Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T14:58:37.907Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Charles Ives at ‘Christo's Gates’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2010

DENISE VON GLAHN
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Throughout its 150-year history New York City's Central Park has inspired writers, painters, poets, and musicians. In 1906 Charles Ives was moved by its rich soundscape to compose his orchestral piece Central Park in the Dark; nearly one hundred years later, in 2005, the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude unfurled 7500 saffron-coloured cloth panels for a sixteen-day installation at the park. Although separated by a century, these artworks appear similarly preoccupied with the construction, manipulation, and perception of nature and place, honouring and celebrating the park as a naturalistic setting, while also acknowledging it as a fabricated entity, shaped by human interactions, and as an ongoing cultural project. The present article suggests parallels between Ives's construction of the park in sound, and ‘Christo's Gates’, as the installation became known – parallels that suggest the continuing resonance of Ives's musical contemplation, as well as the issues that occupied its composer as the Gilded Age gave way to the progressive era.

Type
Articles
Information
Twentieth-Century Music , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , September 2008 , pp. 157 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bibliography

‘B after the Fact’ blogspot. ‘Christo's Gates’, 25 February 2005. <http://bafterthefact.blogspot.com/2005/02/christos-gates.html> (accessed 10 September 2008). (accessed 10 September 2008).' href=https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=‘B+after+the+Fact’+blogspot.+‘Christo's+Gates’,+25+February+2005.++(accessed+10+September+2008).>Google Scholar
Barlow, Elizabeth. Frederick Law Olmsted's New York. New York: Praeger, 1972.Google Scholar
Baron, Carol. ‘Efforts on Behalf of Democracy by Charles Ives and His Family’. Musical Quarterly 87 (2004), 6–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blackmar, Elizabeth, and Rosenzweig, Roy. The Park and the People: a History of Central Park. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Blackmar, Elizabeth, and Rosenzweig, Roy. ‘Central Park’, in The Encyclopedia of New York, ed. Jackson, Kenneth T.. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. <http://www.centralpark.com/pages/history.html> (accessed 10 September 2008).Google Scholar
Broyles, Michael. ‘Charles Ives and the American Democratic Tradition’, in Charles Ives and His World, ed. Burkholder, J. Peter. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. 118–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buell, Lawrence. Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment in the U.S. and Abroad. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burkholder, J. Peter. Charles Ives: the Ideas Behind the Music. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Burkholder, J. Peter. All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses of Musical Borrowing. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Central Park Conservancy. The Official Website for Central Park: Virtual Park. <www.centralparknyc.org/site/PageNavigator/virtualpark_main> (accessed 10 September 2008).+(accessed+10+September+2008).>Google Scholar
, Christo and , Jeanne-Claude. Official Website. <http://christojeanneclaude.net> (accessed 10 September 2008).+(accessed+10+September+2008).>Google Scholar
Craven, Jackie. ‘The Gates in Central Park by Christo and Jeanne-Claude’. About.com: Architecture, 2005. <http://architecture.about.com/od/outdoorart/ss/cristogates_10.htm> (accessed 10 September 2008).Google Scholar
Crunden, Robert M. ‘Charles Ives's Place in American Culture’, in An Ives Celebration, ed. Hitchcock, and Perlis, . 4–15.Google Scholar
Curran, Jeanne, and Takata, Susan. ‘Christo's Gates in Central Park’. Dear Habermas 23/4 (2005). <http:www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas/jcls2304.htm> (accessed 10 September 2008).Google Scholar
Fletcher, Tom. ‘New York Architecture Images: Christo's Gates’. <http://www.nyc-architecture.com/CP/cp-gates.htm> (accessed 10 September 2008). (accessed 10 September 2008).' href=https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Fletcher,+Tom.+‘New+York+Architecture+Images:+Christo's+Gates’.++(accessed+10+September+2008).>Google Scholar
Germic, Stephen. American Green: Class, Crisis, and the Deployment of Nature in Central Park, Yosemite, and Yellowstone. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2001.Google Scholar
Hitchcock, H. Wiley. Ives: a Survey of the Music. New York: Institute for Studies in American Music, 1977.Google Scholar
Hitchcock, H. Wiley and Perlis, Vivian, eds. An Ives Celebration: Papers and Panels of the Charles Ives Centennial Festival-Conference. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Johnston, Nancy Retta. Central Park Country: a Tune Within Us, with text by Johnston, Mireille; ed. and with a foreword by Brower, David. New York: Sierra Club/Ballantine Books, 1970.Google Scholar
Mantegna, Gianfranco. Christo and Jeanne-Claude [interview]. Journal of Contemporary Art Online. <http://www.jca-online.com/christo.html> (accessed 10 September 2008).+(accessed+10+September+2008).>Google Scholar
Miller, Sara Cedar. Central Park: an American Masterpiece. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2007.Google Scholar
Morgan, Robert P. ‘Spatial Form in Ives’, in An Ives Celebration, ed. Hitchcock, and Perlis, . 145–158.Google Scholar
Rossiter, Frank. Charles Ives and His America. New York: Liveright, 1975.Google Scholar
Sinclair, James B. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Music of Charles Ives. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Starr, Larry. A Union of Diversities: Style in the Music of Charles Ives. New York: Schirmer Books, 1992.Google Scholar
Tick, Judith. ‘Charles Ives and the Politics of Direct Democracy’, in Ives Studies, ed. Lambert, P.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. 133–160.Google Scholar
Von Glahn, Denise. The Sounds of Place: Music and the American Cultural Landscape. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Von Glahn, Denise. ‘Musikalische Stadtlandschaft: “Central Park in the Dark”’, in Charles Ives, ed. Tadday, Ulrich, Musik-Konzepte 123. Munich: edition text + kritik, 2004. 89–108.Google Scholar
Williams, Timothy. ‘Keeping Great Crowds Off Central Park's Great Lawn’. New York Times, 27 April 2005, Section B, p. 1. <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/27/nyregion/27park.html> (accessed 28 April 2005).Google Scholar
Wirral, Metropolitan Borough of, United Kingdom. Home Page: Birkenhead Park. <http://www.wirral.gov.uk/LGCL/100006/200073/670/content_0001109.html> (accessed 10 September 2008).+(accessed+10+September+2008).>Google Scholar
‘4 Hurt in Park Runaway: Horse Bolts, Throwing Out the Aged Meinhards and Driver’. New York Times, 29 April 1906, p. 1.Google Scholar
‘Increasing Demand for High-Class Apartments’. New York Times, 2 September 1906, p. 17.Google Scholar
‘Prospect Park Runaway: the Cobines, Father and Son, Thrown Out and Severely Injured’. New York Times, 29 April 1906, p. 1.Google Scholar
‘The Artists behind The Gates: Christo and Jeanne-Claude’. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bADfh_JLLo> (accessed 10 September 2008).+(accessed+10+September+2008).>Google Scholar

Scores

Ives, Charles E. The Unanswered Question, for chamber orchestra or chamber ensemble, full score. New York: Southern Music Publishing, 1953.Google Scholar
Ives, Charles E. Central Park in the Dark, full score, ed. Monod, Jacques-Louis. Hillsdale, NY: Boelke-Bomart, 1973.Google Scholar