<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=2DAq6r_0w8ATVJK00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=2DAq6r_0w8ATVJK00" width="1920" height="1279" ><figcaption>Charles Ives. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.</figcaption></figure>Great Barrington — Even those who care little for Charles Ives’ music are bound to acknowledge that he is probably the most authentically American composer since Stephen Foster. Aaron Copland thought so, and so do the members of Simon’s Rock music faculty, several of whom, along with guest artists, will give a recital of Ives’ works on Sunday, October 20, at 3 p.m., to celebrate Ives’ 150th birth anniversary.Sunday’s recital performers are:<ul><li>John Cheek — bass-baritone</li><li>Lilit Hartunian — violin</li><li>David Russell — cello</li><li>Jacqueline DeVoe — flute</li><li>Aaron Likness — piano</li><li>Larry Wallach — piano</li></ul>The music faculty at Simon’s Rock includes more than one Ives specialist: Chair in Music Larry Wallach [DISCLAIMER: Larry Wallach is a contributing author for The Berkshire Edge] wrote his PhD thesis on Ives, and as a concert performer, Aaron Likness specializes in Ives repertoire.In the wider world, longtime admirers of Charles Ives include Frank Zappa, Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, avant-garde jazz musician Albert Ayler, Leonard Bernstein, and, most notably, Aaron Copland. In “Music and Imagination,” Copland confesses, “What has impressed me most about Charles Ives is his incredible independence, his total disregard for fashion, for tradition.” And in his memoir, Copland wrote of Ives, “He fathered modern music in America.”Pianist Marc-André Hamelin memorized Charles Ives’ “Concord Sonata” at the age of 13 and does not recommend anyone attempt the feat at home or anywhere else. “He wrote what he wanted with really no regard to pianistic difficulty whatsoever,” he told the 92nd Street Y. “You got his musical impulse in unadulterated form without regard to comfort.”Last week, I spoke with Aaron Likness on the phone to learn more about Sunday’s program and his role in it. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.EDGEWhat led you to specialize in the music of Charles Ives?LIKNESSI think my initial attraction probably had something to do with my familiarity with the background material, all of the hymn tunes and things that I grew up with that I recognized in the music. Early on, I had an attraction to modern music, which I think always interested me a little more. But even so, it took me a little while to crack, especially since a lot of people, myself included, tend to be exposed first to some of the most difficult pieces.I remember hearing the “Concord Sonata” for the first time when I was 16 or 17. Especially when you sit down and listen to “Emerson” without much awareness of what’s going on or what the music is about, it can be pretty impenetrable. It certainly felt that way to me, but there was something interesting about it that made a mental footnote.Later on, I encountered the “First Piano Sonata,” which is played less frequently but is much more based around hymn tunes and ragtime. I think it is quite a bit more accessible, and something about it spoke to me. It kind of tumbled forward from there.EDGEIs it safe to say that public response to his music was pretty much the response Ives intended?LIKNESSPossibly. There’s something about the music he wrote about Emerson and some of these other thinkers that is supposed to be craggy and a little difficult to grasp. I think you’re not necessarily supposed to make sense of it on a first listen the way you might with a Mozart sonata or a Beethoven symphony. A lot of his music demands a more active role from the listener. I think the ideal he was aiming for, and what a lot of his music is about, is music as a more communal activity. It’s something in which everyone participates together. It’s not something you sit back and relax to.EDGEIf people misunderstand Ives, then should we expect that correcting their misunderstandings with information and knowledge will change the way his music sounds in their ears?LIKNESSI think it does change, and I think he would welcome that. Even from one day to another, the music can sound or be played a bit differently. He had something of a modernist streak. He liked pounding out dissonant chords on the piano and enjoyed the effects they created, sprinkling jokes and strange harmonies into his music. But that’s not all his music. In fact, I think it’s a smaller fraction than people might assume.A lot of his music has origins in what he initially composed as a church musician. He was trained as an organist and worked as a professional organist for many years. He composed a lot of music for church services, which he eventually recycled into his chamber music, symphonies, and string quartets. Most of that music is centered on old gospel hymn tunes and is much more immediately accessible to the listener than his more abstract, modernist work. Those two things always coexisted in his music. They’re kind of two separate strands of his development.EDGEDo you think Ives, as a church musician, developed an interest in shocking the congregation?LIKNESSThere was certainly a little bit of that. It’s hard to say