This Scherzo Is A Joke: Art from New England's Flinty Soil

Nineteenth-century New England was the cradle of America’s first native art. Although music bloomed late in the flinty soil, New England boasted many original and trailbreaking composers and virtuosi The Musical Heritage Society has now given us an opportunity to see how three New England musicians—born within 11 years of each other—struggled and ultimately triumphed in the search for an American voice.

Of these three, Charles Ives (1874-1954) is the best known. Although much of Ives’ music is now available on record, very little of the music of his contemporaries has been issued. This album allows us to compare Ives’ achievement with that of two of his contemporaries—one, Horatio Parker (1863-1919) was Ives’ teacher at Yale; the other, Mrs. Amy Marcy Cheney (HHA. Beach (1867-1944), was a well-known pianist and composer.

Parker was born and raised in the little town of Auburndale, Massachusetts, near Boston. After study in Boston, he traveled to Munich in 1881, where he studied organ and composition. Returning to the states in 1884, he held several posts as a church organist in New York and Boston. From 1894 until his death, Parker served as professor of music at Yale University. Charles Ives arrived at Yale in 1894 along with Parker, and was one of his first students of composition.

Parker's Suite, op. 35 (1893) was composed in the same year as his most famous work, the oratorio Hora novissima. Like its more famous sibling, it is an unabashedly romantic work, with balanced melodic development, rich harmonies, and dramatic interludes. Parker drew lovingly on the heritage of European romanticism in crafting this work, from its opening piano arpeggios and beautifully articulated melody traded between violin and cello to its closing chords.

Amy Marcy Cheney Beach was a musical prodigy, giving her first piano recital in Boston in 1883 at the age of 16. Two years later, she soloed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She resumed an active concert career in Europe and America after her husband passed away.

Her Trio, op. 150 (1938), like Parker's, is in the romantic mold. It, too, opens with rippling arpeggios performed by the piano; but the melody that is first stated by the cello and then echoed by the violin is more disturbing, less sunny, than Parker's. In her later years Beach had come under the influence of more modern composers, particularly MacDowell and Debussy. This work reflects a late romantic turbulence that is typical of these composers.

Finally, we come to Ives, the great composer who was frustrated throughout his artistic life by an indifferent audience. Ives draws on the romantic tradition of self-expression through deeply emotional work. However, he broadens he musical palette by adding dissonant harmonies, overlapping parts, and new tonalities. Unlike Parker and Beach, who looked to European melodic models, Ives is firmly rooted in America.

Ives’ Trio (1904-05; rev. 1911) is characteristic of his first mature work. The dark, troubled Andante moderato leads into the most interesting part of the work, playfully called “Tsiaj,” meaning “this scherzo is a joke.” Here, the wild polyphony of overlapping parts and the echoes of popular American folk tunes, including “The Sailor's Horn-pipe” and Dixie,” show Ives’ attempt to capture the rhythms of American life. The subtitle ‘Medley on the Campus Fence” might explain this juxtaposition of tunes; we can imagine the young Ives overhearing competing village street musicians as they played these tunes in the early evening air. The piece ends with another troubling section, finding its resolution in the beautiful notes of “Rock of Ages,” as if the composer had strayed into a small New England congregation.

For anyone interested in the growth of American music, these works by Parker, Beach and Ives sensitively performed by the Toledo Trio, make for excellent listening.