Three Quarter Tone Pieces

Composer: Charles Ives
Year: 1925
Instruments: Piano
Sheet Music:
⋅ Alfred Music
⋅ Ficks Music
⋅ Performers Music

This work is scored for two pianos tuned a quarter-tone apart, Ives taking his inspiration from a whimsical childhood memory of two matronly sisters who played their Sunday School classes that way. In 1923, Ives sold insurance to the pianist E. Robert Schmitz. Casually learning of Ives’ interest in microtonality, Schmitz informed him about a two-manual quarter-tone piano lately designed by another pianist, Hans Barth. Interested, Ives completed the Three Pieces by the end of 1924. Barth and Sigmund Klein premiered the “Chorale” at Chickering Hall on February 8, 1925, along with an explanatory talk given by Schmitz. Ives’ own comments, entitled “Some Quarter-tone Impressions,” appeared in print a month later. The “Largo” remained unperformed until Barth and another pianist premiered it in the Ballroom of the Plaza Hotel in New York, April 9, 1929. Barth repeated the “Chorale” at his two-manual quarter-tone instrument at Carnegie Hall on February 23, 1930. The whole work was not heard until 1967, when Stuart Lanning and George V. Pappastavarou, the latter editing the work from manuscript, recorded the Three Pieces for CBS.