(Gabriel and I recently held a trans-conti­nen­tal iChat to further illu­mi­nate our evening on the Ecstatic Music Festival. Here’s the transcript.) 

Gabriel Kahane: Hi Timo 

Timo Andres: Hey there! What’s on the menu today?

GK: I’m trying to remember how it was that we came to present this wacky Ives program, and I feel like it had some­thing to do with one of our first culinary (mis)adventures, no? Did it involve risotto?

TA: They all blur together. Like soup.

GK: Oh wait, it involved BLT’s!! You made olive bread.

TA: Oh right. Those crazy Thai-style BLT’s I made for you

GK: Yes. They were so good.

TA: So this concert is like a Thai person making a BLT.

GK: That’s kind of what it is— wherein I am the Thai person, and the BLT is the Ives song. Or, you are the Thai Person and my pop songs are the BLT. Does that sound right?

TA: I think the program itself is a BLT. A bunch of layered ingre­di­ents that are only tangen­tially related but end up working together to form a bril­liant whole.

GK: If you do say so yourself. But yes.

TA: And we are but the mayo.

GK: Yes, true. But let’s leave culinary metaphor aside for the moment and talk about the vernac­u­lar in concert music.

TA: You are so goal-oriented here. It’s great. It’s a funny idea for me because clas­si­cal music is sort of my vernac­u­lar. I’m not one of those hip young kids you hear about who “grew up playing drums in a punk band” or “writing hip hop beatz”.

GK: Yeah, I hear you. In a way, it’s my vernac­u­lar as well. Do you see, as I do, that the tradi­tion of bringing the vernac­u­lar into concert music is one that has essen­tially been contin­u­ous for the last four hundred years, but was briefly inter­rupted in the decades follow­ing WWII?

TA: I tend not to like to think of music history as linear. 

GK: Okay, but say— the quodli­bet of the Goldberg Vari­a­tions. To me this is one of the prime instances of the sacred and the profane coming together to make a deli­cious croque monsieur. Do you know the lyrics to those songs? 

TA: Yes, some­thing about chard stem soup. It’s a pretty high class example. 

GK: Yes! But then the other one is like kind of soft-core. “I wouldn’t leave the house if…she is so “wet”? “moist”?

TA: So what your saying is, is Bach alt-classical? 

GK: I mean… it’s DURRTY. But no. In fact, what I’m propos­ing is that the notion that alt-clas­si­cal is a new movement is histor­i­cally myopic. 

TA: I would agree. 

GK: In fact, we’re just picking up a thread that got dropped from, say, 1945 to 1970. 

TA: Well, it got dropped by the “academic” side of “clas­si­cal music”. Mean­while Lenny was all about electric guitarz. 

GK: Yeah, and we can forgive him for Mass, because his heart was in the right place? But talk to me more about how you don’t view music history as being linear. 

TA: I’m a big believer in “growing pains” periods in music history. Johann Stamitz anyone? 

GK: But when you say non-linear, are you even reject­ing a broadly linear “three steps forward, two steps back” scheme? 

TA: It’s like the universe. It’s a star being born, or some­thing. It doesn’t happen overnight. But many can be forming/dying simultaneously. 

GK: Uh huh. So Ives is great in that sense. He’s kind of a post­mod­ernist avant-la-lettre, no?

TA: and with that, my neighbor has fired up the Rihanna 

GK: Oh sweet. I love Umbrella

TA: I would say he’s more of a magpie. I don’t know if self-conscious post­moder­nity can be ascribed. In fact I think his sensi­bil­ity was quite romantic. 

GK: Mmm, yes, well this is a differ­ent talk than we’re giving up at Columbia. I guess through the thicket of the harmony, there is a romantic impulse there. 

TA: All differ­ent sorts of composers can find some­thing to love in Ives. He’s like our Honest Abe. He can do no wrong. 

GK: Which sort of brings me to the notion that he’s a great jumping off point or genealog­i­cal antecedent for both you and me. As totally differ­ent as our voices are, I think there’s maybe— I feel icky talking about this, but— 

TA: Cause you’re a Repub­li­can and I’m a Democrat? 

