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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 December 2009
Ives and programmaticism
In his “Prologue” to the Essays Before a Sonata Ives offers an inconclusive personal debate on the nature of program music. At the outset he even questions the whole enterprise:
How far is anyone justified, be he an authority or a layman, in expressing or trying to express in terms of music (in sounds, if you like) the value of anything, material, moral, intellectual, or spiritual, which is usually expressed in terms other than music? (Essays, p. 3)
Ives continues this opening gambit by asking twelve additional mostly unanswered questions in which he confronts difficult philosophical issues that nearly all composers of program music and their audiences invariably face. His question (p. 4), “Does the success of program music depend more upon the program than upon the music?” still needs to be asked. One might respond that symphonies and sonatas with suggestive titles or programmatic content have indeed received more than their fair share of recognition; one might also ask whether the subject of this handbook would have received the same attention and acclaim had Ives not chosen to write his elaborate prefatory Essays Before a Sonata that provide a programmatic handle upon which otherwise uncomprehending listeners can begin to grasp the complex mysteries of his sonata.
By the second paragraph Ives changes the premises of his questions.
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