what came first—whether it was a defensive reaction or if he set out to create sounds that would be alienating to those in his church services. I think he was trying to find sounds that best expressed the ideas he had, and some of those sounds happened to be unusual. I’m sure there were some bewildered reactions during his services.Later in life, I think he certainly welcomed that kind of reaction, this attitude of being a bit of a troublemaker.EDGEBut that came after his music drew responses that may have alienated him a bit.LIKNESSCertainly. The earliest champions of his music were part of the European-influenced modernist scene.EDGEFriends of Schoenberg?LIKNESSYes. People like Nicolas Slonimsky, Henry Cowell, and Aaron Copland—those who were starting to bring modern sounds into the American mainstream in the 1920s and 1930s.EDGEWas Elliott Carter among them?LIKNESSYes.EDGEAnd Carter was actually friends with Ives, was he not?LIKNESSYes, but Carter’s an interesting case, because he started out as a neoclassical composer, much more like Copland than the music he later wrote. He always had a complicated relationship with Ives, both personally and musically, but he was certainly an early proponent of getting Ives’ music out there.EDGESo, you’re playing the “Concord Sonata” on Sunday?LIKNESSJust one movement—the one about Thoreau. But I have played the whole sonata several times. It’s a wonderful piece and probably one of the masterpieces of American piano music. It’s difficult, big, and has a lot of ideas, but there’s beauty in it too. The Thoreau movement, I think, is a little easier to get into on its own. It follows an evening with Thoreau in meditation at Walden Pond.EDGEIf someone knew all about Emerson and were hearing Ives’ music for the first time, would they enjoy it?LIKNESSI hope so. Part of it is approaching it with the right mindset and expectations. There’s a lot in common between the difficult prose of Emerson and Ives’ music—both can be freewheeling and hard to grasp.EDGEThat makes sense. Ives probably wanted his music to have that same level of difficulty.LIKNESSExactly. He once wrote about Emerson as a prophet standing on a summit hurling thunderbolts while contemplating eternity. We latch onto whatever we can.EDGEWhat do you bring to this piece that someone like Donald Berman does not?LIKNESSOh, gosh. Don’s a terrific musician. One special thing about Ives is that there’s a lot of space for different approaches and ways to highlight various ideas. There’s so much depth in his music.EDGEIn a way, aren’t you honoring Ives by interpreting it in a way that might piss someone off?LIKNESSProbably. I remember trying to record the “Emerson” movement, and I realized how difficult that is in a studio. Every take came out different, which isn’t something I typically do with other music. Ives’ music almost demands it.EDGEI’m glad you told that story. It’s really helpful.LIKNESSThere’s this very extemporaneous quality to the music. It’s far from improvised, but there is an element of improvisation that feels essential to it.EDGEWhat else should listeners know about your program for the 20th?LIKNESSI think the terrific thing about Ives’ music is his openness to his musical surroundings. His contemporaries were trying to find their way through Brahms and Liszt to produce modern music, but Ives went in a different direction. He brought in all the music from his personal experiences—hymn tunes, sentimental ballads, marches, patriotic songs—and wove them into his compositions. That communal experience of music-making is also reflected in his compositions. He includes the guy singing out of tune in the back row or the trumpet player who’s a bar behind, weaving all these elements into the experience.* * *In “Essays Before A Sonata, The Majority, and Other Writings,” Charles Ives wrote:[T]he day will come when every man while digging his potatoes will breathe his own epics, his own symphonies (operas, if he likes it); and as he sits of an evening in his backyard and shirt sleeves smoking his pipe and watching his brave children in their fun of building their themes for their sonatas of their life, he will look up over the mountains and see his visions in their reality, will hear the transcendental strains of the day’s symphony resounding in their many choirs, and in all their perfection, through the west wind and the tree tops!The free concert begins at 3 p.m. on October 20 at Daniel Arts Center, on the campus of Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington</div></body>

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Interview with pianist Aaron Likness: Simon’s Rock faculty to give free Charles Ives concert on Sunday, Oct. 20

Great Barrington — Even those who care little for Charles Ives’ music are bound to acknowledge that he is probably the most authentically American composer since Stephen Foster. Aaron Copland thought so, and so do the members of Simon’s Rock music faculty, several of whom, along with guest artists, will give a recital of Ives’ works on Sunday, October 20, at 3 p.m., to celebrate Ives’ 150th birth anniversary.

Interview with pianist Aaron Likness: Simon’s Rock faculty to give free Charles Ives concert on Sunday, Oct. 20

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