March

Mar 1 Mar 2 Mar 3 Mar 4 Mar 5
Mar 9 Mar 11 Mar 12 Mar 13 Mar 15
Mar 16 Mar 17 Mar 18 Mar 19 Mar 20
Mar 21 Mar 22 Mar 23 Mar 25 Mar 27
Mar 28 Mar 29 Mar 30 Mar 31  


  1921 song Immortality composed, prompted by daughter Edith’s illness
  1925 Ives’s article "Some Quarter-Tone Impressions" appears in Franco-American Musical Society Bulletin. Ives composed a 2-piano Three Quarter-Tone Pieces.
  1984 First recording: song Slugging a Vampire (Roberta Alexander [S] and Tan Crone [pf]; issued in 1984 by Etcetera Records)
  1989 First recording: song Du alte Mutter [using German text], Remembrance (Roberta Alexander [S] and Tan Crone [pf]; issued in 1989 by Etcetera Records)
  1993 First recording: choral Crossing the Bar (New Amsterdam Singers, Elizabeth Rodgers [pf], cond. by Clara Longstreth; issued in 1993 by Albany Records)

Mar 1

 1848 Birth of American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens at Dublin, Ireland. Saint-Gaudens’s bas-relief on Boston Common inspired the first mvt. of Ives’s Three Places in New England (Orchestral Set No. 1).
  1896 Birth of pianist (and conductor) Dimitri Mitropoulos at Athens, Greece. Mitropoulos accompanied the premiere of Ives’s songs A Farewell to Land, The New River, Song for Harvest Season, and Tolerance.
  1932 Premiere: song Rough Wind (Judith Litante [S] and Genia Nemenoff-Luboshutz [pf]), at New School, New York City
  1968 Premiere: song Kären (Helen Boatwright [S] and William Dale [pf]), in the Great Hall of Jonathan Edwards College, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

Mar 2

 1938 Premiere: Three Harvest Home Chorales, mvts. i & iii (The Madrigal Singers, Lehman Engel, cond.)

Mar 3

 1948 Premiere: Psalm 67 and Three Harvest Chorales [complete] (Collegiate Chorale, cond. by Robert Shaw), at Carnegie Hall, New York City
  1974 Premiere: "Country Band" March, Overture and March "1776", Fugue in Four Keys, Chromâtimelôdtune [Singleton realization], An Old Song Deranged, Set No. 2 [complete], March No. 2, with "Son of a Gambolier", March No. 3, with "My Old Kentucky Home, and the instrumental versions of songs Charlie Rutlage, Mists, Evening, Swimmers, Remembrance (Yale Theater Orchestra, cond. by James Sinclair), in Sprague Hall, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

Mar 4

 1897 First documented performance: The combined Washington US Marine Band and New Haven Band perform March "Intercollegiate" as part of the activities of the presidential inauguration of William McKinley, Washington, DC
  1951 Ives hears radio rebroadcast of Symphony No. 2 performance at the West Redding home of neighbor William Ryder

Mar 5

 1928 Premiere: Emerson movement of Sonata No. 2 for Piano: Concord, Mass. (Katherine Heyman [pf]), in radio broadcast from the Sorbonne station, Paris, France
  1932 Nicolas Slonimsky conducts members of the Berlin Philharmonic in The Fourth of July [mvt. iii of "Holidays Symphony"] and Set for Theatre Orchestra, mvts. i & iii at Beethovensall, Berlin, Germany
  1936 Premiere: songs The Innate, Majority, Paracelsus, Requiem, and Resolution (Victor Prahl [voice type not given] and Olivier Messiaen [pf]), Salle des Concerts de la Schola Cantorum, Paris, France

Mar 9

 1902 chamber ens Hymn-Anthem performed at Central Presbyterian Church; developed into mvt. iii ("In the Night") of Set for Theatre Orchestra.
  1969 First recording: March "Intercollegiate," with "Annie Lisle" (Cornell Wind Ensemble, cond. by Marice Stith; issued in 1971 by Cornell Wind Ensemble)

