Music 271: 4/11/07 II: Claude Debussy (1862-1918): Evolving approach to musical composition: tonality and form: • Short and simple motives, developed in a harmonically ambiguous environment • 20th century approach to harmony and melody III: Charles Ives (1874-1954): A: Organization of Crawford’s discussion: • Prologue - recap about the sacrilization of art music in America • Biography of Ives - profound impact of his father on his life (father died when Ives was 19) • Art Songs - • Instrumental Music - • Most celebrated American composer of art music • Very complicated individual (emotionally and psychologically) • Life insurance salesman - Estate planning is accredited to him • Compositional activities only took up about 20 years of his life • Rest of his life spent encouraging performance of his works and supporting other younger composers • Leonard Bernstein helped draw public attention to the composers works • B: Distinctive characteristics of Ives: • Ongoing and continuous memorial to this father (role of memory) C: His father’s influence: • George Edward Ives • Youngest band master in the Civil War • Experimentalist in music • 1894 - death of G.E. Ives: very traumatic for Charles Ives • Came to idealize his father D: Song: “The Things Our Fathers Loved”: • Most of the melody is taken from one 19th century piece or another E: “The Housatonic at Stockbridge”: The Three Places in New England: two treatments: