I appreciate Swafford's article. Ives is still, I feel, underrated. Everyone knows he was a maverick and a character; he was also a great composer. I've been a fan of Ives' work for a long time now, and I agree that the fourth symphony is his masterpiece. But another work of his that has deep resonance for me is his Second Orchestral Set, which Ives himself once declared to be his best work.

On Friday, May 7, 1915, at 9:30 AM EST, German U-boats torpedoed the American liner Lusitania, killing some 1,200 people and leaving the United States little choice but to join in the protracted, bloody conflict now known as World War I. Thanks to radio and wire services, most Americans knew about the tragedy by the time of their evening commute home from work. Charles Ives was one of them. His insurance firm, Ives & Myrick, had its offices at 38 Nassau Street. In the notes to his Second Orchestral Set, the third movement of which is entitled "Hanover Square, at the End of Tragic Day," Ives wrote the following:

We were living in an apartment at 27 West 11th Street. The morning paper on the breakfast table gave the news of the sinking of the Lusitania. I remember, going downtown to business, the people on the streets and on the elevated train had something in their faces that was not the usual something. Everybody who came into the office, whether they spoke about the disaster or not, showed a realization of seriously experiencing something. (That it meant war is what the faces said, if the tongues didn't.) Leaving the office and going uptown about 6 o'clock, I took the Third Avenue "L" at the Hanover Square Station [Stone and Pearl Streets, just south of Wall Street]. As I came on the platform, there was quite a crowd waiting for the trains, which had been blocked lower down, and while waiting there, a hand-organ, or hurdy gurdy was playing on a street below. Some workmen sitting on the side of the tracks began to whistle the tune, and others began to sing or hum the refrain. A workman with a shovel over his shoulder came on the platform and joined in the chorus, and the next man, a Wall Street banker with white spats and a cane, joined in it, and finally it seemed to me that everybody was singing this tune, and they didn't seem to be singing for fun, but as a natural outlet for what their feelings had been going through all day long. There was a feeling of dignity all through this. The hand-organ man seemed to sense this and wheeled the organ nearer the platform and kept it up fortissimo (and the chorus sounded out as though every man in New York must be joining in it). Then the first train came and everybody crowded in, and the song eventually died out, but the effect on the crowd still showed. Almost nobody talked-the people acted as though they might be coming out of a church service. In going uptown, occasionally little groups of would start singing or humming the tune.

Now what was the tune? It wasn't a Broadway hit, it wasn't a musical comedy air, it wasn't a waltz tune or a dance tune or an opera tune or a classical tune, or a tune that all of them probably knew. It was (only) the refrain of an old Gospel Hymn that had stirred many people of past generations. It was nothing but--"In the Sweet Bye and Bye." It wasn't a tune written to be sold, or written by a professor of music--but by a man who was but giving out an experience.

This third movement is based on this, fundamentally, and comes from that "L" station. It has secondary themes and rhythms, but widely related, and its general makeup would reflect the sense of many people living, working, and occasionally going through the same deep experience, together.

The movement graphically depicts this episode through an imaginative use of the orchestral pallette. First one hears percussion and piano softly creating the clicks and clunks of commuter train tracks --never completely silent even when there's no train in the station. The woodwinds play the sound of faraway horns and squealing of brakes. Eventually the cellos enter with the tune, tentatively at first, and then the rest of the orchestra gradually comes in, building toward the climax, eight minutes in, when we hear the wildly dissonant, cacaphonic sound of the train rolling into the station, with the gospel hymn triumphantly blaring in the brass and timpani above it. The movement ends quietly, with the same noises with which it began, while a hurdy-gurdy softly plays the tune.

As Swafford noted, Ives was famous for his juxtaposition of disparate elements in his compositions, which may have had its origins in his father's innovative teaching techniques, such as dividing his band in two and having them enter the playing field from opposite directions, playing two different tunes in two different keys, and coming together in a wild jumble in which, however, the individual parts were perfectly coherent.

I'll never forget that on Friday, September 14, 2001, I went to Union Square, where two thousand people were gathered to hold vigil for the victims of the World Trade Center tragedy. Many of them were standing in a semi-circle on the low steps facing 14th Street, looking as if they could be members of a choir. They were all singing different songs, however, and it seemed as if about half of them were holding candles singing "Give Peace a Chance" while the other half were waving flags and singing "God Bless America". Seeing and hearing these people all passionately holding their respective melodies as they tried to out-sing each other, I was reminded of both the healing, community-building power of music and the deep divisions within the American nation that Ives observed and expressed so eloquently almost a century ago.