Mar 11

 1897 Birth of Ives editor and biographer (and composer) Henry Cowell at Menlo Park, Calif. Cowell was an editor of Symphonies No. 2 & 3, piano Three-Page Sonata and Study Nos. 9, 21 & 22, and choral Three Harvest Home Chorales, and arranger of Calcium Light Night (mvt. v of Set No. 1).
  1932 Premiere: song New River (Mary Bell [S] and Horst Keihl [pf]), at the Förster–Dresdner Haus, Dresden, Germany

Mar 12

 1826 Birth of hymn tune composer Robert Lowry at Philadelphia, Penn. Lowry’s tunes used by Ives include:
The Beautiful River ("Shall we gather at the river"; Sonata No. 4 for Violin and Piano, mvt. 3; song At the River)
Need ("I need Thee ev’ry hour"; Sonata No. 3 for Violin and Piano, mvts. i & iii)
  1948 Premiere: Four Transcriptions from "Emerson", complete (Webster Aitken [pf]), at Town Hall, New York City

Mar 13

 1939 First publication: choral Psalm 67, New York and London: Associated Music Publishers
  1974 First recording: "Country Band" March, Overture and March "1776," Fugue in Four Keys, Holiday Quickstep, Charlie Rutlage [Set No. 5, mvt. iii], Mists [Set No. 6, mvt. i], and Swimmers [Set No. 7, mvt. ii] (Yale Theater Orchestra, cond. by James Sinclair; issued in 1974 by CBS Masterworks)

Mar 15

 1929 Premiere: songs Serenity and The Things Our Fathers Loved (Mary Bell [Mez] and Julius Hijman [pf]), at Carnegie Chamber Music Hall, New York City

Mar 16

1823 Birth of hymn tune composer William Henry Monk at London, England. Ives borrowed Monk’s EVENTIDE ("Abide with me") in "In the Night" [mvt. iii of Set for Theatre Orchestra].
  1942 Sol Babitz (vn), Ingolf Dahl (pf) perform Sonata No. 3 for Violin and Piano, at "Evenings on the Roof," Los Angeles. First recording: in the 1940s the same ensemble records the same work for the Alco label (issued in 1940s).
  1978 Premiere: Orchestral Set No. 3, mvt. i [Porter realization] (California State University Orchestra, cond. by Keith Clark), at Fullerton, Calif.

Mar 17

 1904 Date on manuscript: early material for song On the Antipodes—"Bill Maloney mad at this"
  1943 Bernard Herrmann conducts the Columbia Concert Orchestra in String Quartet No. 1, mvts. ii-iv, broadcast over WABC and NET (also included is Symphony No. 4, mvts. i & iii)
  1967 Premiere: songs Omens and Oracles, Songs my mother taught me, and The World’s Wanderers (Larro Chelsi [Bar] and Mary Kay Clark [pf], with Gerald Warburg [vc]), at the Danbury High School Auditorium, Danbury, Conn.
  1984 Premiere: The Unanswered Question [version 1] (American Composers Orchestra, cond. by Dennis Russell Davies), in the "Wall-to-Wall Ives" series at Symphony Space, New York City
    St. Patrick’s Day (annual): March No. 2, with "Son of a Gambolier"; song A Son of a Gambolier
Mar 18 1905 Birth of pianist and Ives cataloguer and editor John Kirkpatrick at New York City. After his premiering in 1938 of Sonata No. 2 for Piano: Concord, Mass. Kirkpatrick became the leading figure of the 20th century in Ives scholarship. He died 8 November 1991.
  1924 Premiere: Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano (Jerome Goldstein [vn] and Rex Tillson [pf]), at Aeolian Hall, New York City
  1942 First publication: Sonata No. 4 for Violin and Piano, New York: Arrow Music Press

Mar 19

 1910 New York Symphony, cond. by Walter Damrosch, reads mvts. ii-iv of Symphony No. 1. Damrosch called the work "charming...The instrumentation is remarkable and the workmanship is admirable" but did not take up the work for a premiere performance (which came only in Apr 1953).