GK: Yes.

TA: (jk, we’re both libertarians) 

GK: —no but we both have this soft spot for the 19^th century that is more explicit than in the music of some of our contem­po­raries. Not that it’s about lifting or quoting, but there’s an affinity. 

TA: Right, we get together and play Brahms waltzes, which are the best thing ever. 

GK: And also, ideo­log­i­cally, it seems like we’re both commit­ted to drawing a line through history, whether it’s LINEAR or not, to connect some dots at various histor­i­cal train depots. 

TA: I think Ives strug­gled to get away from that 19^th-century “parlor” tradi­tion but that it was pretty deeply rooted. 

GK: But some­times that “movement against” or “movement away from” is what yields the most satis­fy­ing work. The struggle becomes the state­ment, perhaps? In the same way that Brahms 1 is all about not being Beethoven 9. Until he finally gives in. 

TA: In our case it may be more about juxta­po­si­tion. We’re not trying to say liter­ally “This influ­enced this influ­enced this”. It’s more like, what if you put nước chấm on a BLT? Wouldn’t that be interesting? 

GK: Which is why I partic­u­larly love these Bach/Kurtag tran­scrip­tions. There’s some­thing about him evoking the over­tones of the organ that feels so right in juxta­po­si­tion with Ives. (devotion!)

GK: Yes. So we’re kind of about juxta­po­si­tion on the one hand, and on the other, there is some­thing about inter­tex­tu­al­ity within our respec­tive bodies of work. Some Connecti­cut Gospel is somehow the twin of the slow movement of my piano sonata inasmuch as both pieces inter­po­late some harmonic gestures that to my ears come very much out of a “pop” tradition. 

TA: Yes. In fact this program is very much about harmony, if you want to get geeky about it. I don’t know that I can put it into words too clearly, which is actually one of the reasons I’m crazy about harmony. But I would argue that there is a common thread of “devo­tional” harmony in Western Musics that you can pretty much follow from Bach all the way through the romantic era, and then it joins the vernac­u­lar mid-stream. Ives certainly has it. In The Housatonic at Stock­bridge the entire thing is grounded by these deep, organ-hymn chords and churchy voice leadings. It’s like Brahms’s German Requiem down there. 

GK: It’s inter­est­ing though that you brought up this notion of harmony as the mayo on our program­matic BLT because, while it might seem facile to make such a state­ment on the surface, I don’t know that a lot of contem­po­rary music is partic­u­larly concerned with harmony. 

TA: Harmonic simplic­ity maybe. Not to say our music is, like, Ferney­hough over here. 

GK: I think this is another thing that you and I have in common is that we’re approach­ing harmony in what could be perceived as either a reac­tionary or progres­sive way depend­ing on one’s point of view. 

TA: I try not to get too polit­i­cal about it. I know what I like. 

GK: Yeah, I didn’t mean that in ideo­log­i­cal terms. I guess what I was going to say is that what I find appeal­ing about your music is that in a piece like Some Connecti­cut Gospel the juxta­po­si­tion is Mahleresque chro­mati­cism vs. triadic glowing warmth (as opposed to harmonic stasis vs. triadic glowing warmth, which is not really a juxta­po­si­tion for me). 

TA: Yes yes. Ivesian thickets. Ives and Mahler have a lot in common. Maybe that’s another iChat. 

GK: Another program, even.

TA: And Some Connecti­cut Gospel is directly about Ives. 

GK: I hear that. So have we gotten on the nose enough about why our program is the way it is?

TA: I think so. Do you have any ques­tions, Gabriel? 

GK: I think this is pleas­antly vague. 

TA: Have you decided what hymn you’re troping on? 

GK: No. But that’s my homework for this tour. Have you? 

TA: Thinking about doing At the River. Ives set it, so did Copland, but I just can’t stay away. 

GK: N.B. I am so over-caffeinated right now 

TA: I am in a post-mine­strone lull. That’s also the genre of music I write. Post-Minestrone.