Ives - Three Places in New England [Audio + Score]

Charles Ives [1874 - 1954] - Three Places in New England, Orchestral set № 1 [1914] I. The "St. Gaudens" in Boston Common (Col. Shaw and his Colored Regiment) [0:03] II. Putnam's Camp, Redding, Connecticut [9:06] III. From "The Housatonic at Stockbridge" by Robert Underwood Johnson [15:13]

"Three Places in New England was composed between 1903 and 1929. The set was completed in 1914, but was later revised for performance in 1929. The second piece, Putnam’s Camp, Redding, Connecticut was created from two short theater orchestra pieces composed by Ives in 1903. These pieces, "Country Band" March and Overture & March: "1776", were completed in 1904. Lyman Brewster, Ives' uncle, had asked him to compose the pieces for his play Major John Andre which was never performed due to Brewster's untimely death. In the early fall of 1912, Ives began tinkering with these compositions again. The satisfaction that Ives derived from working on the Fourth of July (third movement of his Holiday Symphony), in which he used the trio (or middle) section of 1776, may have been the catalyst for inspiring him to reuse these lost songs and create a longer piece. By October, Ives had completed an ink score-sketch of Putnam's Camp. The final version of the piece clearly resembles its source materials, but many of the complex musical jokes that littered the originals had been replaced with simpler alternatives. Three Places was first performed on February 16, 1930 under Slonimsky's direction before the American Committee of the International Society for Contemporary Music, in New York City. Although it had been rehearsed only once, the Committee was sufficiently impressed to recommend the work to the International Society, which surprisingly turned it down for performance at its festival. The first public performance was scheduled for January 10, 1931. Ives himself attended – in fact, he was funding the concert himself. The performance received mild applause, and Ives congratulated the performers backstage – "Just like a town meeting – every man for himself. Wonderful how it came out!". Three Places in New England became the first of Ives' compositions to be commercially published. Slonimsky was in touch with C. C. Birchard (a publisher from Boston) on Ives’ behalf, and by 1935 the two had negotiated a deal. Ives and Slonimsky both painstakingly proofread the score, note by note, to make sure the engravings were correct. In 1935, Ives held a copy of his first work in his hands. He had requested that the binding bear his name in as small a font as possible, so as to not appear egotistical. For many years, very little interest in performance of Three Places was aroused by its publication. After Slonimsky's retirement from conducting, the piece lay dormant until 1948, when longtime BSO concertmaster Richard Burgin programmed Three Places on a Boston Symphony Orchestra concert. The current practice of performing Ives' chamber scores rescored for full orchestra was thus established. In the 1970s, interest in Three Places in New England was piqued once again, this time regarding the differences between the original 1914 scoring, much of which had been lost, and the 1929 chamber-orchestra rescoring for Slonimsky's chamber orchestra. After extensive research by James Sinclair at Yale University, he concluded that the 1914 orchestration could not be recreated in its entirety since only 35% of the second movement had survived Ives' cutting for the 1929 version. Sinclair created what is currently believed to be the closest replication of the 1914 score for full orchestra by extrapolating Ives' scraps, sketches and notes. The world premiere of this version took place on February 9, 1974 at Yale University's Woolsey Hall, with the Yale Symphony Orchestra, conducted by John Mauceri, honoring the composer's 100th birthday." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_P...) The Cleveland Orchestra Christoph von Dohnányi, conductor