Juilliard String Quartet (1967)
Charles Ives' second string quartet was composed in response to what he saw as the "weak, trite, and effeminate" string quartet music of those times. According to his Memos, after attending a performance by the Kneisel Quartet, he began writing a string quartet, "half mad, half in fun, and half to try out, practise, and have some fun with making those men fiddlers get up and do something like men." The result is what Ives considered "one of the best things I have": his String Quartet No. 2. Unfortunately, this forward-looking work was too difficult for audiences and even musicians of his time. A brief play-through of a portion of a movement "made all the men rather mad," and Ives was never able to hear a complete performance of the work.
"Charles Ives' 1896 Quartet No. 1, much of it based on American hymn tunes, was the product of a 21-year-old student. By the time he returned to the quartet form a decade later, his style had grown much more complex and dissonant. The earliest sketches of the Quartet No. 2 date from as early as 1907, but most of the work on it took place in the early 1910s. As so often happened with Ives' music, after the quartet was completed in 1913, it sat on a shelf for many years. Not until May 11, 1946, was it given its first public performance in New York.
The Quartet No. 2 is a programmatic work in which the instrumentalists depict four men who, in the composer's words, 'converse, discuss, argue (in re 'Politick'), fight, shake hands, shut up -- then walk up the mountain side to view the firmament!' The first movement, titled 'Discussions,' gives the listener a flavor of the seriousness of these discussions. The movement is mostly slow, occasionally passionate, with the trademark Ivesian references to popular songs like 'Dixie,' 'Marching Through Georgia,' and the composer's favorite, 'Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean.'
The discussion becomes more animated in the second movement, 'Arguments.' This movement began as a 1907 sketch inspired by lively conversations in which Ives took part at 'Poverty Flat,' the apartment he shared with friends. As the movement progresses there are several abrupt changes of pace, and the conversation becomes quite cacophonous in spots. The second violin, which Ives dubs 'Rollo' in the score, attempts a Romantic-style cadenza but is drowned out by his interlocutors. Once again there are numerous quotations, this time including bits of Tchaikovsky, Brahms, and Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy' theme.
Nearly static, dissonant chords introduce the third movement, 'The Call of the Mountains.' The music unfolds slowly, but starts to build in strength. Furious tremolos break out, but calm returns. The instruments gradually move to the upper limits of their registers as the four ascend the mountain, and the work ends quietly and mysteriously."
