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After Ives ... (1991-93) |
for amplified piano, live electronics, optional instruments (flute & string quartet) and tape - c. 25'
Commissioned by Philip Mead with funds provided by the Eastern Arts Association.
First performance: 29 November, 1991, Peterborough Regional College, UK.
Philip Mead solo piano.
First complete performance: 26 January, 1992 on the American Discoveries
series at the Institute for Contemporary Arts, London. Philip Mead, piano,
Stephen Montague, live electronics.
Movements:
Study No. 1: What a friend we have in Jesus
Study No. 2: Songs of Childhood
Study No. 3: Wayfaring Stranger
Study No. 4: Shall we gather at the River?
Study No. 5: The Grand Tour
Study No. 6: Forever J.P.S.
Gertrude Stein once remarked that America was the first country to enter into the 20th Century. Certainly Charles Ives (1874-1954) was the first composer to explore the radical sonorities of the new techniques later associated with the avant-garde of 20th Century Europe and America. Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Henry Cowell, John Cage, Conlon Nancarrow, Harry Partch and others followed.
After Ives... is a series of studies inspired by some of the ideas and techniques of the American experimental composers from Ives to the present. Ives was particu- larly fond of using fragments of hymn tunes, patriotic songs, the 'classics' and popular songs as the textures for his compositions. These six studies use some of Ives's source material as the basis for my work. However, in most cases, I have chosen to use larger chunks of the original tunes than Ives did. The result is that some of my studies have developed more like bizarre arrangements of the whole tune rather than short melodic fragments woven into a larger compositional texture.
Notes © 1991 Stephen Montague