Hearing The Pulitzers

Episode 5 - 1947: Charles E. Ives, Symphony No. 3, "The Camp Meeting"

In this episode, Dave and Andrew explore the winner of the fifth Pulitzer Prize in Music, Charles E. Ives for his Symphony No. 3, "The Camp Meeting."

This piece, largely scored/written between 1908-11, features many of Ives's favorite techniques, including musical borrowing, cumulative form, and mixtures of harmonic techniques all wrapped up in a short and compact chamber symphony. Ives himself had mixed feelings about the piece, thinking it was a transitional "crossway between the older ways and the newer ways," but it caught the attention of the Pulitzer board through its premiere performance in New York conducted by Lou Harrison in 1946. It was also the first piece to win the Pulitzer Prize that written much earlier than its premiere, and it helped propel Ives and his music into the public eye.

 

If you'd like more information about Ives or his Symphony No. 3, we recommend:

1) The Charles Ives Society: www.charlesives.org

2) Charles Ives, Memos, edited by John Kirkpatrick (W.W. Norton, 1971)

3) J. Peter Burkholder, All Made of Tunes (Yale University Press, 1995)

4) Mark Zobel, The Third Symphony of Charles Ives. Vol. 6 CMS Sourcebooks in American Music, edited by Michael Budds. (Pendragon Press, 2009).

5) A new recording by Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony: https://www.sfsymphony.org/Discover-the-Music/SFS-Media/charles-Ives-Nos3-4

 

Episode 4 - 1946: Leo Sowerby, Canticle of the Sun

In this episode, Dave and Andrew explore the winner of the fourth Pulitzer Prize in Music, Leo Sowerby for Canticle of the Sun. You might not have heard of Sowerby unless you regularly perform church music, but in the mid-20th century he was a powerhouse, especially in the Chicago musical scene. See what we think about Sowerby's setting of Francis of Assisi's hymn and why we think Sowerby might be overlooked today.

If you'd like more information about Canticle of the Sun and Leo Sowerby, we recommend:

1. Brice Gerlach's dissertation "Leo Sowerby's The Canticle of the Sun: An Analysis for Performance."
2. Timothy Sharp's article "The Choral Music of Leo Sowerby: A Centennial Perspective," which you can find in The Choral Journal. 35, no. 8 (1995): 9–19.
3. A good recording of the piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1yxjhfSH4A
4. Leo Sowerby's papers and archives at Northwestern University: https://findingaids.library.northwestern.edu/repositories/3/resources/495