| Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2003 20:43:13
+0000 Sender: Gustav Mahler & related Late Romantic Composers List <[email protected]> From: Anne Ozorio Subject: Charles Ives book |
| The other day in that treasure
trove, my local charity store, I found a mint first edition of the
biography by David Wooldridge "From the Steeples to the Valleys" Knopf
1974. I think it's the author's own proof as it's signed and he's
marked a list of typos. Also there's a flyer advertising the
books release. It was the earliest biography. It's not as
detailed nor as comprehensive as Swafford, Burkhold or Feder.
Nonetheless it has good points: the family history was researched first
hand, as was much else. Woolridge's insights on Ives sexuality and
music are interesting too, different from Swafford, for example and on
his popularity or lack thereof. Most interesting to us now are
Woolridge's comments on the way the music was perceived in 1974: "Stokowski has returned to his native England (after a "scandal" of recording for non Americans) and at the age of 94 is contentedly making music over there". on the songs "I feel that the whole approach to singing Ives' songs is fundamentally wrong. I remember hearing...a BBC broadcast by a fine English tenor of "1,2,3" which was made to sound absolutely ridiculous because the singers diction was immutably "BBC English". On the other hand I have heard many uncontestably fine American singers who feel no compunction about reducing the songs to the level of vaudeville. There is a great deal of humour in these songs ...which speaks best if it not undermined by a lot of burlesque grimacing. ...there is a dry sentimental frailty to Down East if the song is overlaid with a tinge of Maine accent but vanishes utterly where the song is sung with brash Hoosier vulgarity....there is humour in Charles Rutledge but there is also pathos, poignance, a touch, even, of stark tragedy ..it is difficult to maintain all these conflicting elements". and "generally speaking I believe that most of Ives songs lend themselves more easily to black singers because the black voice is more innately expressive ....and is capable of taking awkward and unusual intervals with greater ease and flexibility, capable of more "soul". Charles Ives was a WASP...but his music goes beyond the WASP mentality because it deals in a dimension of suffering that the average WASP ......has no experience of. Only imagine what a voice like Paul Robeson's would have done with General Booth bringing to it a whole social/political/cultural identification. ...or Cleo Laine" on the orchestral music he is glowing about Stokowski. On his 4th he says "the interpretation, like any interpretation of character, is open to criticism, wrong tempi (for some),wrong dynamics (for some) &c &c but Stokowski's most virulent critics are not his peers but ...little musicians who are dedicated to the art of triviality. The man remains an enigma". Anne Reprinted with persmission. |