Ravinia 2024 Issue 5

pursuits before poetry drew him in to the artist’s life. His first collection of verses appeared in 1821, and by the middle of the decade Heine’s name had become a household word. Convert- ing to Christianity in 1825 brought Heine legal German citizenship. His revolutionary political views, however, ultimately forced him to leave his homeland for France. Heine continued to write vociferously, despite the fact that paralysis confined him to bed for the last eight years of his life. The directness and unaffected nature of his verses offered a bounte- ous source for 19th-century songwriters. This same simplicity earned many poems an almost folk-like status among German-speakers. Robert Schumann developed impeccable liter- ary tastes through early reading in his father’s bookstore, editorial responsibilities with the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik , and his enduring be- lief in Romantic musical-poeticism. Quite natu- rally, Schumann turned to Heine’s incomparable Heinrich Heine by Moritz Daniel Oppenheim (1831) Robert Schumann verses during his “miraculous year of song” in 1840, completing the first of his four discrete song cycles—titling it with the literal German word for “song cycle,” Liederkreis —on Febru- ary 24. Distinct from the Frauenliebe und -leben (Woman’s Love and Life), op. 42, and Dichterli- ebe (Poet’s Love), op. 48, which followed within months, the overall unity of Liederkreis , op. 24, is derived more from a single poetic source than from any narrative or emotional sequence. CHARLES IVES (1874–1954) Five songs Ives bore the entire expense of publishing his first major collection of music—the 114 Songs for voice and piano (1922). His composition- al output had slowed to a trickle after the end of World War I and a serious heart attack four years earlier. By profession an insurance ex- ecutive, Ives spent many years revising and expanding his own music and spared no ex- pense—financial or personal—in championing the American avant-garde. Originally, he set out to “Select & correct” 20 to 30 songs in 1920, but his project expanded almost four-fold. The enlarged collection reflected Ives’s progression as a song composer in reverse order. His most recent compositions (1921) came first, while the final work “Slow March” represents the work of a 14-year-old. G. Shirmer issued the 114 Songs free of charge and copyright-free. A famous “Postface” essay contains Ives’s sprawling rationale for issuing these songs: “Some have written a book for money; I have not. Some for fame; I have not. Some for love; I have not. Some for kindlings; I have not. I have not written a book for any of those reasons or for all of them together. In fact, gentle borrower, I have not written a book at all!—I have merely cleaned house.” This substantial volume lacks any coherence of unity. Rather, it is a mishmash of dramatic and tender sentiments, foreign and folk texts, original vocal creations and tran- scriptions from instrumental works, sacred and profane situations, acerbic dissonance and utter simplicity. “The World’s Highway” belongs to a collection of 8 Sentimental Ballads within the 114 Songs . Ives did not identify the text’s author in the index or on the song itself, but the poetry be- longs to Harmony Twitchell, his future wife who shared the poem in 1906 during their courtship. A wanderer (Harmony?) travels the world’s highway, witnessing both its joyous and horrific moments, but grows weary and sad. One day, a small voice (Charles?) calls from a small gar- den of sweet content. The wanderer leaves the world’s highway and enters the garden. Ives composed “Feldeinsamkeit” (In Summer Fields) around 1897–98 as a recital piece for John C. Griggs, a baritone and choirmaster at Center Church in New Haven, CT, whose wide-ranging intellectual interests—studies in literature, phi- losophy, and physics, as well as a doctoral degree in musicology from the University of Leipzig— provided an open-minded environment for Ives’s musical experimentation. Decades later, in January 1930, Ives drafted a letter of gratitude to Griggs: “You didn’t try to superimpose any law on me, or admonish me, or advise me, or boss me, or say very much—but there you were and there you are now.” These idyllic verses, also set by Johannes Brahms, find the singer lying in a grassy field, surrounded by woods and staring at the vast heaven above, as clouds silently drift through the deep blue sky. Ives published the text in both German and English (translation by H.C. Chapman). Soprano Maralin Dice and pi- anist Pauline Wenger gave the first document- ed performance on November 12, 1946, at the University of California, Los Angeles. The poet Hermann Ludwig Allmers (1821–1902) was born into a well-respected, wealthy family in Rechtenfleth, Lower Saxony, where he lived as a gentleman farmer, writer, educator, and ad- vocate of enlightened Christianity. The two contrasting and seemingly unrelated songs known as Memories (1897) employ Ives’s own texts. The boisterous opening (“Very Pleas- ant”) recounts the anticipation surrounding the raising of the curtain at an opera house, replete with excited whistling and shushing. “Curtain!” The mood changes for a 19th-century sentimen- tal salon song (“Rather Sad”), remembering a tune Ives heard his uncle hum from morning throughout the day. Pianist T. Carl Whitmer accompanied contralto Alta Schultz in the first documented performance of Memories on April 29, 1949, in Pittsburgh, PA. Anne Timoney Collins (1885–1979) was born in Illinois, the oldest of Frank and Margaret Fox Timoney’s five children. She later moved to Danville, KY—her mother’s birthplace—where Charles Ives RAVINIAMAGAZINE • AUGUST 19 – SEPTEMBER 1, 2024 64