Universe Symphony (Ives)

The Universe Symphony is an unfinished work by American classical music composer Charles Ives.

The date of composition is unknown, but he probably worked on it periodically between 1911 and 1928. Intended to be a "spatial" composition for two or more orchestras, it is in three sections:

* Part 1, "Past: Formation of the waters and mountains"
* Part 2, "Present: Earth, evolution in nature and humanity"
* Part 3, "Future: Heaven, the rise of all to the Spiritual".

He conceived the idea during the autumn of 1915 while he was staying in the Adirondacks of New York State. He left it alone until 1923, when he returned to working on it. Although he spent many years on it, many of the sketches are missing. During the 1990s there were three separate performing versions assembled, including a version by David Gray Porter (1993, Section A plus the Coda and part of a first Prelude only), Larry Austin (1994), and J. Reinhard (1996).

It is a complex work, using 20 independent musical lines; each moves in a separate meter, only coinciding on downbeats eight seconds apart. Ives said of it: " [it] is a striving to ... trace with tonal imprints the vastness, the evolution of all life ... from the great roots of life to the spiritual eternities, from the great inknown to the great unknown."

Pages are missing or were never written.

The first part (AKA "Section A") was derived from a sketch of 1915 for a piece called "The Earth and the Heavens" or "The Earth and the Firmament," with one group of instruments representing the Earth and another group representing the Heavens, and with a group of percussion instruments reprenting the eternal pulse of the universe underlying both. This is the most complete large fragment of the piece, along with a Coda for the complete movement written in a similar style that shares the same four main "Earth-themes" of Section A. The main "sky-theme" is the only theme built upon a quotation, the hymn-tune "Bethany" ("Nearer My God to Thee," the same hymn-tune used as the basis for the Finale of his Fourth Symphony.)

There were also to be three Preludes to the Symphony, but none were completed. The most complete is the first Prelude, but again this was not completed, left only in the form of an outline-sketch with musical examples. For more information see James B. Sinclair's "Descriptive Catalogue" of Ives's music and manuscripts (1999).

ource

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* J. Peter Burkholder. "Charles Ives", "Grove Music Online", ed. L. Macy (accessed May 1 2005), [http://www.grovemusic.com/ grovemusic.com] (subscription access).