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Programming guide: June

1973:  First recording: songs In the Alley and Marie [English text] (Bruce Fifer [Bar], Raymond Beegle [pf] and Gregg Smith [narrator]; issued in 1974 by Vox Productions); Kären and Memories (Douglas Perry [T] and Raymond Beegle [pf]; issued in 1974 by Vox Productions); An Old Flame (Linda Eckard [A] and Raymond Beegle [pf]; issued in 1974 by Vox Productions); Romanzo (di Central Park) (The New York Vocal Arts Ensemble, Raymond Beegle [pf/dir.];  issued in 1974 by Vox Productions); A Son of a Gambolier (The Gregg Smith Singers, Stephen Crout [pf], cond. Gregg Smith; issued in 1974 by Vox Productions).

1976:  First recording: piano Four Transcriptions from "Emerson" [complete] (Nina Deutsch; issued in 1976 by Vox Productions)

1986:  First recording: The Gong on the Hook and Ladder [chamber ensemble version], and song Aeschylus and Sophocles (Continuum with Victoria Villamil [S], Sheila Schonbrun [S]; issued in 1988 by Musical Heritage Society)

June 1  1902: Ives’s last Sunday at Central Presbyterian Church, New York City (his last job as a professional musician). While at Central Presbyterian Church, Ives composed several organ works that went into his Symphony No. 3:   The Camp Meeting and conducted the premiere of his cantata The Celestial Country.
1951: Birth of baritone William Sharp at Kansas City, Missouri. Sharp has sung for the first recordings of songs I knew and loved a maid, I travelled among unknown men, and The Song of the Dead.

June 2  1947: First recording: songs At the River, The Cage, The Circus Band, Cradle Song, Harpalus, Mirage, Mists, Night of Frost in May, A Night Song, "1, 2, 3", Rough Wind, Thoreau, and Vita (Ernest McChesney [T] and Otto Herz [pf]), for Concert Hall label; issued 1948)

June 4  1876: Birth of Ives’s future wife Harmony Twichell at Hartford, Conn. Harmony Ives is the author of eight poems that Ives used as texts for songs: Autumn, Mists, The South Wind, Spring Song, To Edith, Two Little Flowers, The World’s Highway, and Over all the treetops (Ilmenau).
1895: Premiere: prototype of song The Light That Is Felt (John C. Griggs, Bar), at Center Church, New Haven, Conn.
1911: Date on manuscript: chamber ens The Last Reader [mvt. iii of Set No. 2] implicitly dedicated to Harmony Ives (on her 35th birthday)
1914: Date on manuscript: chamber ens The Rainbow dedicated to Harmony Ives (on her 38th birthday)
1933: Premiere: songs Mists and Walt Whitman (Mary Bell [S] and Vivian Fine [pf]), at New York City

June 6  1931: Slonimsky’s first Pan-American concert, Paris (Orchestral Set No. 1, etc.)
1971: Premiere: Postlude in F [orchestral version] (New Haven Civic Orchestra, cond. by Gordon Emerson), at
Sprague Memorial Hall, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
1996: Premiere: Universe Symphony [Reinhard realization] (American Festival of Microtonal Music Orchestra,
cond. by Johnny Reinhard), at Alice Tully Hall, New York City

June 7  1921: Anne Collins’s "The Greatest Man" appears in New York Sun; Ives set it as song The Greatest Man.

June 8  1810: Birth of composer Robert Schumann at Zwickau, Saxony. Two of Schumann’s songs served as models for
Ives’s songs of the same title: ‘Ich grolle nicht’ (from ‘Dichterliebe,’ Op. 48/7) and ‘Die Lotosblume’ (Op. 25/7).
1902: Date on manuscript: Ives starts first theme of mvt. i of Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano
1922: Premiere: songs Ilmenau, Spring Song, and The White Gulls (Mary B. Holley [S] and an unidentified
pianist), at St. James’s Parish House auditorium, Danbury, Conn.

