Symphony No. 3, “The Camp Meeting”

• Ives began work on this symphony around 1904, and revised it around 1908-11.¹
• Ives’s 3^rd Symphony premiered in New York on April 5, 1946, in a performance by the New York Little Symphony, conducted by Lou Harrison.² Harrison also edited the work for publication in 1947.³
  • Harrison was one of several American modernists who embraced Ives’s as-yet rather obscure music in the 1920s and 30s. He edited several of Ives’s compositions for publication. 
  • Fun fact: Lou Harrison was born in Portland, Oregon. 
• When Ives was a child, his father sometimes joined in revival camp meetings, playing his cornet to lead the gospel songs. These songs became one of several sources of musical quotations Ives used in his mature compositions. (He also frequently quoted church hymns and popular parlor songs.)⁴ 
• Each movement in Ives’s 3^rd Symphony is based on a (now lost) organ piece. Ives began his career as a professional organist at age 14 and wrote many works for the instrument.⁵

Movements 

1. Old Folks Gatherin’ 
2. Children’s Day  
3. Communion⁶

1. J. Peter Burkholder, James B. Sinclair and Gayle Sherwood Magee, “Ives, Charles,” Grove Music Online (October 16, 2013), accessed October 13, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002252967. 
2. “Symphony No. 3 (Ives, Charles),” IMSLP, accessed October 13, 2021, https://imslp.org/wiki/Symphony_No.3_(Ives%2C_Charles). 
3. Burkholder, Sinclair and Magee, “Ives, