Chromâtimelôdtune — Can an Unpublished Work Re-Write History?
As our past historic-musical discussions and debates have shown us thus far, it is incredibly difficult to validate arguments based on information that was told to us through a repetitive series of undergraduate lectures. The purpose of examining primary sources is not necessarily to refute prior knowledge from our music history survey days, but acts as a method by which we can form our own conclusions based on the ‘raw material’. In searching for primary source material related to our next discussion (3/2/21), I found an interesting piece of information discussing the widely respected claim that Arnold Schoenberg created the 12-tone compositional system.
In the December 1, 1962 print of The New York Times, there is a small article in the arts section entitled “Evidence Points to Ives as First 12-Tone User”. Specifically, this article refers to Ives’ Chromâtimelôdtune, which is believed to have been completed in 1923, yet was composed for a few years prior. For the record, the accents within the title are supposed to be satirical. The unnamed author writes, “The discovery was made by Gunther Schuller while he was going through unpublished Ives manuscripts in preparation for the series of concerts entitled ‘American Iconoclasts,’ which he is conducting at Carnegie Recital Hall.”
Performance of Chrômatimelôdtune
Without going on too much of a tangent, I had heard of Gunther Schuller previously from one of his former students at New England Conservatory. This student in particular was tasked with organizing Schuller’s personal score library during the last years of his life. Not knowing this would relate to this blog post (this encounter was four years ago), I remember hearing about the remarkable extent of historical scores and items Schuller had in his possession (specifically a heavily annotated score of Gotterdammerung). As it turns out, some of Schuller’s primary interests involved historical study and analysis of pieces, in addition to his own compositional work.
On July 19, 1963, Schuller presented Ives’ Chromâtimelôdtune in performance at Tanglewood. Whereas the program does not include anything other than the titles of works performed as part of Schuller’s “American Iconoclasts” series (Pg. 462), the August 11, 2012 performance’s program notes include a detailed overview of the composer’s life and why the piece was unpublished, and therefore unknown prior to the 1960s. We recognize Ives today as an experimental composer. An anecdote from prior study was Ives having two marching bands start at opposite sides of town, playing American tunes in separate keys, then having them march towards each other. In this sense, two distinct pieces merged and created a cacophonous sound.
In the aforementioned 2012 program notes, Jan Swafford writes, “When [Ives] wanted to find out how a new technical idea worked, he usually composed or sketched a fully fledged piece with a title and some kind of programmatic idea behind it. Often he left these pieces unfinished, having found out what he needed to know and moved on.” (Swafford, 23). This explains the public’s lack of knowledge about Chromâtimelôdtune; the idea of a 12-tone system was experimental for Ives, yet Schoenberg developed and theorized about it in a more public setting, likely contributing to today’s recognition of him developing the technique.
Though Swafford considers this piece one of many ‘essays’, that vaguely implying a piece for study more than performance, could we argue that it is meaningful music to add to the repertoire? Or should the composer’s original intentions be considered, additionally implying other composers’ unpublished works should not be performed as well? (Yes, I understand this is a leading question). Let me know what you think!
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