Old Home Days Suite

Description

CHARLES E. IVES (1874-1954) was born in Danbury, Connecticut and died in New York City at the age of 79. His father, George, was an accomplished cornet player and Civil War bandmaster, who conducted orchestras, bands, and choirs in Danbury and was his son's first and most influential music teacher. While he insisted on the mastery of traditional music practice, his imaginative teaching also inspired Charles's remarkable experiments with new kinds of musical sounds. The songs and sketches assembled in this suite reflect Ives's lifelong love of familiar tunes and home grown music making.. 1.WALTZ begins and ends by quoting from Michael Nolan’s popular Bowery waltz, “Little Annie Rooney.” Ives’s own verses to the song imagine Annie, now a bride, and her festive wedding party at “the old dance ground.” . 2a. THE OPERA HOUSE is the first part of the song “Memories,” and the text, also by Ives, recalls a youngster’s breathless expectancy as the pit band strikes up the overture. . b. Just as the curtain rises, a drum roll-off takes our thoughts outdoors again to “march along down Main street, behind the village band,” amid the ringing of church and schoolhouse bells. OLD HOME DAY is the nostalgic title of the song from which this section is taken, and the obbligato line played during the repeat features bits and pieces of “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” “Garryowen,” and “Auld Lang Syne.” . 3 The title of THE COLLECTION refers to a church offering. This setting of George Kingsley's hymn-tune Tappan introduces first “The Organist,” then “The Soprano,” and lastly a “Response by Village Choir.” 4. SLOW MARCH, the earliest surviving song by Ives, was composed for the funeral of a family pet. Inscribed “to the Children’s Faithful Friend,” it opens and closes with a quotation from the “Dead March” of Handel’s oratorio, Saul. 5. LONDON BRIDGE IS FALLEN DOWN! is a tonal and rhythmic “take-off” on the familiar tune, which we may imagine to be typical of young Ives’s unruly keyboard improvisations. This arrangement is based on Kenneth Singleton’s realization for brass quintet of Ives’s sketches for organ or piano, which date from about 1891. -- Jonathan Elkus