In simple terms, Ives, at least with intellectual intent, tossed temperament out the window in exchange for the intonational model of a pure spiral of pure fifths, practicality be damned. The Instrument!—there is the perennial difficulty—there is music’s limitation. Why must the scarecrow—of the keyboard—the tyrant in terms of the mechanism (be it Caruso or a Jew’s harp)—stare into every measure? Is it the composer’s fault that man has only ten fingers? (Charles Ives, Essays Before A Sonata). Hermann Helmholtz, author of On The Sensation of Tone, established Ives’s notation protocols. Helmholtz layed out three different ways to interpret contemporary notation based on its underlying tuning system. This recordings’ use of two pianos, tuned with no common pitches between them, constitutes the full manifestation of Ives’s microtonal hopes and dreams. Much has been made of how Ives conceived of the “Concord Sonata,” with its acknowledged sense of impermanence. The composer would play this piece for visitors, and was notorious for improvising upon the material. Ives had the audacity to expect the same of his interpreters. To pianists, the piece is hard enough to play without being challenged to further improvise on the material in front of a live audience. And yet, with all the talk of impermanence, if there was one issue in which Charles Ives would not budge, it was his decisions regarding music notation, his spelling of the notes. For Ives, the note C# must ever remain written as a C#; and a written Db must ever be notated as a Db. It was the one constant. There was to be no allowance for changing notation. None. Period. While pianist John Kirkpatrick famously tried to rewrite the piece by changing Ives’s notation to exaggerate chromatic-pair sameness primarily as an aid to his memorization ease, Ives objected in a tirade. After all, why use both C# and Db when they are the same note with the same sound? Of course, in a spiral of pure fifths, Db is heard lower than its neighboring C#, by about an eighth of a tone (24 cents).

THE TRANSCENDENTAL EXPERIENCE Despite the widespread usage of the term “transcendental” for describing the poetry of Emerson and Thoreau, its appropriateness for music has been more distant. Certainly, one may understand the term transcendental to mean mere ephemera, or a dapper delving into the soul. However the term is difficult to apply, except perhaps in the realm of opinion, or as a catalyst for an insight. With this recording of the “Concord Sonata” the transcendentalism in sound is glaring, and the distinction between untempered and tempered is profoundly perceivable. Without doubt, Ives signaled his readers for sympathy in this regard, and suggested a century of patience to continue to invest in his beliefs long after his passing, akin to a time capsule: “In some century to come, when the school children will whistle popular tunes in quarter-tones—when the diatonic scale will be as obsolete as the pentatonic is now”(Ives, Franco-American Music Society Quarterly Bulletin, March 1925). While there was once a great benefit through temperament, its necessity has finally receded into the past. Temperament is now more often used as a crutch than it is a benefit, based on the reception of our collective ears. There no long needs to be a reaction such as this great fan of the “Concord Sonata,” Kyle Gann, who wrote confidently of “the Concord’s well-deserved reputation for complex dissonances and general atonality” (Gann, Charles Ives’s Concord: Essays After A Sonata, 2017). The intentional untempered version envisioned by Ives unequivocally renders transcendentalism transparent, rather than emphasize atonality. To the musicologists among us, I ask each of you to listen afresh to the music coming out of your stereo speakers. Listen to this recording without the constant comparisons to the thick dissonances of earlier 12-tone equal temperament performances.

Untempered, in this particular case, explicitly means that only one size of perfect fifth is acceptable, two cents higher than its equal tempered stand-in, and added 24 times, one upon another, far past the range of human hearing. But through octave displacement, a single scale is produce-able for every octave range. This untempered approach is best shaped graphically as a spiral since it is doesn’t close in a circle,and may continue mathematically to infinity. Extended Pythagorean Tuning - cycling fifths with A=440 at 0 Cents, 1200 cents per octave: Bbb = 176 (used only once) Fb = 678 Cb = 180 Gb = 882 Db = 384 Ab = 1086 Eb = 588 Bb = 90 F = 792 C = 294 G = 996 D = 498 A = 0 E = 702 B = 204 F# = 906 C# = 408 G# = 1110 D# = 612 A# = 114 E# = 816 B# = 318 FX = 1020 CX = 522 The clarity of listening to Ives’s music untempered is transplendent, constantly providing an awareness of constantly intriguing counterpoint. One feels drawn back in time, a century ago to New York City in the early 20th Century. In repeated listenings, the listener enters deeper into the sound, the mind is molded. New words spring to mind to describe this Ivesian unequal quartertonal system. Ives demonstrates his craft by producing a single Bbb (B double flat) to be inserted only one time in a single middle octave replacing the otherwise usual pitch GX (G double sharp). Here we are, more than a century later, and as Ives predicted, the composer’s rich imagination has indeed been set free. There is a profound quality of resonance experienced upon an attentive listen to this real-time performance enabled by a true spiral of pure 3/2 perfect fifths. If there was any doubt of the profound nature of the evolved tuning of the “Concord Sonata” it takes but a listen to recognize the phenomenon of the actualized transcendentalism imaginatively envisioned by Ives. Additional releases by the American Festival of Microtonal Music by Charles Ives of music compositions in extended Pythagorean tuning include “Universe Symphony” (Stereo Society SS007), “Unanswered Question” (PITCH: Ideas P-200212), and String Quartet #2 (PITCH CD: Chamber P-200203). [See: www.afmm.org and www.stereosociety.com.] The sound achieved is largely ineffable, but try as one must, decidedly transcendental, kaleidoscopic, new dimensions revealed, new expressions resounding. My suggestion is to listen to this microtonal version on its own terms and merits and not by constant comparisons to its equal-tempered prototype.