June 9  1908: Ives (age 34) and Harmony Twichell (age 32) are married by her father, Rev. Joseph Twichell (longtime
closest friend of Mark Twain).
1911: Date in memo added later to song The New River

June 10  1953: Birth of Ives editor David Porter. Among his editions are Emerson Overture (Concerto) for Piano and
  Orchestra, Universe Symphony, Orchestral Set No. 3, and Sets No. 1–3.

June 11  1952: First publication: song A Night Song, repr. as separate song sheet, New York: Peer International
1963: First recording: Thanksgiving and Forefathers’ Day [mvt. iv of "Holidays Symphony"] (Iceland Symphony
Orchestra with the Iceland State Radio Chorus, cond. by William Strickland; issued in 1964 by Composers
Recordings Inc.)

June 12  1896: Premiere: song The All-Enduring (John C. Griggs, Bar), at Center Church, New Haven, Conn.
1933: Ives records two discs at Columbia Graphophone Co. in London, England, yielding the first recording of
  Four Transcriptions from "Emerson", No. 1 (Charles Ives [pf]), released in 1974 by Columbia Records and
by CRI in 1999.

June 14  Flag Day (annual): Symphony No. 2; Variations on "America" (organ or orchestral arr.); song Flag Song

June 15  1904: The excursion steamer "General Slocum" burns and sinks in the East River (New York City). Ives
memorialized the tragedy in a sketch The General Slocum.

June 17  1954: Birth of Ives editor, author, and president of the Ives Society board J. Peter Burkholder. Burkholder has
edited choral Processional: Let There Be Light for future publication.
1959: Premiere: songs Nov. 2, 1920 (An Election) and Romanzo (di Central Park) (Frank Baker [voice type
unidentified] and Henry Brant [pf]), at Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont
1965: Premiere: song Old Home Day (Brian Dennis [Bar] and Roger Smalley [pf], at the Royal College of Music,
London, England

June 20  Summer solstice (annual): orch. Central Park in the Dark in the Good Old Summertime; orch/chamber Gong on
  the Hook and Ladder; Sonata No. 4 for Violin and Piano; song Feldeinsamkeit (In Summer Fields)

June 21  1907: Diary: Ives and Harmony Twichell see Twelfth Night. Ives set to music at least one text of Shakespeare,
  A Sea Dirge (from The Tempest).

June 23  1908: Frank Fichtl leads the Hyperion Theater Orchestra in a reading of The Pond, New Haven, Conn.
1982: First recording: Pre-First Sonata for Violin and Piano, mvt. i (Eugene Gratovich [vn] and George Flynn
[pf]; issued 1982 by Finnadar Records)

June 25  1955: Birth of baritone Thomas Hampson at Elkhart, Indiana. Hampson sang in the first recording of some of Ives’s
German songs: Du bist wie eine Blume, Ein Ton, Frühlingslied, Gruss, Marie, Minnelied, Rosamunde,
  Rosenzweige, and Wiegenlied.

June 26  1898: First Sunday at Bloomfield, New Jersey’s First Presbyterian Church. For Bloomfield Presbyterian, Ives
composed "Adeste Fideles" in an Organ Prelude and Psalm 100.

June 27  1898: Yale College Class Day, Ives chairman of Ivy Committee (delivering the required comedic address and
ceremonially planting the class’s ivy inside the court of Vanderbilt Hall).

June 28  1904: Sexennial Reunion of Yale’s Class of 1898, New Haven, Conn; Trio for Violin, Violoncello, and Piano
begun.
1908: Diary: "Sunday morning walk . . . near Stockbridge" (inspiring Ives’s "The Housatonic at Stockbridge", mvt. iii
of Three Places in New England (Orchestral Set No. 1)

June 29  1898: Yale Commencement for Charles Ives and his class (inspiring the song A Songs for Anything—Yale,
  Farewell!)
1911: Birth of conductor (and composer) Bernard Herrmann at New York City. Herrmann (noted for his music for
Hollywood films) conducted the CBS Radio Orchestra and performed or recorded many Ives works, including
  Symphonies No. 2 and 3, The Rainbow, Largo cantabile: Hymn, and others.