Music, Race, and Memorialization in Concord, MA: An Analysis of Place and Identity through the Works of Charles Ives.
Topics:
Keywords: Cultural Geography, GIS, Music Geography, Place
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract
Authors:
Mark Joseph Sciuchetti, Jacksonville State University
Denise Von Glahn, Florida State University
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Abstract
Music is one key elements in the construction of place and identity. To explore the role of music in our current lives, the construction of place, and the missing narratives that music can shed light on in a palce, we examine the works of Charles Ives. In 1920, Charles Ives assembled Sonata No. 2 for Piano: Concord, Mass., 1840-1860, a work in four movements associated with Emerson, Hawthorne, the Alcott family, and Thoreau; a work that privileged one version of the place and time over the people. Ives called attention to a New England town closely identified with the nation’s revolutionary history—the site of “the shot heard ‘round the world.” He valorized the reading of the United States as a white, Christian nation of (male) individuals who came together to forge a new polity. As we explore the place and the people associated with Concord, we question:
What can Concord the town and Ives’s Sonata No. 2, say to a diverse population of U.S. citizens, the overwhelming majority of whom have no connection to that place or time? What does Ives’s description of Concord tell us about the memorialization of the past and a place, and who is left out of that narrative (enslaved peoples)? What is their relevance a hundred years after Ives’s composition in a world searching for equality and justice in all environments? “Revisiting Concord” explores the realities of the historic place and considers the missing narratives and lessons both town and piece still hold for listeners.
Music, Race, and Memorialization in Concord, MA: An Analysis of Place and Identity through the Works of Charles Ives.
Category
Paper Abstract