Conversation with the performer
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Matthew Gold – A couple of days after Marc Peloquin’s performance of Charles Ives’s “Concord Sonata” we met for this discussion. Marc had many thoughts and insights on the piece and the conversation ranged widely in its scope. As we talked he illustrated his points at the piano with excerpts from the piece. This was Marc’s first performance of the work, and as we began, he talked about how he felt that each subsequent performance of it would be different.

Marc Peloquin – I think each performance would be unique which is in line with the philosophy of Ives in regards to this piece. It is not a fixed composition. He paid for this piece to be published in its first edition. He wanted to circulate the piece while at the same time he had other ideas for it. If you are playing a passage and something comes to mind, go with it. It is quite radical that so early in the century he was thinking in those terms. The notes are fixed, whatever choices you make, whatever edition you are using. But the feeling of the piece is flexible.

For instance the “Emerson,” the first movement, is really the biggest movement. There are very few markings, tempo and such. And it feels more like reading a story than playing the piano. The way Ives unifies the sonata so that it is one experience is through his use of a set of motives that he brings out. They start from the very beginning. One of the most important, the “human faith motive,” starts in the very beginning. Here we also get the Beethoven Fifth Symphony reference. Ives talked about how Beethoven was very important to the Transcendentalists. You hear, once you have experienced the whole piece, that that motive is certainly a unifying motive. Sometimes people refer to that motive as faith knocking on the door. I think Ives thought of it as an opportunity for a higher experience. Maybe it was the insistence of the motive.

The human faith motive does contain that interval, the major 3rd, from the Beethoven. In the “Hawthorne” movement he makes reference to some hymns which both open with the major 3rd as well. It is a classical motive with which he is finding parallels in the vernacular, in the hymns. The human faith melody is his motive. It is a beautiful moment when you arrive at the end of the piece and you hear it for the first time in its entirety. In this performance it was performed on flute.

MG – We discussed Emerson’s oratorical style as an influence on the piece.

MP – Ives talks about how it is like the prose of Emerson, less metrical and tuneful, and more distant than the poetry. The score indicates, “quite slowly and as a song, but not too evenly.” Plays musical example 1

The poetry is represented in a previous section, marked, “quite fast, but slower than the preceding passage.” Ex. 2

There are often sudden shifts of mood. There is a climax where it becomes more rhapsodic. Ex. 3

MG – We talked about interpretation and the role of the performer.

MP – It is a highly interpretive piece. Here is the basic material, now do something with it. There are inconsistencies in the score, such as with accidentals. There are pages lacking bar lines. This suggests to me that the performer has to find the inner rhythm. I think that is a deliberate omission which gives the performer more of a say. I would imagine that probably he [Ives] would hear something in each performance. There is this story that John Kirkpatrick, who did the first full performance of the Concord Sonata, went to Ives to play for him. He sat down for about a minute and started playing, and Ives takes him off the bench and just starts talking about the Concord Sonata. He had no critiques, he just talked and played, as though he wanted to explain it and experience it. It seems that Ives was not interested in, “bring this note out or I want to hear this,” type of comments. Nor do I get the sense that he would say, “this is how it should be played.” Because it was written so early in the twentieth century we can see how later composers picked up on this idea of the participation of the performer. It is not aleatoric, the notes are all there. But at the same time it is an interpreter’s piece. Someone asked me if it is a virtuoso piece, and I said, “I don’t really know how to answer that.” I mean you need strong fingers, but it is almost more like acting. It is more like telling stories. And I discovered that it is the motives that give you this ability. They recur like a story line. Or like, with Emerson, a sermon.

Even “The Alcotts,” which is really the most conventional movement in terms of its metric regularity and harmony. I think the psychology of the piece is really very clear. I think at that point, when you reach “The Alcotts” it is time to express, it is time to sing. We have had this grand sermon of “Emerson,” and the “Hawthorne,” which is the phantasmal piece. It is schizophrenic, like Schumann. So when you get to “Alcotts” it’s just where you need to be. And it sets the stage for “Thoreau.”

“ Thoreau” is the reflective movement, and probably the most beautiful to me. I found the experience of playing it to be an enjoyment of the luxury of sound, and the pacing, which I took rather slow. Like Thoreau himself it is very philosophical but very grounded.

MG – Among other things, the “Concord” is known for its musical borrowings from hymns, popular music, and of course Beethoven.

MP – In “Thoreau” he introduces a new motive that we haven’t heard before based on Stephen Foster, from Massa’s in De Cold Ground. And we just get a hint of it. Ex. 4

Now we hear this. Ex. 5 That’s really the direct quote, and it comes from the part of the chorus that says, “Down in the Corn Field.” He refers somewhere in the preface from the essays to a line of Thoreau, “I grew in those seasons like corn in the night.” Maybe just that phrase suggested something to him, and that is why he incorporated that motive. It’s more of a motive than a quotation. It is, I believe one of the ones that he admitted to. This and the Beethoven Fifth Symphony.

I don’t think he admitted to these hymn quotations in the “Hawthorne,” but it has been written that there are two hymns that are often referred to – Martyn and Missionary Chant that both use the major third. Maybe that is why he used them. When you hear the hymns in “Hawthorne,” they come after a very fast, very loud section. The first time you hear the hymn, he says something like, “the hymn heard over a distant hill after a heavy storm.” It reminds me of other pieces of his in which sounds come over a pond or appear after a storm. The sound is not completely clear but is, rather, a water sound.

