IVES: “DECORATION DAY” AND BRAHMS: CONCERTO FOR VIOLIN AND CELLO

By Judith Eckelmeyer

(GRACE WOODS MUSIC SESSION MAY 25, 2026)

---

Charles Ives, 1947

IVES: “DECORATION DAY”

​In 1995, teacher and author of liner notes for Decca Philippe Danel interviewed conductor David Zinman, then conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. The topic: Charles Ives and his music. Danel’s first question: “Would you consider Ives to be more a modernist or a traditionalist?” Zinman’s response in part: ​

David Zinman conducting the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra in 1971

Ives would never have thought of himself as a traditionalist. Traditionalists were, at best, ‘lily-boys’ (this euphemism for critics), or ‘old ladies’ (his description of the typical concert-goer fo the day), or at worst, ‘mental-musico-defectives like Rollo’ (‘Rollo’ being Ives’ symbol for someone who is unable to imagine anything beyond what he has been taught.) ‘Personally’, wrote Ives in his curmudgeonly Memos,, ‘I feel like cussing or sat least sidetracking the inevitable tag ‘modern’ or ‘ultra-modern’, etc. It has tobe used til something else better is found….’

Horatio Parker, September 15, 1863

Indeed, Ives was his teacher Horatio Parker’s Bad Boy, iconoclastic to a fault, and per Danel,  “his music [is] of a fierce, chaotic independence and of a stubborn and rebellious nature”. No previously recognized composer, whether European or New Englander (as Ives was), had ever thought of composing in so unconventional a manner, much less actually written in such a way.

Charles Ives House in Danbury, Connecticut

Born in Danbury, Connecticut in 1874, lves grew up with music in his family; his father George was a US Army bandleader during the Civil War, and as a civilian after the war directed a variety of musical ensembles and taught music theory and instruments in his hometown. He was Charles’ early teacher of harmony and counterpoint and composition.  George’s extraordinary tutelage included encouraging Charles to experiment with untraditional harmonies such as bitonal and polytonal systems—both of which skirted the sense of a harmonic “home” so characteristic of tonality (then common to virtually all Western music). Virtually untethered from conventional thinking of music, Charles absorbed the sounds of music that were inherent in his personal environment: church hymns, patriotic songs, popular songs by composer such as Steven Foster, and even the odd experience of hearing two bands on opposite sides of the town square paying simultaneously. ​

At age 19 Charles moved to New Haven and a year later entered Yale University, where he studied with composer Horatio Parker. A talented athlete, he was a varsity football player and based his senior thesis on a Yale-Princeton game. Although his father died while he was still in college, Charles continued composing in his daring and unconventional manner, also serving as a church organist for a time. After graduating from Yale, he began work as an actuary for the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York and in 1907 founded a new independent insurance company with a friend. He stayed at this firm until he retired but continued to compose in his spare time. After he married Harmony Twitchell in 1908 the couple moved to New York. Continuing in the insurance company, he also composed prolifically until 1927, when he suddenly announced that he couldn’t continue composing because “nothing sounded right”. No one could explain the reason for this. His late years were plagued by heart problems which he called “attacks” and effects of diabetes. He died of a stroke in 1954. ​

Ives composed in a wide variety of genres—songs, symphonies, suites, choral music and much more. “Decoration Day” (1912), the original name for today’s Memorial Day, was established in 1868 to honor soldiers who died during the Civil War. After WW I, the holiday expanded to include the fallen in any conflict. Ives’s composition of that title is one of four pieces composed 1911-1914, later gathered as A Symphony: New England Holidays; Igor Stravinsky is said to have called “Decoration Day” a “masterpiece, with an ending that is the loneliest and one of the most touching I know of” (Wikipedia, Decoration Day). Ives described the work in his Memos (1932):

In the early morning the gardens and woods around the village are the meeting places of those who, with tender memories and devoted hands, gather the flowers for the Day’s Memorial. During the forenoon as the people join each other on the Green there is felt, at times, a fervency and intensity—a shadow perhaps of the fanatical harshness—reflecting old Abolitionist days. It is a day as Thoreau suggests, when there is a pervading consciousness of “Nature’s kinship with the lower order—man.”
After the Town Hall is filled with the Spring’s harvest of lilacs, daisies, and peonies, the parade is slowly formed on Main Street. First come the three Marshals on plough horses (going sideways), then the Warden and Burgesses in carriages, the Village Cornet Band, the G.A.R., two by two, the Militia (Company G), while the volunteer Fire Brigade, drawing a decorated hose-cart, with its jangling bells, brings up the rear—the inevitable swarm of small boys following. The march to Wooster Cemetery is a thing a boy never forgets. The roll of the muffled drums and Adeste Fideles answer for the dirge. A little girl on a fencepost waves to her father and wonders if he looked like that at Gettysburg.
After the last grave is decorated, Taps sounds out through the pines and hickories, while a last hymn is sung. Then the ranks are formed again, and “we all march to town” to a Yankee stimulant—Reeves’ inspiring Second Regiment Quickstep—though, to many a soldier, the sombre thoughts of the day underlie the tunes of the band. The march stops—and in the silence of the shadow of the early morning flower-song rises over the Town, and the sunset behind the West Mountain breathes its benediction upon the Day. [Memos 101-102].

