{"id":2136,"date":"2021-10-26T15:43:18","date_gmt":"2021-10-26T19:43:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=2136"},"modified":"2021-10-26T15:43:20","modified_gmt":"2021-10-26T19:43:20","slug":"charles-ives-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2021\/10\/charles-ives-america.html","title":{"rendered":"Charles Ives&#8217; America"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-vimeo wp-block-embed-vimeo wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Trailer - Charles Ives\u2019 America\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/625862872?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u201c&#8217;Charles Ives\u2019 America&#8217; is very likely the most important film ever made about American music\u201d \u2013 JoAnn Falletta, Music Director, The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My forthcoming book,\u00a0<strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/josephhorowitz.com\/content.asp?elemento_id=68\">Dvorak\u2019s Prophecy and the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music<\/a><\/em><\/strong>\u00a0(WW Norton, Nov. 25) links to\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/josephhorowitz.com\/content.asp?elemento_id=70\">six documentary films.<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of these, \u201cCharles Ives\u2019 America\u201d attempts a landmark feat of advocacy. It argues that Ives not only deserves to be situated at the center of American classical music, but that he should become as generally well-known and esteemed as such American icons as Herman Melville and Walt Whitman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The film strives to overcome the notion that Ives is esoteric &#8212; not readily approachable. It approaches Ives through his words and music, and also the Civil War, the Transcendentalists, and his Connecticut porch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My collaborator Peter Bogdanoff has rendered such music as \u201cThe Housatonic at Stockbridge\u201d and \u201cThe Alcotts\u201d (both included in their entirety) with spellbinding visual panache. For &#8220;The &#8216;St. Gaudens&#8217; in Boston Common&#8221; he has done more than that: in combination with James Sinclair\u2019s inspired commentary, Peter has taken the most elusive of Ives\u2019s signature compositions and fashioned a visual rendering that will electrify first-time listeners. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If any music seals Ives\u2019 pertinence today, it is this 1911 \u201cBlack March\u201d memorializing\u00a0Colonel Robert Gould Shaw\u2019s  Black Civil War regiment as famously depicted by Augustus Saint-Gaudens\u2019 Boston Common bas-relief, with its proud Black faces and striding Black bodies. As I write in\u00a0<em>Dvorak\u2019s Prophecy<\/em>, \u201cIves\u2019s ghost-dirge is suffused with weary echoes of Civil War songs, plantation songs, minstrel songs: a fog of memory, a dream distillation whose hypnotic tread and consecrating \u2018Amen\u2019 close celebrate an act of stoic fortitude.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In addition to Peter Bogdanoff and Jim Sinclair, my collaborators on the Ives film include the music historians Peter Burkholder and Judith Tick and two peerless Ives performers: the pianist Steven Mayer and the baritone William Sharp (accompanied by Paul Sanchez).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Information on all six films is posted <a href=\"http:\/\/josephhorowitz.com\/content.asp?elemento_id=70\"><strong>here<\/strong> <\/a>and <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.naxos.com\/ECard\/2021\/Dvorak-Prophecy\/index.html\">here. <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201c&#8217;Charles Ives\u2019 America&#8217; is very likely the most important film ever made about American music\u201d \u2013 JoAnn Falletta, Music Director, The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra My forthcoming book,\u00a0Dvorak\u2019s Prophecy and the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music\u00a0(WW Norton, Nov. 25) links to\u00a0six documentary films.\u00a0 Of these, \u201cCharles Ives\u2019 America\u201d attempts a landmark feat of advocacy. It [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2136","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-ys","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2136"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2140,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2136\/revisions\/2140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}