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Programming guide: July

1903:  Date on manuscript: Pre-First Sonata for Violin and Piano, mvt. iii ("Autumn")

1912:  Date on manuscript: Robert Browning Overture, sketch of mm. 312–30 "after a walk with [nephew] Moss White [Ives; born 1905]"

1913:  Date on manuscript: The New River [mvt. ii of Set No. 1] arranged as song

1915:  Louis Untermeyer’s "Swimmers" appears in Yale Review; Ives set it as song Swimmers.

July 2  1935: Birth of pianist Gilbert Kalish who performed for the first recordings of Largo for Violin and Piano, In Re Con Moto et al., Largo Risoluto No. 1 & 2, A Set of Three Short Pieces (mvts: Largo cantabile: Hymn, Scherzo: Holding Your Own, Adagio cantabile: The Innate) and songs The All-Enduring, The Innate, and Song (She is not fair).

July 3  1914: Date on manuscript: Ives plays piano Study No. 4 for Francis Ryder (West Redding neighbor). Ives attempted to compose 27 studies (etudes) as Chopin had produced; complete and extant today are Studies No. 2, 5–9, 16+19, and 20–23.
1946: Bernard Herrmann conducts Symphony No. 3 in performance broadcast over radio station WABC, New York City shortly after the April 5th premiere).

July 4  1804: Birth of author Nathaniel Hawthorne at Salem, Mass. Ives composed two piano pieces inspired by Hawthorne: Hawthorne (mvt. ii of Sonata No. 2 for Piano: Concord, Mass.) and The Celestial Railroad.
1826: Birth of songwriter Stephen Foster at Pittsburgh, Penn. Ives borrowed a number of tunes from Foster: Camptown Races (Symphony No. 2/v; Symphony No. 4/ii; Washington’s Birthday; piano The Celestial Railroad) Massa’s in de Cold Ground (Symphony No. 2; Symphony No. 4/ii, Washington’s Birthday, Three Places in New England/i&ii, String Quartet No. 2/ii; song They Are There!) My Old Kentucky Home (March No. 3; "Country Band" March; Scherzo: Holding Your Own!; Trio for Violin, Violoncello, and Piano, mvt. ii; song The Things Our Fathers Loved) Old Black Joe (Symphony No. 4/ii; Three Places in New England/i; Orchestral Set No. 2/i; piano The Celestial Railroad) Old Folks at Home (Washington’s Birthday)
1878: Birth of songwriter George M. Cohan at Providence, Rhode Island. Ives dedicated his song Tom Sails Away to Cohan and borrowed the signature tune from Cohan’s ‘Over there’ for songs They Are There!, Nov. 2, 1920, An Election, and Tom Sails Away.
1891: Ives plays Variations on "America" at Brewster, NY (possibly the premiere performance)
1903: Date on manuscript: lost song Ariel’s Departure which evolves into the extant Spring Song
1904: Date on manuscript: Overture and March "1776", score-sketch [finished], "Pine Mt."
1911: Date on manuscript: The Fourth of July [mvt. iii of "Holidays Symphony"] "started . . . from chords in [song]   The Cage" Independence Day (annual): Fourth of July (mvt. iii of "Holidays Symphony"), Symphony No. 2, Putnam’s Camp (mvt. ii of Orchestral Set No. 1: Three Places in New England), Overture & March "1776"; Variations on "America" (organ or orchestra arr.)

July 7  1860: Birth of conductor (and composer) Gustav Mahler at Kalischt, Bohemia. Mahler admired Ives’s Symphony No. 3 and took a copyist score with him to Vienna where Mahler died without an opportunity to premiere the work.
1965: First recording: choral December, The New River, and March: The Circus Band [vocal versions] (The Gregg Smith Singers and The Columbia Chamber Orchestra, cond. by Gregg Smith; issued in 1966 by Columbia Records)

July 8  1967: song Soliloquy (Marni Nixon [S] and John McCabe [pf]; issued in 1967 by Pye)

July 10  1933: Birth of mezzo soprano Jan DeGaetani at Massilon, Ohio. DeGaetani sang for the first recording of four Ives songs: The All-Enduring, The Innate, Song (She is not fair), and Song for Harvest Season.

July 12  1817: Birth of naturalistic and writer Henry David Thoreau at Concord, Mass. Ives memoralized Thoreau in Thoreau (mvt. iv of Sonata No. 2 for Piano: Concord, Mass.) and the song Thoreau.

July 13  1965: Premiere: band March in F and C, with "Omega Lambda Chi" (North Jersey Wind Symphony, cond. by Keith Brion), at West Caldwell, New Jersey

July 17  1935: Birth of pianist Alan Mandel. Mandel performed for the premiere and first recording of a number of Ives piano works: Studies No. 2, 5–8, 15, 20, and 23, and The Celestial Railroad, Invention in D, Set of Five Take-Offs, Varied Air and Variations, and Waltz-Rondo. Mandel accompanied in the first recordings of songs The Housatonic at Stockbridge, The Light That Is Felt, There is a lane, and The Things Our Fathers Loved.

July 28  1906: Date on manuscript: In the Cage [mvt. i of Set for Theatre Orchestra]—"Bart & Geo., 65 Central Park West [New York City]" (one of Ives’s "Poverty Flat" addresses)

July 29  1930: Birth of pianist and Ives editor George Pappastavrou at Syracuse, NY. Pappastavrou (with Stuart Warren Lanning) played the first recording of the 2-piano Three Quarter-Tone Pieces (5 May 1967) and has edited the work for future publication.

July 31  1928: Oscar Ziegler (pf) plays The Alcotts [mvt. iii of Sonata No. 2 for Piano: Concord, Mass.] at Salzburg, Austria