PORTRAIT OF IVES Much of the appreciation for Charles Ives (1875-1954) has survived through received wisdom. On many levels, Ives is a great success story. He amassed a personal fortune in life insurance, while leading a determined, non-commercial musical life. He enjoyed a loving marriage, and adopted a daughter. He was a very generous philanthropist. As with any bright light, Ives was smeared by younger stars on the horizon. Aaron Copland, for example, questioned Ives’s ability to edit his compositions. Elliott Carter thought there should be a squelching of any hoopla for the “supposed” Ives innovations. Worse still, the innovator of life insurance’s actuarial tables was described as a cheat by famed Beethoven biographer Maynard Solomon, professionally questioning Ives’s reputation. Ives altered the dates of his compositions, according to Solomon, and these intentional actions drew into question the composer’s seminal position in the American music pantheon (“Charles Ives: Some Questions of Veracity,” 1986). The motivation accrued to Ives was dishonesty. Former music critic Donal Henahan of The New York Times subsequently revoked the name of Charles Ives as an ideal American composer role model for the nation (“Did Ives Fiddle with the Truth?” February 21, 1988). Soon after, Ives was called a crank, a homophobe, and a sexist. But for musicians who hear a biography in the music composed, there is a disconnect between his accomplishments and the accusations levied against him. Pertaining to re-dating, Ives scholar Carol K. Baron has sufficiently shown the nefarious assertion regarding his altering of dates on his compositions to be without merit (“Dating Charles Ives’s Music: Facts and Fiction,” Baron, Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 28 No. 1, 1990). I have nothing to add regarding this fully exposed misunderstanding with any new reasons or issues since those published by Baron. Carter waited until 1939 to announce his accusations against Ives and published them in the journal Modern Music and in 1969 for the Vivian Perlis oral history project. Rather than jacking up the dissonance, Ives added a whole new dimension to his music by removing temperament altogether for the majority of his music. For example, a harmonic interval notated A-C# is considered dissonant as practiced in Pythagorean tuning during the Middle Ages, and called a ditone (of 408 cents, constructed by ratio 81/64). However, a notated A-Db sounds practically “just” as a major third at 384 cents. Ives indeed did evolve his notation, but purposely, in order to adequately reflect an extended Pythagorean tuning aesthetic (not to impress outsiders as foolishly surmised). Ives indeed changed his accidentals to permit greater clarity of his materials as demonstrated through the results. Apparently, looks can be deceiving. Ives employed an “acoustical plan,” to allow for a whole new transcendental dimension to his music. People invariably ask, “but did Ives really want this change in tuning?!” May I suggest a response at least in part with this Memo of 1923, or soon after, by Ives: The twelve notes in a nice well-tuned piano are ‘twelve notes’ – machine-made almost – but at present the best instrument, that is, the widest sound implement we have, for only one many to use. But the mind, ear, and thought don’t always have to be limited by the ‘twelve’ – for a B# and a C natural are not then the same – a B# may help the ear-mind get higher up the mountain that a C natural always… Some of the chords in this…. I copied out and had played by six violins at Tams, playing in a kind of chord-system made – that is, assuming that a Db was nearer down to C, and that C# was nearer up to D. After the players had sensed this difference in playing the passage – say B B# C, D Db C … to me they usually sounded nearer to each other than a quarter-tone (Ives, Memos, W.W. Norton, New York 1972, pp. 190).