In “Hawthorne” the first time you hear it is after this very big… Ex.6(Martyn)…and then it immediately goes back into “Hawthorne.”

Then after the next big section. Ex. 7 (Martyn)

So you get this second hymn that comes after. It’s like he creates a storm for it to follow.

You get the second hymn, the storm, and then he brings in that circus band stuff. Ex.8

For this he is quoting his own work, the Country Band March.

So in the Concord, he is getting in the hymns and the band music, the American music. This is the music that America has created. This is what he is drawing on, along with the Beethoven Fifth Symphony.

MG – How is the “Fifth” used?

MP – I will play the beginning of the Sonata. You hear the Fifth motive for the first time in the second line. Ex. 9 (So there you heard it in the bass.)
Very much like Beethoven, in the beginning he is giving us a lot of motives, a lot of information that he is going to use throughout the piece. In that way it has this classical sense.

Near the end of “Hawthorne.” Ex.10

At the end of “Hawthorne,” it almost has the feeling of a coda. You’ve gone through this wild, wild movement and you are coming to the end. The Fifth Symphony comes back. Ex. 11 I see it as a bridge into this very fast, tumultuous ending. It leaves you breathless at the end.

The Beethoven appears at one point in the Alcotts in a very insistent form. Ex. 12

Also things like – Ex. 13 – taking just the rhythm of that.

Another tune he incorporates in this movement is Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean, which I guess was one of his favorites. So here at the end of “Hawthorne” he’s pounding out Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean. Ex. 14 Maybe because of this very tumultuous, chromatic dissonance, he puts in these melodies and tunes, maybe for something to hold on to. But I think more than that, there is some philosophical reason he had. He found that this was the right place to put this tune. When the piece was first premiered, it was both praised and criticized. And some of the critique, for instance by Elliot Carter, was that he was using these motives, some of them direct quotations of pieces. Is it a camouflage for a lack of structure, of understanding? I don’t agree, and in fact I believe Carter later changed his mind on that. Having played it now, I think that all of the motives are in place. I don’t sense that there is anything that is added just for the sake of eccentricity or to give the audience something to recognize.

MG – What issues are involved in performing this work?

MP – If someone said, “what are the requirements to play this piece?” Well, I think you have to really like those sudden shifts. And like an actor you have to be able to convey different emotions. Because I think there is an emotional level to the piece. I think that to bring it across as a “major modern work” is just not enough.

The “Emerson” is kind of like the sermon. It is the most prosaic, the most literary, even musically in the counterpoint and the motives. The “Hawthorne” is more like a tale and very moody. This is where I compare him to Schumann with those shifts that I find so exciting. And “The Alcotts” has a certain nostalgic quality just by itself, but also, when I get there, I personally experience a kind of reflective nostalgia within the piece. It starts out with… Ex.15. So we hear the Beethoven, some of the hymn. It refers back to “Hawthorne” but now in a completely different mood.

Then there is the section – Ex. 16 – which for me is evocative of Americana. I am seeing someone on the porch, in the deep south perhaps. There is just something evocative, whatever actually comes to mind there. And I think it gives the listener room for some of that imagery, which is different from what we had in “Hawthorne.”

Each movement is very different. They are all referring to each other, so they are cyclical. Some compare it to the Hammerklavier Sonata [Beethoven], but it is really like later pieces that are more cyclical, like Liszt, where things are coming back throughout the piece. The four movements are four very different experiences. But the way they go from one to another, I think, is emotionally and psychologically very tight.

It was interesting to hear reactions from people, because I think it is an individual experience. One person even commented that she found the piece very long, which it is. Of course the length is part of the experience. My question, because this concert was just the one piece, what would I do if I were playing other pieces? What could go with it? I find that it takes so much room to experience. To me it can be a whole concert even though lengthwise it is not enough. Originally I had a few ideas. I thought maybe having some text read, which I am not sure about. Perhaps you could do some songs before. Not necessarily songs that refer directly to this, but something that has its own importance but is related to the Concord.

Memorization is an issue I had to deal with. Do you play it from memory, do you play it from the music? Right now it still feels like I am opening a book and telling a story. I have a relationship with the score, which may change, I don’t know. But it should be based on the way you want to convey the piece, not on some requirement of memorization. There are some pieces, like the Rzewski North American Ballads for which I can’t use the score. It just distracts from the experience. So that is part of the consideration. I find it to be such a literary sort of piece, it almost happens to be a piano piece. It is ideas, thoughts, and feelings, and it requires a rich palette of articulations and sounds to make it an experience.

MG – The “Concord” also rather enigmatically contains passages for viola and flute. How did you deal with this?

MP – In this performance I used a viola at the end of “Emerson.” It is a very short passage, but it is the only place in the movement where he refers to another instrument, so I decided to do it, offstage. And at the end of “Thoreau” I had the offstage flute. Maybe next time I will not indicate that it is going to happen. It might be interesting to leave the viola and flute off the program [the printed program] so that people don’t know it is coming. Then all of a sudden you hear this viola. With the flute, you are almost 45 minutes into the piece before it enters, and I was thinking maybe people thought she didn’t show up, or that she forgot her cue.

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