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An Instrumental Song without Words about Hope: A Melodic Motivic Analysis of the Third Violin Sonata by Charles Ives (1874–1954)

The American composer Charles Ives is well known for musical quotation/borrowing: composing music with or from pre-existing musical sources, such as folk tunes, hymns, chants, or other composers' works. His Third Violin Sonata is one of few works that used his unique technique of cumulative setting with only hymn tunes. For analysis of his instrumental music, the text of the hymn tunes is generally disregarded, as the compositions are for instruments. Ives' Third Violin Sonata is challenging to understand in comparison with other violin sonatas, because it lacks information such as titles and subtitles. Even though Ives never mentioned the piece's meanings or extramusical meanings, almost all the elements of the piece indicate hope as a common theme. This dissertation examines which hymn tunes were quoted in the piece, gives the meanings of the hymn tunes, and discusses how Ives uses these tunes as themes with textual meanings. The study includes a brief life of Ives and his historical circumstances and presents a brief musical analysis. The research should give a better understanding of the piece to performers and others curious about it.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc1808337
Date05 1900
CreatorsKim, GaLeoung
ContributorsBushkova, Julia, Lavacek, Justin, Dubois, Susan
PublisherUniversity of North Texas
Source SetsUniversity of North Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis or Dissertation
Formatvii, 42 pages : illustrations, music., Text
RightsPublic, Kim, GaLeoung, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights Reserved.
RelationRecital: March 8, 2016, ark:/67531/metadc1614902, Recital: November 15, 2016, ark:/67531/metadc1614914, Recital: April 27, 2017, ark:/67531/metadc2099722, Lecture recital: November 5, 2020, not yet digitized

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