Use of time and spatial form in String Quartet No. 2 by Charles Ives.

Abstract

<italic>Volume I</italic>. I am interested in the human voice and physical gestures as resources for instrumental music. The idea for this concerto started with the trumpet's knack for imitating human sounds, like the cry of a baby, and talking trumpet, which is done with a harmon mute. While sound effect techniques are not used extensively in this piece, they are important to its story. The first movement begins with a birth, and the following movements are related to childhood. In the first movement the trumpet sobs and whimpers, and also takes on the persona of the toy trumpet with innocent fanfares. The second movement begins with tender melody, reminiscing about a childhood from the past. The words of a Tennessee Williams poem are expressed through the trumpet, as it imitates speech sounds. In the finale, the trumpet gives vent to some youthful aggression through jazzy outbursts based, as in much good jazz, on vocal models, both musical and extra-musical. <italic>Volume II</italic>. In his 1974 paper, Spatial Form in Ives, Robert Morgan claims that Ives's creation of music that is anti-temporal is the main reason Ives is sometimes accused of being an awkward composer, and why his music is puzzling to so many listeners. This paper examines Ives's <italic>String Quartet No. 2</italic>, concentrating on its use of time. Western listeners are accustomed to hearing music linearly. But if Ives's music disregards or even fights the forward flow of music, we need to listen differently to him. Through a detailed study of <italic>String Quartet No. 2</italic>, I will show how Ives manipulates time to counteract forward motion and project a multidimensional musical image. I introduce a new concept called fictional time and discuss the role of the listener's initiative in approaching Ives. I believe Ives was interested in depicting an inner life of recollection, imagination and association in his music. I claim Ives's nonlinear time orientation functions to evoke the discontinuities and multiple streams of our inner thought processes in such activities as imagining and remembering, both favorite topics of his.