Charles Edward Ives | New York Phil | cond. Leonard Bernstein
​00:00 I. Washington’s Birthday (1909, 1913) 11:38 II. Decoration Day (1912) 20:12 III. The Fourth of July (1912) 25:50 IV. Thanksgiving and Forefathers’ Day (1904)

---

Johannes Brahms

BRAHMS: CONCERTO FOR VIOLIN AND CELLO

Over the course of his compositional life, Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) collaborated with a number of instrumentalists, many of whom were concert soloists. As a young concert pianist himself, and beginning his compositional career with works for piano and, often, voices, he only slowly expanded his sights to string and wind instruments. As was his nature, he proceeded systematically, writing for small solo ensembles—chamber music—and finally graduating to full orchestra.

Ede Reményi (l.) and Brahms in 1852

In the course of this autodidacticism and in spite of the fact that his father was a string bass player, Brahms recognized his lack of effective working knowledge of the violin, so he leaned on the technical knowledge of the violin by well-established practitioners. The first of these was Ede Reményi, aka Eduard Hoffmann (1828-98), one of many refugees fleeing Austria’s and Russia’s suppression of the 1848 uprising in Hungary. Reményi, a violin virtuoso, and the very talented young pianist Brahms toured Germany in 1853. Through this association, Brahms learned the alla zingaresstyle (Gypsie) and csardas dances of Hungarian music; these elements would become features of Brahms’ music for the rest of his compositional life. In fact, Brahms celebrated this Hungarian style in over two dozen Hungarian dances for piano and over a dozen part songs referencing Gypsie life, and cameo appearances of the Gypsie idiom in other compositions.

Joseph Joachim by Charles Reutlinger

Then in 1848 Brahms first briefly met a second guide to violin technique: Joseph Joachim (1831-1901), but they met again in 1853. The close friendship they established included also Joseph’s wife Amalie, a singer and voice teacher. It was to Joachim that Brahms turned for technical advice for his writing for violins and a critique of his compositions; he also performed major works for violin by Brahms: violin sonatas and chamber works, the premiere of the Violin Concerto in D, and the premiere of the Double Concerto in A minor.

The Double Concerto, i.e. Concerto for Violin and Cello in A minor, Op. 102, touches on Brahms’ friendships with both Reményi and the Joachims. Reményi’s influence is apparent in the final movement of the concerto where a vibrant Gypsie flavor presides. Joachim’s influence is more subtle but extensive: the very existence of the concerto is considered a healing of the bitter rift between the two men that began with Amalie Joachim’s divorce from Joseph, and Brahms’ (perhaps unwisely) taking Amalie’s part and supporting her through this trauma. Many years passed in silence between the two men. Then in 1887 Brahms offered to dedicate the new Double Concerto to Joseph. Joseph accepted the dedication and performed the premiere. The cellist was Robert Hausmann, who had requested the concerto of Brahms. Brahms conducted. This successful reconciliation was followed by several more works for Joachim. ​

The Double Concerto is in three movements (fast, slow, fast). The conventionality of this structure leaves unsaid the unique issues in a work for these two instruments. Unlike previous double or triple concertos, the two instruments from the same family but of widely separated ranges would have to be independent participants but also collegial in their work. And, they had to relate to the larger orchestra without being overpowered. Brahms “invented” a number of ways for them to practice these features in a remarkable balancing act. To begin, he wrote cadenzas for the soloists as separate performers and also in duet—an octave apart. Continuing through the movement, Brahms introduced both tension between the three forces and alliance among them. A striking passage explores his ideal of complementarity by having the violinists melody sink from the heights to within the cello’s range, where the cello picks up the melody to continue downward to its bottom notes—and then reverse direction. The extension of string range in this manner suggests a “super instrument”. (Brahms created the same kind of extension in his German Requiem with choral voices some 20 years earlier.) It’s not hard to recognize the efforts of the composer to provide metaphors for Joachim and Brahms’ reconciliation, a peace offering that achieved its goal.

Critics and even close friends at the time thought of the Double Concerto as dry, unapproachable, joyless, tedious and wearisome. With time, though, audiences have increasingly perceived the unique qualities and beauties of the work. 

This is Brahms’ last orchestral work.

Johannes Brahms - Double Concerto for Violin and Cello in A Minor, Op. 102
​Allegro (00:00:00) II Andante (00:19:47) III Vivace non troppo (00:27:36)
ESTONIAN NATIONAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
​NEEME JÄRVI, conductor ANNA-LIISA BEZRODNY, violin JAN-ERIK GUSTAFSSON, cello

---

Judith Eckelmeyer ©2026