The Well-Tempered Ear
YOU MUST HEAR THIS: No piece captures the mixed emotions of Memorial Day better than Charles Ives’ “Decoration Day”
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By Jacob Stockinger
Today is Memorial Day, 2022.
It is the annual holiday to remember those who died in military service to the country. (Below are flags placed each year at the tombstones in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.)
If you want to honor survivors and current service members, that would be Veterans Day on Nov. 11.
All weekend long the radio has been playing music and the television has been showing war movies.
A lot of the music is familiar and repeated every year: Sousa marches and Morton Gould suites, elegies by Gustav Mahler, Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein; requiems by Mozart and Fauré; a hymn by John Williams and other movie scores. This year has also seen the playlist include rediscovered works of homage by African-American composers such as William Grant Still.
But only this year did The Ear finally hear — thanks to Wisconsin Public Radio — the one piece that, to his mind, best captures Memorial Day with its blending of consonance and dissonance, its mix of major and major keys, of familiar or “found” music and original music.
It is called, simply, “Decoration Day” and it was composed in 1912 — but not published until 1989 — by the 20th-century iconoclastic and early modernist American composer Charles Ives (below, 1874-1954). It ended up as part of a work the composer called “A Symphony: New England Hollidays.”
See if you agree with The Ear.
Listen to the 8-minute performance by “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band in the YouTube video at the bottom.
Listen to the deep anguish and and sense of loss conveyed in the opening, when a solemn remembrance procession goes to a cemetery to plant flags and lay flowers and wreaths to “decorate” the graves of the fallen.
Listen carefully and you will hear a faint version of “Taps” and ringing church bells in the atmospheric music.
Then as so often happens in reality, life suddenly intrudes in the form of a celebration by a loud marching brass band as it leaves the cemetery for the celebratory marches, picnics and fireworks.
But at the end, the darkness briefly returns. The sense of loss lingers long after the actual death and long after the holiday has been celebrated.
There is no closure.
Just resignation.
Just living with loss.
Here is the background from Wikipedia about how the holiday started as Decoration Day after the Civil War and when it evolved into Memorial Day in 1970: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Day
And here is biographical background, with the actual sources and depictions of “Decoration Day” — just go down the page to compositions and click — about Charles Ives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ives
Did you know and like Charles Ives’ music?
Does “Decoration Day” impress or move you?
What music most embodies Memorial Day for you?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: This coming weekend, pianist John O’Conor returns to play a Beethoven concerto with the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra on Friday night and then a solo recital at Farley’s on Saturday night
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By Jacob Stockinger
The acclaimed Irish pianist and teacher John O’Conor (below) returns to Madison this weekend for two concerts that will close out the season for the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra on Friday night and the Salon Piano Series at Farley’s House of Piano on Saturday night.
For more about John O’Conor‘s impressive background as a performer, a recording artist, a pedagogue and a juror for international piano competitions, go to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_O%27Conor
The first event with O’Conor is an all-Beethoven concert by the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra (below) under the baton of music director Andrew Sewell.
The WCO concert is on Friday night, May 11, at 7:30 p.m. in the Capitol Theater of the Overture Center, 201 State St.
The program features the Overture to “King Stephen”; the Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37, with O’Conor as soloist; and the popular, dramatic and iconoclastic or even revolutionary Symphony No. 5 in C minor.
Such repertoire from the Classical period is one of O’Conor’s strong suits as well as one of the WCO’s. When the two last performed together in 2016 O’Conor and the WCO played works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the Irish early Romantic John Field.
Plus, O’Conor studied Beethoven with the legendary Beethoven interpreter Wilhelm Kempff.
So this concert promises to be a dynamic experience with perfectly paired players.
Tickets are $15-$80 with student tickets available for $10.
For more information about O’Conor and about how to obtain tickets, go to:
https://wisconsinchamberorchestra.org/performances/masterworks-v-3/
SALON PIANO SERIES
Then on Saturday night, May 12, at 7:30 p.m. at Farley’s House of Pianos, located at 6522 Seybold Road, on Madison’s far west side near the West Towne Mall, pianist O’Conor will give a solo recital to close out the Salon Piano Series.
The program includes the Sonata in B minor by Franz Joseph Haydn; Four Impromptus, Op. 90 or D. 899, by Franz Schubert; Nocturnes Nos. 5, 6, and 18 by the Irish composer John Field (below), whose neglected works are a specialty of O’Conor; and the iconic “Moonlight” Sonata in C-sharp minor by Ludwig van Beethoven. (You can hear O’Conor perform the exciting and virtuosic last moment of the “Moonlight” in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
A reception follows the concert.
Tickets are $45 in advance and $50 at the door, with student tickets available for $10.
For more information and to purchase tickets, call (608) 271-2626 or go to these two web sites:
http://salonpianoseries.org/concerts.html
https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2995003
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