I found Ives’ The Things our Fathers Loved to offer a very rewarding listening experience. I particularly liked the first half, in which the voice and the piano interact in a sometimes more and sometimes less consonant way. The general atmosphere of irresolution made the few moments of consonance more salient. In general, I found the suspension of tonal expectations particularly in this stretch of music to have the effect of enriching my experience of the music’s development. Perhaps this sense is intensified by the music’s tendency to move from the more dysphoric mood of the beginning to the ecstatic recollections of the singer.

This shift toward a more excited affect is realized in part through a more upbeat piano section that intensifies in volume as the piece reaches its end. At the same time, the piano part includes more and more dissonant chords that feel drive the music more at a rhythmic level than a melodic one. At the end of the piece, the mood becomes more depressed once again, as if from exhaustion. The tempo slows drastically and the piano part communicates a much bleaker affect.

Overall, the experience is not one of joy, though it is quite multi-dimensional. Ives’ polytonality enables him to express the whole range of emotions, as well as a kind of rich, affective ambiguity. His use of different rhythmic features in the first and second part of the piece is also used quite effectively for expressive purposes.