Steve Schwartz <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>As to "gratuitous clarity," I don't know what to make of that.  For my
>money, you can't be too clear, but that may be my Midwestern thriftiness
>coming through:  I've *paid* for all those lines, damnit!  I want to hear
>them.

Because Ives derived so much of his inspiration from the real world
(indeed, it's hard to imagine a basically secular composer who was less
absolutist that the demon insurance theoretician), his works generally -
well:  work - best when they're viewed as romanticised sound landscapes
rather than pure music...  in this context, gratuitous clarity is
clarifying things which should be left confused:  the confusion of noises
that we might have heard on Hanover St North, at the End of a Tragic Day.
This romanticised representation (or is it romanticised?...  start
listening to the confusion of sounds which surround you right now; & count
the number you weren't hearing clearly until i asked you to listen for
them) becomes the set-up for the big hymn which makes the People into a
single powerful Voice Arise; so a quest for detail within the confusion is
less important than - & probably counterproductive to - creating the sense
of sonic confusion which surrounds it.

(By the way:  i never meant to suggest that von Dohnanyi's approach
homogenised Ives; or that he took a homogenic approach to his conducting...
like Steve, i generally enjoy this conductor because - as with the
distinctly less fashionable Wit - he often gives the impression that he's
never heard a bar of the music he's playing in his life; & is therefore
forced to come up with his own solution to the score's conceptual problems.
My objection was only that _this_ solution wasn't the most insightful one
he's ever done)

All the best,
Robert Clements <[log in to unmask]>