Charles Ives on the Nature of Experience: The Compositional Designs and Aesthetic Programs of

212 Pages·2017·22.99 MB·English

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Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects CUNY Graduate Center
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Ashleé Michele Miller
Graduate Center, City University of New York
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CHARLES IVES ON THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE: THE
COMPOSITIONAL DESIGN AND AESTHETIC PROGRAMS OF THREE
ORCHESTRAL WORKS

by

ASHLEÉ MICHELE MILLER

A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Music in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of Doctoral of Musical Arts, The City University of New York.

2016
©2016

ASHLEÉ MICHELE MILLER

All Rights Reserved

  ii
CHARLES IVES ON THE NATURE OF EXPERIENCE: THE COMPOSITIONAL
DESIGN AND AESTHETIC PROGRAMS OF THREE ORCHESTRAL WORKS

by

ASHLEÉ MICHELE MILLER

This manuscript has been read and accepted for the
Graduate Faculty in Music to satisfy the dissertation
requirement for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts.

_____Ashleé Michele Miller_________

________________ ___________________________________________
Date Chair of Examining Committee

____________Dr. Norman Carey__________

________________ ___________________________________________
Date Executive Officer

_____________Dr. Norman Carey_________

Stephen Blum (Advisor)_____________________

Philip Lambert (First-Reader)_________________

Ursula Oppens_____________________________

Supervisory Committee

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ABSTRACT
Charles Ives on the Nature of Experience: The Compositional Designs and Aesthetic
Programs of Three Orchestral Works
by

Ashleé Michele Miller

Advisor: Stephen Blum

Charles Ives on the Nature of Experience: The Compositional Designs and Aesthetic
Programs of Three Orchestral Works explores the hypothesis that Ives set in motion in many of
his compositions a juxtaposition of temporal process (such as polyrhythm and polymeter) with
the aim of exploiting a person’s innate abilities to entrain. Ives believed participants engaged in a
juxtaposition of temporal processes are able to form personalized experiences by choosing which
elements to attend to.
I present three analyses to explore the potential for multiple entrainment experiences in
three works by Ives: The Unanswered Question, Central Park in the Dark, and the Fourth
Symphony. Each composition contains a juxtaposition of temporal processes and a written
program addressing the nature of human experience. I examine each work’s compositional
design and written program to find an underlying process (“aesthetic program”) that is realized in
both musical and extra-musical forms.
Chapter 2, “Ives’s Views and Approaches to Musical Time,” outlines Ives’s performance
approach to polyrhythms and connects his performance practice with current studies on
polyrhythmic performance. Ives considered musical time as being built on a fluid foundation that

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is continually affected by experience. I connect this approach with current musical theories that
consider experience a critical component in the unfolding of musical time: Christopher Hasty’s
theory of projection and Mari Reiss Jones’s concept of subjective generators.
Ives referred to many of his compositions as “Pictures in Sounds.” Chapter 3 “Pictures in
Sounds” lists these compositions and explores the underlying aesthetic objective in this sub-
category in Ives’s oeuvre. I claim that these musical illustrations are perceptual images
comprised of the participant’s perceptual anticipations while entraining in the musical
experience. As participants engage in a juxtaposition of temporal processes, their choices while
listening and/or performing shape and define their individual experiences, resulting in individual
“views.”
As many researchers have noted, Ives was interested in cycles as a medium of
unification. The term “cycles” in music however has typically referred to imbedded or repetitive
structures. In Chapter 4 (“Cycles Revised”), I treat the use of “cycles” as a process and connect
Ives’s use of the term to Ulric Neisser’s concept of “perceptual cycles.” Both authors considered
cycles and perception as being continually evolving processes rooted in the inseparable variable
of experience.
I introduce the concept of cyclic reference units (CRU), which are continual musical
processes that guarantee a juxtaposition of temporal processes, heard or unheard. The CRU
creates a rhythmic density in Ives’s music that allows listeners and performers to actively choose
between different temporal processes inherent in the work or attune to an internal process in the
creation of a composite view. I assert that this rhythmic density in Ives’s music reverberates into
the composition’s musical form and continuity by enabling participants to ultimately choose
what is in the foreground, middle ground, and background. Ives’s compositions subsequently

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take many forms and facilitate a variety of meanings, creating musical experiences that
ultimately embrace diversity and individuals’ rights to choose—paradigms at the heart of
Transcendental principles and American values.

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For Papa

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Preface

I first became acquainted with Charles Ives’s music during my high school years at the
North Carolina School of the Arts. As is typical in music appreciation classes, Ives was part of a
large group of American composers to be introduced during a quick two-hour lecture. After
giving a brief biographical description, our professor, Dr. Irna Priore, had chosen one piece from
Ives’s oeuvre to play for the class: an orchestration of General William Booth Enters Into
Heaven recently recorded by Michael Tilson Thomas with the San Francisco Symphony. This
recording became my first encounter with Ives’s music and an experience that would lead to my
doctoral thesis less than a decade later.
Sitting in class, I listened to the recording, noting the soft approach of the orchestra’s
march as if the ensemble were approaching from a distance. A choir suddenly interjected with
the phrase, “Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?” As someone who grew up in a devout
Southern Baptist family, I instantly recognized the phrase, which comes from Elisha Hoffman’s
hymn of the same name. But there was something strikingly different about encountering the
hymn in Ives’s composition than in my previous experiences. In Ives’s work, the phrase is set
among clashing harmonies and echoed in a brash tone by the solo baritone. This experience was
in stark juxtaposition with my childhood memories, which recalled the hymn in sentimental
settings with feelings of reverence and seriousness—experiences engrained in Sunday school.
This juxtaposition aroused feelings of humor. And as the singers shouted a sarcastic
“Hallelujah!” I started laughing.
I began identifying more musical fragments intermixed in Ives’s composition and became
increasingly astounded by the ways Ives layered and used these hymns. At one point, a distant

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trombone intoned the “There is a Fountain” while the singers sang (and went) “’round and
’round.” I found it hard to listen to both events because the tunes seemed to be moving
simultaneously at different speeds. The juxtaposition of both materials created a dizzying
experience that would eventually fade and break with cleverly punctuated silences and the phrase
“yet, in an instant.”
In the work’s final moments, the singers and instrumentalists unexpectedly engaged in a
sentimental rendition of the tune “Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?” This final presence
of the tune was more in line with my childhood memories and experiences. The phrase’s sudden
transformation, from a cynical chant to a tender intoning, created a contrast that could be easily
recognized by all. More interestingly, this musical realization seemed to acknowledge the
juxtaposition I had experienced earlier in the work as I acquainted my previous experiences with
current ones.
Seven years later, I had similar a experience while listening to the last movement of
Ives’s Fourth Symphony in Professor Stephen Blum’s doctoral seminar at The Graduate Center,
CUNY. My colleagues and I huddled around the new critical edition while another Michael
Tilson Thomas recording filled the room. This time, I could clearly see the layering of various
materials in the large blue-bound score. As I listened, my ears began to pick up familiar tunes
and begin to switch between them, feeling each melody moving at its own speed. Then an
unexpected presence and tune appeared in the final moments of the piece; a choir suddenly
entered with a familiar hymn that seemed to coalesce the movement’s large juxtaposition into a
communal chant.
As I described my experience to the class, Professor Blum asked me to name the hymn. I
quickly sang the melody but mislabeled the hymn as “Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?”

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