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A Composite Approach to Ives's ‘Cage’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2010

SCOTT MURPHY
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Abstract

Larry Starr's analysis of Charles Ives's ‘The Cage’, in his book A Union of Diversities, contrasts with most readings of the song in that he focuses on how the points of congruence between the highly dissimilar vocal and piano parts form a ‘powerful unity’. However, he provides no specific analytical method for examining this unity more closely. This study offers one such method for ‘The Cage’, revealing a path within a virtual, bounded space that correlates with some of the syntactic and semantic aspects of the song's text. These syntactic correlations also hold true in a similar passage in Ives's song ‘Majority’.

Type
Articles
Information
Twentieth-Century Music , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , September 2008 , pp. 179 - 193
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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