By presenting current thought on the realization, performance, interpretation, influence, and importance of Ives s works, this collection grapples with many critical issues in Ives research and will invigorate interest in this unique American voice.
Several articles dig deep into the music itself.
The Things Our Fathers Loved and its connection to European musical tradition. He demonstrates the singular yet compelling logic of Ives s compositional language by showing how Ives understood tonality as a historical language, still meaningful and powerful, but no longer necessary or inviolable. Ives s unfinished Universe Symphony is the subject taken up by both Larry Austin and Philip Lambert in their essays. It is intriguing that in his most transcendental, mystical work, Ives was thinking primarily in abstract and experimental terms. Austin s description of the sketches shows how different the Symphony is from the Concord Sonata , for instance.