Charles Ives grew up using harmonies, rhythms and conceptions unprecedented in the history of music. Prophetic of much to come, Ives still held on to the sensibilities of the Romantic era. The folksy and intimate Third Symphony, the last of his symphonies to be laid out in more or less traditional form and tonal language, is based on hymn-tunes. Washington’s Birthday, a work from Ives’s maturity, is a portrait of a New England winter in a soft web of dissonant harmonies. Visionary works, The Unanswered Question and Central Park in the Dark both use a collage technique, piling one piece of music in one style on top of another piece of music in a different style. “Country Band” March is a wry, rowdy evocation of the amateur bands of Ives’s Danbury youth. The slow march 1776 is an overture for a Revolutionary-era opera that was never completed.
