This is first really “authentic” version of Charles Ives’s weird and experimentally advanced “Universe Symphony”, left in sketches and instructions at his death, and here completed by composer Johnny Reinhard. Larry Austin tried a completion for Centaur, but that one is tantalizingly ineffective and not nearly complete, and this one was recorded to better effect by Michael Stern on Col Legno. Now the long-anticipated Reinhard recording has come about, but even it will be left with some serious issues as the record was made with a series of over 120 layered tracks done by 19 musicians (Ives calls for 74 and three conductors). Surely one has a right to ask a question as to how authentic and “Ivesian” this process is, though musically it all seems to come out okay in the end.
This is not your grandmother’s Charles Ives—it is quite unlike anything you have ever heard by this composer, and if there was ever a doubt about old Charlie’s being ahead of his time, this release should dispel it. Calling for (among other things) nine flutists and 14 percussionists, Ives incorporates three orchestras into one: Earth, Heavens, and the “Pulse” orchestra. Quartertones abound, as do many rhythmic complexities and for once—absolutely no references to hymns or popular tunes. There are homemade instruments, improvisation, and even an “overtone machine” (here played by a guitar). The opening 30 minute “Pulse of the Cosmos” for percussion is something Stockhausen would not have been ashamed to pen. This is truly Ives the revolutionary, and as such it should be heard by all who either love the composer or who are interested in the real beginnings of modern music, anticipating the European avant-garde by at least 40 years.
The recording process, as I mentioned, is a bit of a phony one from a puritan standpoint, but it is also well done and in overly-bright and impact-laden sound. I am still taking in this important work, and to be honest I do not know how much I like it yet (Reinhard says that the work in the sketches are really “complete”, unlike some of his predecessors, and that we are hearing the real thing for the first time), feeling that when Ives leaves his sense of genuine Americana he moves more into speculation that has a feeling of being divorced from the roots that made him what he was. But then again, Ives himself moves into a different “universe” with this piece, and we must be open to what and where he is trying to take us, though we may in the end reject the journey.
The players of the American Festival of Microtonal Music Orchestra are—indeed have to be—superb, and this is recommended to all Ivesians, while others not familiar with the composer should definitely start in some other directions, like the Second Symphony, before diving into this.
[Some interesting sidelights: Scriabin also composed a Universe Symphony, and calling for 9 flutists and 14 percussionists sounds a lot like Henry Brant…Ed.]
— Steven Ritter
