Taking him on!
Celeste Hutchins
Proseminar
10 September 2003
Postmodernist Ives
Kramer is correct in
concluding that Ives is not a “pre-postmodernist.” Although Ives aesthetic is clearly very forward thinking,
his intentions are not and he borders on being a romantic. Kramer’s article starts
with a definition of postmodernism “as a recurrent movement within modernism.”
Despite working with a definition that frees postmodernism from time
constraints, it still supposes that a “pre-postmodernist” would embrace current
cultural values. This situation would be exception, especially since music
tends to lag 50 years or more behind the other arts in following
movements. Ives, as a
transcendentalist, is no exception. Cowell, in his biography of Ives, (really a hagiography) Charles Ives
and His Music,
identifies Ives as a follower of Emerson. Cowell writes, “By that time Emerson’s thinking had been shaping
American minds for more than sixty years . . ..” (p. 8) Ives is thus not at the
forefront of philosophical thought, but identifies with the values of a
previous generation.
His song, The Things
Our Fathers Loved
similarly esteems a bygone era. In this case, it idealizes community bands like
the one Ives’ father conducted. It
praises small town life, which, as Kramer points out, was already
disappearing. Thus it represents
“nostalgia for the unattainable,” and promotes nostalgic values. He has similar
romantic yearnings in other works. Cowell describes a short piece for vocalist and piano. Ives notes that four measures of the
piece would sound better played on a string quartet than a piano and a quartet
should be used for those measures if possible. “Four string players are not usually on hand at a song
recital to play just the four measures that sound better with strings than they
do with a piano, but of course from the composer’s point of view they should
be. Ives exclaims: ‘Why can’t a
musical thought be presented as it is born?'” (Cowell p. 10) This idea of spontaneity could have
come directly from one of the romantic poets.
Kramer’s claims as to
Ives’ misogyny are also amply documented. In the song An Election, the vocalist sings,
“some old women: male and female.” That line certainly “conforms to what classical psychoanalysis calls the
masculine protest.” (Kramer p. 183) Cowell approvingly records Ives’ (masculine) protest against Haydn, “Easy
Music for the sissies, for the lilypad ears of Rollo!” (p. 10) Rollo is
explained in a footnote on the same page, “An imaginary gentleman named Rollo
is a familiar of the Ives household – one of those white-livered weaklings who
cannot stand up and receive the full force of dissonance like a man.” Thus Ives’ dissonance stems not from a “[search]
for new presentations . . . in order to impart a stronger sense of the
unpresentable,” (Lyotard) but from “a dread of being feminized.” (Kramer p.
183) This is especially clear when
Ives complains about the New York Symphony Orchestra’s response to Washington’s
Birthday. They asked him to cut out some of the
dissonance. He wrote, “They made
an awful fuss about playing it, and before I got through, this had to be cut
out, and that had to be cut out, and in the end, the score was practically emasculated.” [emphasis mine]
(Cowell p. 68) Dissonance is thus very clearly linked in Ives’ mind to manliness
and virility.
Kramer also describes
flute as phallic. (p. 197) Although this may seem absurd, given the flute’s current association of
femininity, the flute was recently considered a manly instrument. Flutist Polly Moller told me that one
hundred years ago, the flute occupied the cultural position currently held by
the electric guitar. Middle class
white boys learned to play them and tried to master them, much like some of
them now try to sound like commercials for Guitar Center. Therefore, if Ives’ use of the flute is
designed to convey manliness, it is intended to convey the culture of the white
male middle class.
Kramer
goes on to describe Ives as homophobic, based on his misogyny and fear of
emasculation. Ives’ disassociation with Cowell seems to confirm this, however I
disagree with the thesis that misogyny leads directly to homophobia. Sometimes
male homosexuality is presented as a hyper-manliness, for example in the
drawings of Tom of Finland or among the Brown shirts of 1930’s Germany. In any case, Cowell’s writing reveals
no tinges of discomfort as he joins Ives in condemning Rollo and the sissies. However, if “Ives’ obsessive degradation of the feminine” is any sort of
a “response to the social conditions surrounding concert music in the late nineteenth
century,” (Kramer p. 183) then Cowell’s approval could similarly stem from
social conditions surrounding male homosexuality. Perhaps both of them were avoiding the sissy label – applied
to male musicians and gay men alike.
Ives’
desire to avoid “pretty little sugar plum sounds,” (Cowell p. 10) is clearly
evident in his masterwork Symphony No. 4. At one point, a violin plays a romantic line, while another
instrument plinks discordantly in the background, as if mocking it. This is followed by a tumult of
patriotic music, blaring furiously away, finally coming to a climax. Immediately after the climax is a break where the
audience laughs nervously in the recording that I listened to. It is a spectacular and occasionally
overwhelming work. Ives wanted “to
strengthen and give more muscle to the ear, brain, heart, limbs and feat!” [Ives’ emphasis] (Cowell p. 10) His work is strong and can and should
be enjoyed despite his troubling politics.