The Gong on the Hook and Ladder

Background#

This piece was first composed in a very early form as a section in Charles Ives’s Pre-Second String Quartet, a work that he composed between 1904 and 1906, but later discarded and destroyed. Ives described the piece as a series of short movements, the material of which would later be used in other pieces, such as Hymn, Hallowe’en or The Gong on the Hook and Ladder. In the period between 1906 and 1916, Ives formed a professional partnership with his friend and business colleague, Julian S. Myrick, to start what eventually developed into a highly successful insurance company and married Harmony Twichell, thus moving out of “Poverty Flat”, a bachelor’s apartment that he shared with his friends at Yale University where he tried out different rhythms and harmonies at the piano. It was in this decade that he devoted his time and energy to business and composition; it was the most musically prolific decade of his life.

Structure#

The Gong on the Hook and Ladder was first conceived as a small chamber composition scored for first and second violin, viola, cello, piano, optional double bass, and optional gong, bell or drum. The revised orchestrated version premiered in 1934, however, is scored for a chamber orchestra, consisting of a flute, a B-flat clarinet, a bassoon, a first and second B-flat trumpet, a trombone, timpani, an optional gong, a snare drum, a triangle, a piano and a small string section, consisting of three first violins, three second violins, two violas, two cellos, and two double basses. Both versions have an approximate duration of 2 to 3 minutes, the latter being 35 bars long. It is marked Allegro moderato in the score, later reaching Allegro vivace, only to come back to Tempo primo in the last five bars.

Analysis#

It is in , though time subdivision is not clear because of the multiple irregular beats performed by the musicians. Many different rhythm elements take place in a performance of this piece. This piece is well-known for juxtaposing non-tonal and tonal rhythms, which attempt to resemble the sounds produced during a parade by a marching band while the engine of a fire truck speeds up or slows down. In the case of the chamber orchestra version, the rhythm in the first 21 bars can be broken down into these parts: * The gong strikes once in each measure throughout the whole piece, while the snare drum plays the same rhythm striking twice (two double-dotted quarter notes in each bar) and the timpani executes a roll from decreasing to in each bar. The gong is only meant to be played in case the ensemble is large. * The bassoon, bowed cello and pizzicato bass keep rhythmically synchronized with the triangle, which is meant to strike in expanding and contracting patterns: first, two events in the first bar, then three events in the second, then four in the third, etc. The series follows this pattern: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 3, and 4. * The piano plays two large whole-tone chords, the one on the left hand being built on C and the one on the right hand on C-sharp. Incidentally, these two highly dissonant chords are the first two notes on the cello, bass, and bassoon line. From the third bar onwards, the piano also plays a second sound event per bar, which consists of double octaves that have slight alterations in the three lower notes. * The trumpets, the trombone, the clarinet, and the flute all play different melodic themes in four different keys. From bar 21 onwards, at the Allegro vivace mark, the piece slightly changes and becomes more agitated: the strings play tremolos; the piano plays fast, high-pitched chords; the melodic themes played by most instruments change, etc. The tempo changes to at the climax in bar 29, only to go back to Tempo primo in bar 31, decrescendo and ritardando until the end of the piece.

Piano quintet version#

• Violinists Eva Gruesser and Mia Wu, violist Rachel Evans, cellist Beverly Lauridsen and pianist Joel Sachs recorded the piece under Naxos. The recording, initially released by the Musical Heritage Society in 1988 on LP, was taken at the Middle Tennessee State University, in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in September 1987, and was released on compact disc much later, in March 2005.

Chamber orchestra version#

• Leonard Bernstein conducted the world premiere recording on January 31, 1967 with the New York Philharmonic. and re-released in 2004, 2013, and 2018.
• Conductor Ingo Metzmacher also recorded the piece with the Ensemble Modern under EMI Classics. The performance was recorded at the Saal der Deutschen Bank in Frankfurt, between December 2 and 6, 1991. The recording was made available on compact disc in 1992 and re-released in 2008,
• Accentus Music released an all-Ives double DVD in Germany. This release consisted of two films, the first of which was Universe, Incomplete, which included The Gong on the Hook and Ladder. The two-hour feature was a stage production of Ruhrtriennale 2018, which was filmed at the Jahrhunderthalle, in Bochum, and was premiered on August 17, 2018. The DVD was released in 2019.

External links#

*Sample of the original score for piano quintet published by Peermusic.