Part of it may have been, even in Ives' purely instrumental work, the extraordinarily rich and focused content of American patriotism and history -- a very different brand from contemporary brain-dead superpatriotism, Ives had very radical ideas about what was wonderful and what was wretched about the America he found himself in. A Dutch orchestra can (and does!) play Ives, but there is some question about whether they all "get" the highly rarified political and social ideas that Ives was wrapping his music around.
On second thought, if it's possible for non-Americans to "get" Ives, the Dutch may be among the most likely candidates. Canadians, on the other hand -- despite the similarities, Canadian history and society is quite different from American, and celebrates quite different ideals. Ives celebrates the anarchy of unfettered individualism -- a very different ideal from the Canadian. Two of Ives' central themes, the American Revolution and the American Civil War, are just things that didn't happen in Canada -- so Ives' grandiose and bombastic crescendos shaped around and inspired by these events and ideas may have largely left Gould cold.
Clearly Gould was drawn to classical forms and rarely seems enthusiastic about the 20th Century repertoire; I think it's fair to say that musically, he felt trapped in the wrong century. (Technologically, he clearly loved his present and grasped aggressively at the future.) Ives is awfully hard to love for a person steeped in more formal conventions; I've met many orchestra instrumentalists who just flat-out cringe when I ask them about their feelings about Ives. (There's the famous story of the Italian maestro who ran from Ives' music shed screaming "This is not music! This is noise!")
But I find it hard to believe that someone of Gould's genius, curiosity and imagination could have entirely dismissed Ives; there may be clashes and discordances in Ives, but there is such raw, naked emotional power and romanticism.
But I guess all of us have among our beloved friends two whom we can never invite to the same party.
I'd be interested in hearing the thoughts of Canadians particularly about the Gould-Ives disconnection.
Bob Merkin
Sivan Etedgee wrote:
> Did GG ever play the Concord? probably wouldn't have been
> his cup of tea, because it would be stretching things to try to reduce it
> to a contrapuntal essence (as a foundation, and as a performance approach).
>I believe he read through the piece (Ive's Concord Sonata) during his teens, and
it gave him a big headache. He mentions that somewhere in the Gould Reader, but I
can't remember which article offhand.
-Sivan Etedgee