Music Notes for Dec. 27

The music of Charles Ives can be offsetting to the music ear. The simultaneous expression of differing rhythms, melodies and even keys can be hard to take in all at once. Ives’ Christmas Carol which we sing at the offertory has nothing but harmonic and melodic charm with a little challenge of metrical perception, yet making it even more charming. He labels this piece composed in 1894. It probably was composed after that. Ives’ biographers have inferred that anything Ives labeled as 1894 carries with it the psychological events of that eventful year- his freshman year a Yale, a exciting new beginning; also the year his beloved father died, the end of Charles’ inspiration to be an adventurous musician! So the innocent charm of text united with melody and harmony portrays the happiness of that year, 1894. The puzzling metrical excursions perhaps represent that year’s loss of self in time and space, often the description of the profound loss of a loved one. This is the stuff of Christmas music that Ives captures so beautifully. We rejoice in greeting the newborn child at the beginning of his unsettling journey to the cross.