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Songs by Charles Ives

1992 | Vocal

(0 Ratings)

Album Favorite

"Ives's 114 Songs has been a major source of inspiration for me (particularly for my 69 Love Songs and 50 Song Memoir). But that wasn't all he wrote: from 1887 to 1926 Ives wrote 193 songs, and here they all are on six CDs: lullabies, Christmas carols, German operetta emulations, mortal laments, parlor ballads, cowboy dirges, and even election-day commentary on 'Nov. 2, 1920 (An Election)', and 'Vote for Names! Names! Names!', of which Ives says, ""The [three] pianos represent three political candidates, each uttering his own 'hot air slogan'; the singer represents the disillusioned voter."" The texts come 80% from poets (Keats, Kipling, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and many anonymous sources) and 20% from Ives himself, whose aw-shucks Americana (as on 'Slugging A Vampire') and gleefully jarring harmonies keep the surprises genuinely surprising. "

Source

Jr Oliver Wendell Holmes

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Pragmatism, and the Jurisprudence of Agon: Aesthetic Dissent and the Common Law

Lotto Land (1996)

Good Day for a Hanging (1959)

But Not for Me (1959)

Stephin Merritt recommended Songs by Charles Ives in Music (curated)

The Dante Chamber

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