Title: Ives, Concord sonata : piano sonata no. 2 ("Concord, Mass., 1840-1860") /
Authors: Block, Geoffrey Holden, 1948-
Publisher: Cambridge University Press,
Year: 1996
Subjects: Ives, Charles,
Abstract: "Charles Ives's massive Concord Sonata, his second sonata for piano, named after the town of Concord in Massachusetts, is central to his output and clearly reflects his aesthetic perspective. Geoffrey Block's wide-ranging account of the work thus provides an ideal introduction to this fascinating composer. As well as a discussion of the Sonata's reception history from 1920 to the present, and a chapter on its compositional genesis, this handbook includes a detailed narrative of the motivic content and a historical and analytical survey of the work's borrowings, both certifiable and newly proposed. The programmatic element of the Sonata is explored in the context of Ives's personal vision of four literary subjects associated with the town of Concord between 1840 and 1860: Emerson, Hawthorne, the Alcotts and Thoreau."--BOOK JACKET.
Contents: 1. Introduction -- 2. Reception. Critical responses 1920-1938. 1939 and after -- 3. Genesis. Ives's chronology. Ives's chronology cross-examined. A revised genesis. The two Concords -- 4. Form and design. Motivic fabric. Tonal characteristics. Form -- 5. Borrowing. Borrowings: Ives, Cowell, and Kirkpatrick. Later discoveries of Ives borrowings. Other hypothetical borrowings. Musical borrowings in the Concord Sonata -- 6. The program. Ives and programmaticism. "Emerson" "Hawthorne" "The Alcotts" "Thoreau" -- Appendix I. Concord Sonata themes -- Appendix II. Formal and thematic outline.