Three Places in New England

Three Places In New England

The Three Places in New England (Orchestral Set No. 1) is a composition for orchestra by American composer Charles Ives. It was composed mainly between 1911 and 1914, although sketches for the work date from 1903, and the latest revisions were made in 1929. The piece is famous for its use of musical quotation and paraphrasing. Three Places consists of three movements in Ives' preferred slow-fast-slow movement order:

I. The "St. Gaudens" in Boston Common (Col. Shaw and his Colored Regiment)

II. Putnam's Camp, Redding, Connecticut

III. The Housatonic at Stockbridge

The three movements are ordered with the longest first and the shortest last, and a complete performance of the piece lasts eighteen or nineteen minutes. As he does in his Orchestral Set No. 2, Ives inverts the fast-slow-fast movement order typical of most three-movement works, using instead a slow-fast-slow order.

The piece has become one of Ives' most commonly performed compositions. It exhibits most of the signature traits of his style: layered textures, with multiple, simultaneous melodies, many of which are recognizable hymn and marching tunes; masses of sound, and tone clusters; and sudden, sharp textural contrasts.

Each of the three movements is named for a place in New England, USA. Each is intended to make the listener experience the unique atmosphere of the place, as though he or she is there. To that end, Ives’ paraphrasing of American folk tunes is a particularly important device, as it provides the listener with tangible reference points from which to access the music. The intention was to make the music accessible in spite of its avant-garde chromaticism.

Three Places in New England aims to paint a picture of American ideals, lifestyle and patriotism at the turn of the twentieth century.