Recordings
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Ives: Symphonies Nos 2 & 3
CDA67525
This album is not available for download
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Ives: Symphonies Nos 2 & 3
SACDA67525
Super-Audio CD
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Details
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Donnie Ray Albert (baritone), Dallas Symphony Chorus, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Litton (conductor)
Track 9 on SACDA67525
[5'13]
Super-Audio CD
Copyright holder as reported by MCPS: United Music Publishers
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Ives seems to have come across the text in a review of Lindsay’s poetry published in the New York Independent on 12 January 1914, since he sets only the thirty-one lines quoted in that review. The poem’s musical possibilities – and also no doubt the fervour of its Gospel religion – clearly fired him, and he had soon composed a setting (he called it a ‘glory trance’) for voice and piano. This was not published in his collection of 114 Songs, maybe because the possibility of using larger forces was present from the beginning. Ives made some sketches towards a brass band version, and a male chorus form. In 1934 the composer John J Becker, one of Ives’s staunchest admirers, arranged General Booth for bass voice, chorus and chamber orchestra, in which form it has become best known. But it remains a stunning tour de force in the original song version.
from notes by Calum MacDonald © 2005
