Central Park in the Dark
Encyclopedia
Central Park in the Dark is a music composition by Charles Ives
for chamber orchestra. It was composed in 1906 and has been paired with The Unanswered Question
as part of “Two Contemplations” and Hallowe’en and The Pond in “Three Outdoor Scenes.”
The piece is scored for piccolo
, flute
, E-flat clarinet
, bassoon
, trumpet
, trombone
, percussion, two pianos
and strings
. Ives specifically suggests the two pianos be a player-piano and a grand piano. The orchestral group are to be separated spatially from each other. Ives described the role of the instruments in a programmatic description of the piece:
, Three Places in New England
, and the Symphony No. 4
.
Ives uses quotation in Central Park in the Dark, using common themes from popular tunes of the day in his piece. He quotes the popular tune Hello! Ma Baby
within the ragtime
pianos and the Washington Post March within the street band.
Central Park in the Dark is clearly a programmatic
work, as can be derived from Ives’s own detailed narrative describing the piece. Ives’s work often relies on programmatic/narrative themes, allowing him to provide guidance through his dense scores.
. It was performed at an all-Ives concert at the McMillin Theatre at Columbia University
as part of the Second Annual Festival of Contemporary America Music. Ives, in a letter for Elliot Carter remembered a different initial performance. In relation to programs to be printed for the concert Ives wrote:
The piece was first recorded in 1951 by the Polymusic Chamber Orchestra, under the direction of Will Lorin by Polymusic and has since been recorded by many orchestral groups.
discussed the “strange historical coincidence” between Ives’s Central Park in the Dark and Karlheinz Stockhausen
's Gruppen fur Drei Orchester. He found that after a performance of Central Park in the Dark by the West German Radio Symphony Orchestra, Stockhausen came out with Gruppen fur Drei Orchester, which had very similar musical qualities to the Ives piece, such as independent lines represented through individual players and dividing the orchestra spatially.
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original"...
for chamber orchestra. It was composed in 1906 and has been paired with The Unanswered Question
The Unanswered Question
The Unanswered Question is a work by American composer Charles Ives. It was originally the first of "Two Contemplations" composed in 1906, paired with another piece called Central Park in the Dark. As with many of Ives' works, it was largely unknown until much later in his life, being first...
as part of “Two Contemplations” and Hallowe’en and The Pond in “Three Outdoor Scenes.”
Composition
The piece was first titled A Contemplation of Nothing Serious or Central Park in the Dark in ‘The Good Old Summer Time’ (in comparison to A Contemplation of a Serious Matter or The Unanswered Perennial Question). Ives wrote detailed notes concerning the purpose and context of Central Park in the Dark: This piece was composed in 1906.
This piece purports to be a picture-in-sounds of the sounds of nature and of happenings that men would hear some thirty or so years ago (before the combustion engine and radio monopolized the earth and air), when sitting on a bench in Central Park on a hot summer night.
The piece is scored for piccolo
Piccolo
The piccolo is a half-size flute, and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. The piccolo has the same fingerings as its larger sibling, the standard transverse flute, but the sound it produces is an octave higher than written...
, flute
Flute
The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
, E-flat clarinet
E-flat clarinet
The E-flat clarinet is a member of the clarinet family. It is usually classed as a soprano clarinet, although some authors describe it as a "sopranino" or even "piccolo" clarinet. Smaller in size and higher in pitch than the more common B clarinet, it is a transposing instrument in E, sounding a...
, bassoon
Bassoon
The bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that typically plays music written in the bass and tenor registers, and occasionally higher. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band and chamber music literature...
, trumpet
Trumpet
The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
, trombone
Trombone
The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...
, percussion, two pianos
Pianos
Pianos is a two-story bar/restaurant/live music venue in the Lower East Side section of Manhattan at 158 Ludlow Street.Its stage attracts local and national alternative rock groups as well as DJs, though a more typical performance consists of smaller name local and touring acts...
and strings
String instrument
A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...
. Ives specifically suggests the two pianos be a player-piano and a grand piano. The orchestral group are to be separated spatially from each other. Ives described the role of the instruments in a programmatic description of the piece:
The strings represent the night sounds and silent darkness- interrupted by sounds from the Casino over the pond- of street singers coming up from the Circle singing, in spots, the tunes of those days- of some ‘night owls’ from Healy’s whistling the latest of the Freshman March- the “occasional elevated,” a street parade, or a “break-down” in the distance- of newsboys crying “uxtries”- of pianolas having a ragtime war in the apartment house “over the garden wall,” a street car and a street band join in the chorus- a fire engine, a cab horse runs away, lands “over the fence and out,” the wayfarers shout- again the darkness is heard- an echo over the pond- and we walk home.
