January

Jan 1 Jan 2 Jan 4 Jan 6 Jan 8
Jan 9 Jan 10 Jan 12 Jan 14 Jan 16
Jan 17 Jan 18 Jan 19 Jan 20 Jan 23
Jan 25 Jan 26 Jan 28 Jan 29 Jan 31

 

  1893 Date on manuscript: song Canon [I]
  1894 William E. Ashmall turns down Variations on "America" for publication and returns the manuscript
  1918 MS date ("1917"): Premonitions (mvt. iii of Set No. 3), sketch (or ?orchestration), "120 E. 22"
  1921 First printing: Sonata No. 2 for Piano: Concord, Mass.; Redding, Conn., by the author
  1929 First publication: Symphony No. 4, mvt. ii, in New Music
  1932 First publication: The Fourth of July (mvt. iii of "Holidays Symphony"), Berlin: Edition Adler; San Francisco: New Music, Orchestra Series; Lincoln, the Great Commoner, San Francisco: New Music, Orchestra Series; Set for Theatre Orchestra, San Francisco: New Music (under title "A Set of Pieces for Theater or Chamber Orchestra")
  1952 First recording: songs At Parting, At Sea, A Christmas Carol, Feldeinsamkeit/In Summer Fields, Ich grolle nicht, A Night Thought, Tolerance, Walt Whitman, and When stars are in the quiet skies (Jacqueline Greissle [S] and Josef Wolman [pf]) for SPA Records; issued 1953)
Jan 1 1902 Date on manuscript: song Ilmenau "copied at Povert[y Flat]"
  1908 Date on manuscript: Sonata No. 1 for Piano, mvt. v, "ended at 125 Woodland St., Hartford" (Conn.)
  1911 Date on manuscript: String Quartet No. 2, mvt. ii, sketch, "good place to stop, not end!"
Jan 2 1850 Birth of Ives’s mother Mary Parmelee at Danbury, Conn. Mary Parmelee is (de facto) the subject of Ives’s song Songs my mother taught me.
Jan 4 1896 Date on manuscript: band March "Omega Lambda Chi"
  1903 Date on manuscript: song The Sea of Sleep "[composed] in Danbury"
Jan 6 1931 Premiere: piano Four Transcriptions from "Emerson", No. 1 (Oscar Ziegler [pf]), at New School, New York City
Jan 8 1792 Birth of hymn tune composer Lowell Mason at Medfield, Mass. Mason's tunes used by Ives include: Antioch ("Joy to the World"; Symphony No. 4, mvt. iii)  

Bethany ("Nearer my God to Thee"; Decoration Day; Symphony No. 4, mvt. i; String Quartet No. 2, mvt. iii; songs Down East, Evening)  

Fountain ("There is a fountain filled with blood"; Symphony No. 3, mvt. ii; songs General Booth, West London)  

Hamburg ("When I survey the wondrous cross"; Symphony No. 2, mvt. ii)  

Missionary Hymn ("From Greenland’s icy mountains"; Symphony No. 4, mvt. iii; String Quartet No. 1, mvt. i) 

Naomi ("Now from the altar of my heart"; Symphony No. 3, mvt. ii)  

Olivet ("My faith looks up to Thee"; Largo cantabile: Hymn [mvt. i of A Set of Three Short Pieces]; song Hymn)  

Watchman ("Watchman, tell us of the night"; Symphony No. 4, mvt. iii; Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano, mvt. iii; song Watchman)  