Mar 20

   Spring equinox (annual): songs Frühlingslied, Gruss, A Perfect Day, Spring Song, Two Little Flowers

Mar 21

 1685 Birth of Johann Sebastian Bach at Eisenach, Germany. Ives borrowed several tunes by Bach, including:
motiv "B-A-C-H" (Three-Page Sonata, opening section)
Sinfonia in A Minor (S. 799; piano Invention in D)
Sinfonia in F Minor (S. 785; Symphony No. 2, mvts. i & iv; piano Study No. 21: Some Southpaw Pitching)
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor ("Dorian" S. 538; Symphony No. 4, mvt. iii and String Quartet No. 1, mvt. i)
"Well-Tempered Clavier" (Book I) Fugue in E Minor (S. 855; Symphony No. 2, mvt. v)
  1949 First publication: Three Harvest Home Chorales, New York: Mercury Music

Mar 22

 1939 First recording: choral Psalm 67 (The Madrigal Singers, cond. by Lehman Engel, for Columbia Records; issued 1939)

Mar 23

 1968 Premiere: piano Set of Five Take-Offs and Study Nos. 2, 5, 6, 7, 15, 20, and 23 (Alan Mandel), at Town Hall, New York City

Mar 25

 1949 First publications: piano Study No. 9: The Anti-Abolitionist Riots in the 1830’s and 1840’s and Study No. 21: Some Southpaw Pitching, and Three-Page Sonata, each ed. Henry Cowell. New York: Mercury Music (separately)
  1965 Modern premiere: March "Intercollegiate," with "Annie Lisle" (James Caldwell High School Band, cond. by Keith Brion), at West Caldwell, New Jersey
  1966 First documented performance (using piano): Processional: Let There Be Light, song Allegro (Winifred Keane [S] and John Kirkpatrick [pf]), and choral They Are There! (Danbury State Chorus, cond. by James Furman, with A. William Ferguson [pf] accompanying), at the Berkshire Auditorium, Danbury, Conn.

Mar 27

 1924 Ives hears Stravinsky’s Rossignol and Scriabin’s Le Poème de l’extase.
  1947 First publication: Symphony No. 3, ed. Lou Harrison, New York: Arrow Music Press

Mar 28

 1950 song Ich grolle nicht (Rosemary Volz [S] and Viola Filter [pf]), in an all-Ives concert at the Milwaukee Art Institute, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Mar 29

 1906 Birth of organist E. Power Biggs at Westcliff-on-Sea, England. Biggs gave the modern premiere of, and edited for publication, Variations on "America."
  1935 First publication: Orchestral Set No. 1: Three Places in New England [1935 version], Boston: C. C. Birchard

Mar 30

 1898 George Chadwick visits Horatio Parker’s music classes at Yale, admires Ives’s song Feldeinsamkeit
  1940 Premiere: song Night of Frost in May (Shirley Brandt [Contralto] and Norman Cazden [pf]), at the Dalcroze School of Music, New York City
  1953 First publication: Largo for Violin, Clarinet, and Piano, New York: Southern Music Publishing Company

Mar 31

 1894 Ives sees Wagner’s Götterdämmerung performed in New York City
  1929 Birth of organist Charles Krigbaum at Seattle, Washington. Krigbaum premiered organ Canzonetta, Fugue in C Minor, and Fugue in E-flat, and played in the premiere of chamber ens Prelude on "Eventide" (which piece developed into "In the Night" [mvt. iii of Set for Theatre Orchestra]). Krigbaum has edited those works for future publication.
  1968 Birth of Ives editor and music engraver Thomas Brodhead. Brodhead has edited piano The Celestial Railroad and Four Transcriptions from "Emerson" for future publication.
  1969 First recording: Scherzo: All the Way Around and Back, Set No. 1 [complete], The Last Reader [Set No. 2, mvt. iii (instrumental)], and Set No. 3 (chamber orchestra, cond. by Gunther Schuller; issued in 1970 by Columbia Records)