1. Manner versus substance Charles Ives (1874-1954)
“It wasn’t the music that did it, and it wasn’t the words
that did it, and it wasn’t the sounds (whatever they
were—transcendent, peculiar, bad, some beautifully
unmusical)—but they were sung ‘like the rocks were
grown.’ The singers weren’t singers, but they knew what
they were doing—it all came from something felt, way
down and way up.”
“ ‘How can you stand it to hear old John Bell (the best
stone-mason in town) sing?’ Father said, ‘He is a supreme
musician.’ the young man (nice and educated) was
horrified—’Why he sings off the key, the wrong notes and
everything—and that horrible, raucous voice—and he
bellows out and hits notes no one else does—it’s awful!’
Father said, ‘Watch him closely and reverently, look into
his face and hear the music of the ages. Don’t pay too
much attention to the sounds—for if you do, you may
miss the music.’”

2. Ives, The Circus Band, 1897
All summer long, we boys dreamed 'bout big
circus joys! Down Main street, comes the band,
Oh! "Ain't it a grand and glorious
noise!" Horses are prancing, knights
advancing; Helmets gleaming, pennants
streaming, Cleopatra's on her throne! That
golden hair is all her own. Where is the lady all
in pink? Last year she waved to me I think, Can
she have died? Can! that! rot! She is passing
but she sees me not.

3. Ives, Serenity, 1919
Text by John Greenleaf Whittier, from “The Brewing of Soma”
“A unison chant” to be sung “Very slowly, quietly and sustained with little or no change in tempo or volume throughout”
O, Sabbath rest of Galilee! O, calm of hills
above, Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee, the
silence of eternity Interpreted by love. Drop Thy
still dews of quietness, till all our strivings
cease: Take from our souls the strain and
stress, and let our ordered lives confess, the
beauty of thy peace.

4. Ives, The Housatonic at Stockbridge, 1921
Text by Robert Underwood Johnson
Contented river! in thy dreamy realm
The cloudy willow and the plumy elm:
Thou beautiful! from ev'ry dreamy hill
What eye but wanders with thee at thy will,
Dorrnance hymn
Contented river! and yet overshy
To mask thy beauty from the eager eye;
Hast thou a thought to hide from field and town?
In some deep current of the sunlit brown.
Ah! there's a restive ripple,
And the swift red leaves
September's firstlings faster drift;
Woulds’t thou away, dear stream?
Come, whisper near!
I also of much resting have a fear:
Let me tomorrow thy companion be,
By fall and shallow to the adventurous sea!