Work Song ("Work, for the night is coming"; Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano, mvts. ii & iii)
Jan 9 1995 First recording: choral Easter Carol (BBC Singers, cond. by Stephen Cleobury; issued in 1996 by Collins Classics)
Jan 10 1931 Premiere: Orchestral Set No. 1: Three Places in New England (Chamber Orchestra of Boston, cond. by Nicolas Slonimsky), at Town Hall, New York City—Ives is present.
Jan 12 1902 Premiere: lost Hymn-Anthem at Central Presbyterian Church (developed into Set for Theatre Orchestra, mvt. iii "In the Night")
  1914 Issue of Independent with parts of Vachel Lindsay’s poem "General Booth." Ives set it as the song General Booth Enters into Heaven.
  1921 Maurice Morris’s very short poem "Ann Street" appears in New York Herald. Ives set it as the song Ann Street.
Jan 14 1741: Birth of American soldier Benedict Arnold (and turncoat spy) at Norwich, Conn. Ives contemplated composing an opera to be called "Benedict Arnold" (or "Major John Andre") and seems to have produced for it Overture and March "1776" and possibly "Country Band" March.
  1940 Premiere: Sonata No. 4 for Violin and Piano (Eudice Shapiro [vn] and Irene Jacobi [pf]), at Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Jan 16 1888 Premiere: Holiday Quickstep (theater orchestra, cond. by George E. Ives), at Taylor’s Opera House, Danbury, Conn.
  1901 Date on manuscript: Symphony No. 2, mvt. ii, full score "finished"
Jan 17 1924 Premiere: song Charlie Rutlage (Leon Ryder-Maxwell [Bar] and Clara del Marmol [pf]), at H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, New Orleans
  1967 First recording: instrumentally accompanied songs A Lecture, New River, Allegretto sombreoso: The Incantation [all from Set No. 1], The Last Reader [mvt. i of Set No. 9], Adagio sostenuto: At Sea and Luck and Work [both from Set No. 3] (William Feuerstein [Bar], Adrienne Albert [Mez], Columbia Orchestra, cond. by Gregg Smith; issued in 1969 by Columbia Records)
Jan 18 1921 Copies of Sonata No. 2 for Piano: Concord, Mass. "ready for shipment" by G. Schirmer
  1940 Premiere: songs He Is There! and In the Alley (Mary B. Holley [S] and Sarane Ives [pf]), in a concert of Ives’s music at "Oheyahtah," Danbury, Conn.
  1944 Premiere: songs A Farewell to Land, Song for Harvest Season, and Tolerance (Alice Duschak [S] and Dimitri Mitropoulos [pf]), at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Minn.
Jan 19 1925 Date on manuscript: song A Sea Dirge, ink copy
Jan 20 1919: Diary: "Charlie finishing up Prologue [to Essays Before a Sonata]." The Essays are Ives’s fascinating rumination on the writing and soul of Concord’s transcendentalist writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bronson Alcott (and family), and Henry David Thoreau; the "sonata" of the title is one of Ives’s masterpieces, Sonata No. 2 for Piano: Concord, Mass.
  1939 John Kirkpatrick plays Sonata No. 2 for Piano: Concord, Mass., at Town Hall, New York City (Lawrence Gilman’s review: "the greatest music composed by an American.") [for the actual premiere, see Nov 28, 1938]
Jan 23 1954 Harmony Ives, Carl Ruggles, and Edgard Varèse hear Sonata No. 2 for Piano: Concord, Mass. (John Kirkpatrick, pf) at Town Hall, New York City
Jan 25 1914 Birth of conductor William Strickland at Defiance, Ohio. Strickland conducted the first recordings of Holidays Symphony, Robert Browning Overture, and The Pond.
  1929 Death of Mrs. George E. Ives (Mary Parmelee; Ives’s mother), 79, at Danbury, Conn. Ives’s songs Immortality and Like a Sick Eagle deal with the subject of death.
Jan 26 1918 Ives (pf) and Reber Johnson (vn, concertmaster of the New York Symphony) play Mozart sonatas for soldiers at Camp Upton (Yaphank, Long Island)
Jan 28 1919 Date on manuscript: song To Edith, adapted (in honor of Ives’s adopted daughter)
  1994 Premiere: Universe Symphony [Austin realization] (Cincinnati Philharmonic Orchestra with the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music Percussion Ensemble and Chamber Choir, cond. by Gerhard Samuel and four assisting conductors), at the College-Conservatory of Music, Cincinnati, Ohio
Jan 29 1843 Birth of American president William McKinley at Niles, Ohio. Ives’s March "Intercollegiate," with "Annie Lisle" was played by the US Marine Band in Washington, DC at McKinley’s inauguration in 1897; Ives composed his song William Will to support the Republican presidential campaign of William McKinley.
  1927 Premiere: Symphony No. 4, mvts. i & ii (members of the NY Philharmonic, cond. by Eugene Goossens), at Town Hall, New York City
  1994 First recording: Universe Symphony [Austin realization] (Cincinnati Philharmonia Orchestra with the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music Percussion Ensemble, cond. by Gerhard Samuel; issued in 1994 by Centaur Records)
Jan 31 1967 Premiere: Gong on the Hook and Ladder [orchestral version] (New York Philharmonic, cond. by Leonard Bernstein; issued in 1972 by Columbia Records)