‘1, 2, 3’ (1921) seems to have originated in a 1906 ‘take-off’ for chamber orchestra, entitled
Rube trying to walk 2 and 3!!. ‘Written as a joke, and sounds like one! … at 2.45 A.M.’, Ives wrote on the sketch. This music became the basis of his scherzo
Over the Pavements, and in 1921 he adapted it for voice and piano in
114 Songs. In this rhythmic and metric study of two-against-three, the 3/8 time signature is continually subverted by the two-quaver figures in the bass, which tend to walk all over the bar lines. (The song might be regarded as a comic counterpart to
Walking.)
from notes by Calum MacDonald © 2005
