This past weekend the University hosted the fifth round of performances in “The Complete Songs of Charles Ives.” The series began in January 2005 by Professor of Music Neely Bruce, and intends to perform all 182 of Ives’s pieces.

This weekend’s events included a panel discussion and two concerts: “Songs of Peace and War” and “Charles Ives in Context.”

Ives was a Connecticut musician and composer in the late 19th century. He is known for fusing traditional folk American forms such as the contra dance and hymnals with European classical modes. This fusion resulted in a highly unique style that was classified as many different things, including American, avant-garde, patriotic, classical, conceptual, and operatic.

“Ives had a wonderful ability to remember a snippet of a song, say that he heard in church, or on the dance floor, and then insert it into a composition of his,” said violinist Paul Woodiel.

The Second Sonata for Violin and Piano, performed on Sunday evening, incorporated common fiddle tunes, such as “The Turkey in the Straw” and “The Arkansas Traveler.” By playing snippets of these tunes before the piece, Woodiel helped the audience appreciate the medley of sounds found throughout the classical piece.

During the weekend a couple of newly discovered songs by Ives were premiered. On Sunday night Bruce and Johana Arnold performed “The Song without Words I” and “The Song without Words II.” Both of these songs were incomplete when Ives died in 1954 and had no lyrics. Both Bruce and Arnold considered creating text for the songs, but decided against it.

“The songs were quite beautiful without words, so we decided to leave them as they were,” Bruce said.

The last song Ives wrote before his death in 1983, “Sunrise,” was performed in both concerts. The song expresses peace and strength, capturing the finest quality of Ives’s work.

Other songs used words more sparingly, such as “Romanzo (di Central Park),” which had lyrics written by Leigh Hunt. The text for this poem was sung only in the third rendition of this song and consisted of one-word interjections: “Grove, Rove, Night, Delight, Heart, Impart, Prove, Love, Kiss, Bliss, Blest, Rest, Heart, Impart, Impart, Love.”

All of the songs were generally short and slightly overdramatic in the style of the European opera. They were much less formulaic than most classical music being produced in England or America during the same time period.

One piece played on Sunday, originally had no time signature noted by Ives on the score. Deciphering it by looking at eighth notes and how they were aligned, the time signatures later assigned to it by Neely ranged from 13/16, to 6/8, to 11/8. These irregularities indicate that Ives did not produce music mechanically, but did so through an organic relationship with the music that he heard all around him—in churches, dancing halls, even at social town gatherings.

The last song performed was a World War II song entitled “He Is There!” an adaptation of a World War I song entitled “We Are Here.” One of his more patriotic songs, the chorus culminated in “Shout the Battle Cry of Freedom!” which the audience was encouraged to sing loudly.

The next performance in “The Complete Songs of Charles Ives” series will take place in the spring.