Piano Sonata No. 1 (Ives)

The Piano Sonata No. 1, also called the First Piano Sonata, is a work for solo piano by the American composer Charles Ives (1874–1954). It is catalogued as S. 87.^[1] Its musical material was largely written between 1901 and 1909 and draws on the Protestant hymn tunes, ragtime, and revival-meeting music of Ives's New England upbringing.^[2:1] The sonata is cast in five movements and, in recorded performances, runs from roughly 30 to 40 minutes.^[3]

The work alternates reflective, hymn-derived movements with two boisterous ragtime scherzos (fast, playful movements). The pianist and Ives scholar John Kirkpatrick read the sonata as loosely programmatic — that is, as depicting an implied story — tracing a family narrative across a five-part arch, with recurring hymn quotations binding the movements together.^[4:1]

Long overshadowed by Ives's better-known Piano Sonata No. 2, the "Concord" Sonata, the First Sonata waited four decades for a complete public hearing. The pianist William Masselos gave that premiere in New York City on February 17, 1949, and went on to become the work's first recording artist and one of its editors.^[5:1]

Composition

Most of the sonata's material was composed between 1901 and 1909, the period in which Ives, then working in the insurance business in New York, produced much of his mature music away from public performance.^[2:1] Ives did not leave the piece in a single finished state at that time. The musicologist J. Peter Burkholder dates the sonata's assembly and revision into its final form to roughly 1915–16 and again to about 1921.^[6:1] The two datings are not in conflict: the earlier span covers the composition of the underlying material, while the later dates mark when Ives compiled and reworked that material into the sonata as it is now known.

Two of the sonata's movements grew directly out of Ives's earlier set of Four Ragtime Dances. Ives incorporated three of the dances into the sonata's two scherzo movements and added to the fourth movement a newly composed passage of especially intense ragtime rhythms; he later reorchestrated material from the second scherzo, titled "In the Inn," for a movement of his A Set of Pieces for Theatre or Chamber Orchestra.^[7:1] The hymn material includes gospel songs such as "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" and "Bringing in the Sheaves."^[2:1]

Structure

The sonata is in five movements, the second and fourth of which each divide into two linked sections (labeled a and b). The tempo markings of the movements are as follows.^[6:1]

Burkholder describes the underlying design as follows: the first and third movements are in cumulative form — an Ives procedure in which a theme is stated in full only near the end, after being built up from fragments — on hymn-tune themes; the second and fourth movements together form a set of four hymn variations infused with ragtime rhythms; and the finale is a free fantasy.^[6:1]

Interpretation

John Kirkpatrick, who did much to establish Ives's piano music in performance, offered a programmatic reading of the sonata. In his account the family is together in the first and fifth movements, the boy is "sowing his oats" in the ragtime second and fourth movements, and the third movement conveys parental anxiety; the hymns quoted in each movement reinforce this program and shape the whole as a large five-part arch form. This reading, reported in the notes to a recording on Albany Records, also characterizes the sonata as a landmark of American piano literature that is nonetheless less widely known than the Concord Sonata.^[4:1]

Premiere, publication, and recordings

The sonata received its first complete public performance from William Masselos in New York City on February 17, 1949, roughly four decades after its material was composed.^[5:1] Masselos also made early commercial recordings of the work and prepared a performing edition. The published score, issued by Peer International (later Peermusic), carries an introduction by Masselos along with corrections by John Buchanan and Jerry Bramblett.^[5]

The sonata has since been recorded by a number of pianists. Timings vary considerably between interpreters, with recorded performances ranging from about 31 to 42 minutes.^[3]