Three Places in New England

The Three Places in New England (Orchestral Set No. 1) is a composition for orchestra by Charles Ives. Recent scholarship has shown that most of it was written between 1912 and 1921, and it consists of the following three movements:

Related Topics:
Charles Ives - 1912 - 1921

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:I. The "St. Gaudens" in Boston Common (Col. Shaw and his Colored Regiment)

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:II. Putnam's Camp, Redding, Connecticut

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:III. The Housatonic at Stockbridge

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The first movement refers to the monument by St. Gaudens on Boston Common to the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, an African-American regiment which performed distinguished service during the American Civil War; it is full of fragmentary march tunes and distant songs overlaid in a dense and somewhat impressionistic texture. The second movement begins with a boisterous blast of noise, contrasting with the first, and brings together two pieces which Ives wrote in 1903; in addition it is an example of Ives' multi-layer technique, bringing together seemingly incompatible music into one complex texture. The third movement, according to Ives himself, is based on a poem by Robert Underwood, and also recollects a walk he took one day with his wife, during which he could hear the distant sounds of a church service as well as the rushing of water in the river.

Related Topics:
St. Gaudens - Boston Common - 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry - American Civil War - Impressionistic - 1903 - Robert Underwood

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Some of the manuscripts for the work are dated 1908, but the paper type and handwriting, according to musicologist Gayle Sherwood, indicate a date after 1912. It is possible that Ives' date refers to preliminary sketches which are now lost; it has also been suggested that Ives deliberately obfuscated the dates on some of his pieces to make it appear that he wrote them earlier than he did.

Related Topics:
1908 - Musicologist - Gayle Sherwood - 1912

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The work did not receive its premiere until 1930, when it was performed in Boston. It has gone on to become one of Ives' most commonly performed compositions, and it shows most of the signature traits of his style: layered textures, with multiple, simultaneous melodies, many of which are recognizable hymn and marching tunes; masses of sound, and tone-clusters; and sudden, sharp textural contrasts.

Related Topics:
1930 - Boston - Texture - Hymn - Marching - Tone-cluster

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The three movements are ordered with the longest first and the shortest last, and a complete performance of the piece lasts eighteen or nineteen minutes.

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