Charles Ives' Three Places in New England: An Interpretation and a Conductor's Guide

My personal journey through Ives' music is currently focused on version 4 of his Three Places in New England (the version that is the truest realization of his original instrumentation and orchestration), through the second edition of said version, published in 2008 with editing by conductor James Sinclair and engraving by Thomas Brodhead, both of whom represent the Charles Ives Society. Despite being more than a century old, the ideas contained within Three Places in New England are as contemporary and pressing as ever, and the duality of its scope is impressive: it gazes outward with worldly ambition alongside intimate reflections. Whereas Aaron Copland's oeuvre frequently meditates on the possibility of the American Dream, elusive as that may be, Ives' mature works reflect an American reality, where an array of cultures meet as the American experiment, and the ensuing mix of sounds is equal parts dissonant and beautiful. With this inspiration in mind, I set forth to gather ideas pertaining to Charles Ives' Three Places in New England, intending to build a thorough guide to interpreting and realizing it