Charles Ives' Glory Trance: General William Booth Enters Into Heaven
Evening Music | May 6, 2010
After Charles Ives set the Vachel Lindsay poem about the founder of the Salvation Army, “General William Booth Enters into Heaven,” he called the song a “glory trance.”
Listen as baritone Thomas Hampson sings about Booth pounding his bass drum and leading his band of drunks and floozies into Paradise, music pulsing in a revivalist-style frenzy. It’s Ives birthday (1874), and his entrance into heaven was no doubt just as musically entertaining.
The Haydn Piano Concerto No. 3 featuring Leif Ove Andsnes paves the way for a Telemann trumpet concerto, Schubert’s Second Symphony, and the Brahms String Sextet No. 1. But we bring you some less familiar fare as well.
American composer Thomas Pasatieri, born this day in 1945, specializes mostly in song and opera. He says that when the Verdehr Trio (tonight’s performers) asked him to write an “opera” for violin, clarinet, and piano, he accepted the challenge and produced “Theatrepieces.” Virtuosic writing for each character in his cast of three leads the instrumentalists through a series of contrasting emotions and relationships until, as he says, they “leave the stage when their story is over.” No narrative is provided, so listeners are invited to invent their own.
Sir Simon Rattle conducts the Symphony of Birmingham in William Walton’s Symphony No. 1, a work begun in 1932 but not completed until three years later. Walton called the tempestuous opening movement “the end of a love affair and the start of a new one.”
Listen as baritone Thomas Hampson sings about Booth pounding his bass drum and leading his band of drunks and floozies into Paradise, music pulsing in a revivalist-style frenzy. It’s Ives birthday (1874), and his entrance into heaven was no doubt just as musically entertaining.
The Haydn Piano Concerto No. 3 featuring Leif Ove Andsnes paves the way for a Telemann trumpet concerto, Schubert’s Second Symphony, and the Brahms String Sextet No. 1. But we bring you some less familiar fare as well.
American composer Thomas Pasatieri, born this day in 1945, specializes mostly in song and opera. He says that when the Verdehr Trio (tonight’s performers) asked him to write an “opera” for violin, clarinet, and piano, he accepted the challenge and produced “Theatrepieces.” Virtuosic writing for each character in his cast of three leads the instrumentalists through a series of contrasting emotions and relationships until, as he says, they “leave the stage when their story is over.” No narrative is provided, so listeners are invited to invent their own.
Sir Simon Rattle conducts the Symphony of Birmingham in William Walton’s Symphony No. 1, a work begun in 1932 but not completed until three years later. Walton called the tempestuous opening movement “the end of a love affair and the start of a new one.”
