From the Steeples and the Mountains

Program notes

About the Work

From the Steeples and the Mountains dates from 1901, when Ives was in his mid-twenties, three years out of Yale and beginning the career in life insurance that would pay for his composing. It is one of the short experimental pieces he wrote for himself in those years.

The scoring alone makes it unlike anything else of its time: a trumpet, a trombone and four sets of bells. The composer and conductor Gunther Schuller, who conducted it, pointed out that Ives wrote for bell pitches that did not exist in 1901 and are still hard to find, so that every performance has to decide how to realise them with chimes, other tuned percussion or pianos. The idea behind it is one Ives returned to all his life: sound heard across open space, with several sources that take no notice of one another, like the bells of different churches ringing over a New England valley.

What to Listen For

The bells begin almost inaudibly, in pealing patterns that overlap and clash. The trumpet and trombone enter hesitantly with angular lines that copy each other at a distance, and their rhythms grow steadily more intricate as the bells grow louder. The piece is a single crescendo. After three or four minutes it reaches a clangorous peak with everything sounding at once, and then the players stop and leave the bells to ring away into silence.