In Ives and Gershwin’s pieces, there seems to a common theme of music corresponding to the expression of a culture, and a common contrast to that culture based on the composers’ personal styles.

Ives “The Things Our Fathers Loved” is comprised of a soloist and a piano accompaniment. The text of the song discusses everyday aspects of colloquial life in Ives life, as well as a strong nationalist expression. After reading about the piece, I found out that different parts of the piece reflected various contemporary songs. Ives is expressing the American culture he experienced in his piece by these expressions and the lyrics. However, the traditional music is contrasted by Ives take on music, and seems to incorporate dissonance and discord, much like the march we listened to earlier in the semester. The pieces Ives references reflect his style, which results in a contrast between his style and the full expression of American culture. Ultimately, Ives seeks to capture the zeitgeist of his society in a nostalgic, dissonant tone.

Gershwin follows a similar theme to Ives in “Summertime”. The song is an aria sung multiple times throughout the Opera Porgy & Bess, and is a lullaby sung to a baby at the beginning. The opera also hired African American singers to maintain a sense of cultural accuracy in the opera. Gershwin seems to try and capture the culture in African American society, using pentatonic scales (which I found out are scales where the octave is composed of five notes”. The pentatonic is incorporated from the very beginning, with the ascending line of the horns and the descending line of the clarinet. The scale evokes a folky, bluesy feel seeking to reflect the culture as Ives does. However, there is a strong contrast between the lyrics, which are bright and comforting, and the music, which is very much gloomy. At 3:10, the song takes a very up tempo turn, which I think reflects the game of craps that is being played right after the soloist is done singing. Overall, Gershwin follows this theme of capturing a culture, and including contrasts that reflect the composers’ respective style.

Gershwin’s “Summertime” unites elements considered both classical and contemporary. I did not even know Billie Holiday’s “Summertime” was a cover from Porgy and Bess, and it is difficult to believe, after listening to her recording, that this was extracted from an opera.

Gershwin employs the aria but combines jazz elements that make it sound more song-like. The slow harmonic line and minor tonality add a “blues” vibe to the song, and the necessary vocal range to sing this song is so extreme that I cannot even imagine how difficult it is to sing!

The song is opened with the sound of trumpets, and the fragment almost sounds like Hunding’s leitmotif in Die Walküre, which is transformed into a two-note melody played by the clarinet that is subsequently repeated by other instruments. Once the singing begins, we can still hear the underlying repetitive melody, almost rocking the baby to sleep.

However, despite the underlying melody, it is still difficult to believe that “Summertime” is a lullaby. The two-note melody seems to be battling with the rest of the instruments and eventually loses. Gershwin sets up another juxtaposition between a higher pitch, “Summertime…,” and a lower pitch, “easy.” Ironically, the “high” in the “cotton is high” is sung in the lower pitch.

Furthermore, the minor tonality and the accompanying lyrics are far from cheery lullabies. She sings to her baby to wait until his arrival in Heaven; but, in the meantime, nothing will harm him “with your daddy and mammy standing by.” However, the “by” almost sounds like a scream, offering little reassurance that no harm will occur.

The feeling of nostalgia is characteristic of Ives’ “The Things Our Fathers Loved.” Similar to Three Places in New England, this piece transplants the listener to a different time and place. The opening line, “I think there must be a place in the soul all made of tunes, of tunes of long ago,” is representative of his music’s objective. Ives is attempting to extract the listener and bring him into a specific time and location through music.

“The Things Our Fathers Loved” begins, already with marked dissonance, slowly. Rather than saying, “I know,” Ives writes, “I think,” and the opening is demonstrative of his uncertainty. He almost presents his hypothesis with this timid opening, the polar opposite of the opening of “Putnam’s Camp,” and proves it gradually over the course of the piece.

The singing and the accompanying piano paint the scene for us. When he sings, “Aunt Sarah humming Gospels,” the rise in pitch and softer singing prompt us to imagine gospel music, while the softer singing and lighter piano accompaniment that follow provoke images of “summer evenings.”

A cadence between “summer evenings” and “the village cornet band” mark a stark shift in mood. While previously painting a picture for us, Ives now is eliciting a more abstract sentiment: American nationalism. The music almost resembles a potential anthem. However, there is still a remarkable number of dissonances accompanying the music but unlike the introduction, it does not elicit a gloomy and doubtful sentiment. Rather, Ives is representing the struggle and fight, through which “our Fathers” suffered.

