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Broderick Lemke
MUSI 369
Charles Ives Innovation, Exploration and Cringe-Inducing Dissonance
As one of the first American composers, Charles Ives began a tradition of modern

American music that would continue long after he was gone. His music embraced new concepts

that stretched tonality to its limits, utilized dissonance in shocking ways, and explored a new

aesthetic of music. Some of the tools he used to accomplish his innovation include, but are not

limited to, conflicting tempos, tone clusters, polytonality and microtonality. Each of these

techniques created a unique soundscape that stood apart from the common practice period.

A discussion of Ives use of conflicting tempos serves as a primer for discussing

harmonic developments that Ives used in his pieces. It does this by creating sharp contrasts and

dissonances in melodies that sound consonant on their own, but by overlapping them creates a

seemingly chaotic and unnatural result. Among the pieces that demonstrate this technique are

Ives Symphony No. 4 and the second movement of Three Places in New England. These pieces

require members of the ensemble to perform at tempos independent of each other, and in the case

of Three Places in New England, Ives notes that the performance should feel as if two bands are

playing two different tunes at the same time. A listener can hear familiar melodies throughout the

work including Yankee Doodle and Sousas Semper Fidelis, and by utilizing recognizable

melodies, Ives is able to present extreme dissonance that can be contextualized and understood in

a tonal fashion. The groups of instruments playing each melody and related harmonies can be

pieced together and the listener is able to dissect the conflicting harmonies and rhythms to come

to an understanding of Ives premise of two bands playing simultaneously. In the other

techniques the dissonances are harder to contextualize, but this shows a way in which Ives allows

an audience to pick apart dissonance and approach it with some familiarity.

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In a similar fashion to asking performers to play at two tempos, Ives also asked

performers to perform in two of more simultaneous keys. As a child, Ives father would have him

sing a song in one key while harmonizing it in another key. Because of this experience as a child

and his willingness to encounter and embrace new amounts of dissonance, several of his pieces

feature polytonal sections. Among these pieces are Psalm 67, Variations on America, and

movement three of his Piano Sonata No. 2 Concord. In his second piano sonata, Ives begins

the piece with a diatonic pitch collection similar to B flat major. However, after a short

introduction (no length can be specified because of a lack of measures and time signature), the

left hand changes to playing in A flat major while the right continues in B flat major. In this

piece, the juxtaposition of keys presents a dreamy atmosphere from the open fifths and octaves in

the left hand harmonizing open harmonies and a simple melody in the right hand. Other instances

of bitonality in Ives work are not as consonant, such as the use of bitonality in the interludes of

Variations on America. In the first interlude, Ives uses tightly packed triadic harmonies in the

keys of F major and D flat major to create a sharp dissonance. The use of triads adds more

conflicting members of the harmonies than in the previous example with open fifths and octaves,

contributing to a jolting dissonance. He also compliments the interludes dissonance by placing

the voices in a one measure canon with each other, creating rhythmic dissonance and

independence on top of the harmonic dissonance.

Another technique used by Ives to explore dissonance was the use of tone clusters, or as

he called them group chords. These collections of pitches are highly dissonant and do not

follow typical voice leading conventions from the common practice period. Scherzo: Over the

Pavements, the second movement of the Piano Sonata No. 2 Concord, and many of his songs.

These pieces were not often performed immediately after they were written, but would gain
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popularity later in his life. At first these collections of pitches can sometimes seem like just

noise, but the unique harmonic properties of the tone clusters becomes clear upon repeated

intentional listenings and provides a rich new harmonic language that Ives explores. The second

movement of the Concord sonata contains one of Ives most famous tone clusters. A wooden bar

of about 15 inches is used to play the tone cluster because of its sheer size and number of notes,

and is meant to be reminiscent of church bells ringing in the dissonance. Ives was trying to

capture harmonic noises that were present in other situations, utilizing a complex harmonic

language to mimic the complex noises he was hearing.

Ives also imitates the timbre of church bells in other pieces through the use of microtonal

tuning systems. Three Quarter-Tone Pieces was written for two pianos, with one being a quarter

tone sharp compared to the other. Using this unique tuning system Ives was able to create a more

exact sound of a church bell and explore new systems of tonality. In a sense, it reminds me of

spectralism music, utilizing a unique tuning system and timbres to achieve a very specific sound

such as a church bell ringing. He would go on to use a quarter tone piano in his Symphony No. 4.

This exploration of microtonal tuning was reminiscent of practices already common in eastern

music, but helped to bring it to a more popular front in the Western realm.

Ives sound was unique to what was going on around him in Western music at the time of

his writing. He used a large number of techniques that would be explored throughout the

twentieth century and are still being explored to date. He helped to bring these tools to other

composers who would experiment with them, as well as helped to open up western music to new

tonal ideas. He played a large role in advancing music and contributed many great pieces that

can expose even a contemporary audience to new musical ideas.

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Some Questions (I know you didnt ask, but I was curious)

- Do you think Ives wouldve been fascinated by electronic music? I think the possibilities for

specific pitch, panning audio, as well as conflicting tempos and rhythms with exactness may

have been up his alley, but I dont know for sure.

- How often was polytonality used before Ives, and where is poly tonality at today? Is it still a

really common practice?

- How do the keys picked in polytonal pieces impact each other? I assume if you picked two

keys that were a tritone apart from each other there would be more dissonance than if you

picked ones a fifth apart from each other. Is there any theory written about this that explains

polytonal relationships?

- Are tone clusters used differently today? Were they originally meant as a dissonance, where

now they are used are thick tonal harmonies (like in Whitacre) sometimes as well, or am I

just using a limited knowledge of Ives to influence my thoughts that tone clusters have

changed in purpose over time?

- Has anyone made theories like tonal functionality for tone clusters?

- Where does Spectralism come from, what schools of thoughts or goals? Do they relate to

Ives?