 14 are not found."

(25) Another aspect of this realization that needs correction is the
instrumentation of the parts playing meters 17-31. On one of his
sketches (n3023/f1821), Ives composed melodic parts for these meters and
suggested they be used for the "lst or later cycles." (He then
suggested that in later cycles, non-pitched instruments be used on these
parts.) Austin's realization of the Prelude uses these parts for most
at the cycles. In my realization orthe first two cycles, I took a cue
from a preliminary verbal outline (n3025/f1820) where Ives suggests that
these parts be played "in [the] first 2 or 3 cycles, just [played] as
beats....more as a rehearsal fur players and listeners," using
non-pitched percussion instruments and saving the melodic parts for the
second cycle. Ives goes on to say on the first of these 2 pages that in
the third cycle, different instruments such as "lights [light-sounding,
non-resonating instrumental sounds, not illuminating lights--cf.
also Q3021/f1828 and Q3026/f18233, [and] electric buttons"
[noise-makers] could be used. Taken with his instrumental designations
on other pages, I conclude that the instrumentation should be varied for
each cycle.

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