However, the shift in mood is only temporary, and Ives returns to the slower melodic line of the opening. The final note is remarkably dissonant and is the last thing heard in the piece. It restates the feelings of nostalgia.

“Summertime” is an aria written by Gershwin for his folk opera Porgy and Bess. The song incorporates jazz elements and classical styles from opera. From the very beginning of the song, Gershwin communicates to listeners that there is a clear tension between the subject matter (summer time) and the execution of the song. In other words, he shows us in a few ways that what is actually being sung in “Summertime” is not reflective of reality.

Usually when you think of summer time (especially summer time in the south) you immediately think of the word “hot”. Therefore, I was initially expecting something with an immediate upbeat rhythm and cheerful melody that created feelings of happiness and excitement that are typically associated with the season. Yet, when you listen to “Summertime” it surprisingly sounds very “cool”. The song sounds very soothing and peaceful, as opposed to excited and fast paced. This “coolness” of affect is clearly intentional because the song is a lullaby that a mother is singing to her child. Gershwin creates this calm and peaceful affect through soothing vocals sung in minor (0:24), the slow-moving harmony which suggest elements of blues (0:34), and by the lyrics themselves (Summer Time/ And the livin’ is easy).

However, the execution of the song “summertime” is purposefully ironic, because the woman is singing about the peacefulness of summertime, but in the opera the residents of “Catfish Row” live a life that is anything but peaceful. She also mentions that her husband is rich, but in reality he is not and they actually live on the margins. Therefore, Gershwin reveals to us the “falseness” of what is being sung by communicating contradictions present in the opera itself, but also  by deliberately going against our expectations of what summer time should sound like. This is perhaps reinforced by the decision to make the song a lullaby. Lullabies are what parents sing to their children to create a peaceful environment and make them go to sleep, the truth is not supposed to be told in a lullaby. Yet the lullaby serves two purposes in Gershwin’s work: (1) it agrees with what is being said in the lyrics by depicting a peaceful melody, but (2) it also challenges the peace and happiness that is being communicated in the lyrics by creating a very sad affect that is at odd with happiness. In this way, Gershwin presents listeners with a challenge: the lullaby seems to agree with the reality depicted in the lyrics, but also functions to challenge it.

We do not get an upbeat melody that is perhaps more in line with what summer time sounds like until the very end of the song (3:16 – 3: 28). This instrumental segment functions as recitative and symbolizes the transition “back to reality” after the mother has finished singing to her child. One can imagine the characters scurrying around the stage, after the mother has just finished singing. Perhaps, this is another way that Gershwin is communicating the tension between what we expect to hear and what we actually hear. What’s also very interesting about Summer time is how differently the song sounds when it is sung in different vocal styles. In the version we listened to, Harolyn Blackwell intentionally sings in a low, soothing operatic voice. However, in other versions (such as the one by Ella Fitzgerald) we get a more jazzy style of singing that sounds much different from the “cool” lullaby sung by Blackwell.

Gershwin wrote “Summertime” in 1935 as a part of his self-titled “folk opera,” Porgy and Bess. He wanted the “opera” to reflect the folk spirituals of the African American south but still have its own consistent musical form. “Summertime” is an example of the blending of American jazz and spirituals with the classical “operatic” form.

The instrumental texture of the piece is influenced by the classical genre of music. It’s instrumentation is a classical orchestra, showcased in an introduction that features woodwinds that gradually add layers of texture. The vocal line however, mimics American folk spirituals. The melody is simple and repetitive and it works to express the emotional depth of the lyrics. The singer’s style also mimics the genre, with thin vibrato and a clear, soulful sound.  These elements are especially clear at the start of the song at 0:22, when the line rises and the singer crescendos through the lyric “summertime,” to depict the deep life of the season in one word.

These two seemingly contrasting lines work together, with the instrumental line adding emotional undercurrent to the steady melody of the vocal line. An example of this is at 1:43, when the instrumentation crescendos and grows in texture to express the depth of the lyrics. The vocal line remains steady, but the instrumental line moves quickly through its melody to express movement. The two lines work together to convey the depth of the spiritual and set the stage for the geographically specific story of the folk opera.

What struck me about Gershwin’s “Summertime” was how it was able to simultaneously blend a sense of musical drama and tension with the serenity required of a lullaby.  Like most arias we have encountered in the course thus far, this one, too, provides the audience with insight on the character who sings it. Here, as the mother sings to her child about the ease and peace of summertime, we can imagine the sense of protection and warmth she feels towards her child. However, what was interesting to me was how the soft and pleasant lyrics are not always complemented by sweet sounds, but accompanied by tense musical undertones instead.

