Episode 5 - 1947: Charles E. Ives, Symphony No. 3, ”The Camp Meeting”

In this episode, Dave and Andrew explore the winner of the fifth Pulitzer Prize in Music, Charles E. Ives for his Symphony No. 3, "The Camp Meeting."

This piece, largely scored/written between 1908-11, features many of Ives's favorite techniques, including musical borrowing, cumulative form, and mixtures of harmonic techniques all wrapped up in a short and compact chamber symphony. Ives himself had mixed feelings about the piece, thinking it was a transitional "crossway between the older ways and the newer ways," but it caught the attention of the Pulitzer board through its premiere performance in New York conducted by Lou Harrison in 1946. It was also the first piece to win the Pulitzer Prize that written much earlier than its premiere, and it helped propel Ives and his music into the public eye.

 

If you'd like more information about Ives or his Symphony No. 3, we recommend:

1) The Charles Ives Society: www.charlesives.org

2) Charles Ives, Memos, edited by John Kirkpatrick (W.W. Norton, 1971)

3) J. Peter Burkholder, All Made of Tunes (Yale University Press, 1995)

4) Mark Zobel, The Third Symphony of Charles Ives. Vol. 6 CMS Sourcebooks in American Music, edited by Michael Budds. (Pendragon Press, 2009).

5) A new recording by Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony: https://www.sfsymphony.org/Discover-the-Music/SFS-Media/charles-Ives-Nos3-4