Characteristics
Central Park in the Dark displays several characteristics that are typical of Ives’s work. Ives layers of orchestral textures on top of each other to create a polytonal atmosphere. Within this polytonal atmosphere, Ives juxtaposes the different sections of the orchestras in contrasting and clashing pairings (i.e. the ambient, static strings against the syncopated ragtime pianos against a brass street band). These juxtapositions are a prevalent theme in the works of Ives, and can be seen most notably in The Unanswered QuestionThe Unanswered Question
The Unanswered Question is a work by American composer Charles Ives. It was originally the first of "Two Contemplations" composed in 1906, paired with another piece called Central Park in the Dark. As with many of Ives' works, it was largely unknown until much later in his life, being first...
, Three Places in New England
Three Places in New England
The Three Places in New England is a composition for orchestra by Charles Ives. It was composed across a long span of time , however the bulk was written between 1911 and 1914. The piece is famous for its use of musical quotation and paraphrasing, as explained later in this article...
, and the Symphony No. 4
Symphony No. 4 (Ives)
The Symphony No. 4, S. 4 by Charles Ives was written between the years of 1910 and 1916. The symphony is notable for its multi-layered complexity - usually necessitating two conductors in performance - and for its over-sized orchestra...
.
Ives uses quotation in Central Park in the Dark, using common themes from popular tunes of the day in his piece. He quotes the popular tune Hello! Ma Baby
Hello! Ma Baby
"Hello! Ma Baby" is a Tin Pan Alley song written in 1899 by the team of Joseph E. Howard and Ida Emerson . Its subject is a man who has a girlfriend he knows only through the telephone...
within the ragtime
Ragtime
Ragtime is an original musical genre which enjoyed its peak popularity between 1897 and 1918. Its main characteristic trait is its syncopated, or "ragged," rhythm. It began as dance music in the red-light districts of American cities such as St. Louis and New Orleans years before being published...
pianos and the Washington Post March within the street band.
Central Park in the Dark is clearly a programmatic
Program music
Program music or programme music is a type of art music that attempts to musically render an extra-musical narrative. The narrative itself might be offered to the audience in the form of program notes, inviting imaginative correlations with the music...
work, as can be derived from Ives’s own detailed narrative describing the piece. Ives’s work often relies on programmatic/narrative themes, allowing him to provide guidance through his dense scores.
Performance and recording
The first documented performance of the piece was in New York on May 11, 1946 by the chamber orchestra students from Juilliard Graduate School conducted by Theodore BloomfieldTheodore Bloomfield
Theodore Robert Bloomfield was an American conductor.Born in Cleveland, Ohio he studied music at Oberlin College in Ohio and conducting with Edgar Schenkman for two years on a fellowship at The Juilliard School in Manhattan...
. It was performed at an all-Ives concert at the McMillin Theatre at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
as part of the Second Annual Festival of Contemporary America Music. Ives, in a letter for Elliot Carter remembered a different initial performance. In relation to programs to be printed for the concert Ives wrote:
Though it is not an important matter, it would be well—unless the programs for the May concert are already printed—not to put as a first public performance the ‘Central Park- some 40 years ago’ as it was cut down some, in instrumentation, for a Theater Orchestra and played between acts in a downtown Theatre in N.Y. [Ives] doesn’t remember the exact date or the name of the theater. There was no program, but he thinks it was in 1906 or ’07. The players had a hard time with it—the piano player got mad, stopped in the middle and kicked the bass drum. However, don’t put the above in the program—just omit ‘First Performance’—as he feels, if not, it would be hardly fair to those old ‘fellers’ who stood up for a ‘dangerous job.’
The piece was first recorded in 1951 by the Polymusic Chamber Orchestra, under the direction of Will Lorin by Polymusic and has since been recorded by many orchestral groups.
Influence
In “An Ives Celebration: Papers and Panels of the Charles Ives Centennial Festival Conference,” Hans G. HelmsHans G. Helms
Hans G Helms is a German experimental writer, composer, and social and economic analyst and critic....
discussed the “strange historical coincidence” between Ives’s Central Park in the Dark and Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
's Gruppen fur Drei Orchester. He found that after a performance of Central Park in the Dark by the West German Radio Symphony Orchestra, Stockhausen came out with Gruppen fur Drei Orchester, which had very similar musical qualities to the Ives piece, such as independent lines represented through individual players and dividing the orchestra spatially.
Further reading
- Feder, Stuart. "My Father's Song": A Psychoanalytic Biography. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.
- Hitchcock, Wiley H., ed and Perlis, Vivian, ed. 1977. An Ives Celebration: Papers and Panels of the Charles Ives Centennial Festival Conference. Urbana: University of Illinois Press
- Sinclair, James B. 1999. A Descriptive Catalogue of The Music of Charles Ives. New Haven: Yale University Press.