For example, when the song opened, I felt the sense of calmness I would expect listening to a lullaby. The song begins with a low bass sound (0:00 to 0:05) that creates a soothing affect. However, this peace is fleeting due to the quick transition to the minor key (0:06 to 0:16). Moreover, the prominent repetition of a short, low tune at 0:10, 0:11, and 0:13 sounds ominous. However, before any substantial feeling of unease could really settle within me, I heard pleasant bell chimes (0:17, 0:19, 0:20). These bells softened any sense of foreboding I was beginning to feel. Just within the first twenty seconds, Gershwin’s lullaby is thus both sweet-sounding and slightly tense.

When the mother begins her aria, the instrumentation is soft and takes a subsidiary role to her singing. However, at 0:50, the instrumentation takes over, and there is a crescendo and repetition of a short, quick, ascending tune. The rapid repetition of this tune contrasts with the drawn out singing style that we hear from the mother just seconds before. Moreover, at 0:55, this tune repeats again, but is presented in a much lower, darker form. Yet, once the mother starts singing again, the content of her words are fully devoid of tension. The mother says, “Your daddy’s rich/ And your mamma’s good lookin.’” The apparent incongruity between what the mother sings and the music that precedes her could be due to the fact that Clara, the mother who sings this lullaby in Porgy and Bess, is actually married to a fisherman who does not make much money at all. My interpretation of this lyrical and instrumental incompatibility is that it conveys the discrepancy between what the mother wants her daughter to hear in this lullaby and what the nature of their actual life is. This could explain the duality in affect (tense, ominous vs. sweet, soft) that pervades the lullaby.

Perhaps the most striking moment of contrast for me was in the final twenty seconds of the song, once the mother has stopped singing. Her final words are “There’s a’nothing can harm you / With daddy and mamma standing by.” I expected these words to be followed by soft, mellifluous sounds, or even just to conclude the song themselves. Instead, the mood becomes extremely dark at 3:05. There is a crescendo that begins at 3:08, and the instrumentation takes on more complexity as the music loudens, with a trumpet adding to the mix at 3:12 and a cymbalic crash at 3:15. The notes that follow are rapid, like the footsteps of someone trying to escape, not like someone who is entering into a peaceful sleep. Whenever I felt a rise in tension in the earlier parts of the song, I was almost always quickly relieved, by the introduction of soft bells or vocals, for example, and I was somehow once again brought back to the mode of a lullaby. However, the very end of this song created a great deal of tension with no release, and I lost the sense of a lullaby by this point. Keeping in mind that this aria was part of a larger opera, it is possible that Gershwin intentionally did not provide a release of tension here in order to remove his audience from the mindset of a lullaby and transition them to the next scene in the program. Either way, I found his dualistic, complex musical depiction of a lullaby to be fascinating and useful as a plot device.

The Things our Fathers Loved starts out sounding like a few other short piano and vocal pieces or even a recitative. The voice sings lyrics and the piano seems to echo or at least mimic or enhance the mood of the vocals. At times, the duet even creates a monophonic feel. This is perhaps the introduction as the protagonist sings of a place ‘in the soul.’ This place happens to be long ago: probably a generation ago as his they were ‘the things our fathers loved.’

At about 52 seconds into the piece, the mood changes dramatically. This is due to the timbre of the singers voice, the tempo, and the shortness of the notes as opposed to long dragged out and mellow notes. The singer then sings about people singing and a band playing and it makes the listener think of a happy and better time. He sings mostly about song and music that was enjoyed during this period in his or maybe his father’s life. It sounds uplifting and joyful but then becomes a bit minor and tension starts to build up as he is singing ‘red white and blue.’ At this point, there also seems to be a lot going on with the piano. Much like in Ives’ other piece, Putnam’s Camp, it sounds like there could be multiple melodies being played at the same time creating some sort of dissonance with consonant melodies.

At 1’32 into the song, the tension is released and the mood goes back to that of the beginning. It sounds more sad and the interpretation could be that the singer realizes that the happy memories are of the past and only exist in his soul now.

This composition as a whole, although short, takes us through a brief story of a nostalgic musician who reminisces of a better time with music and singing, only to end on the same low note the piece started with.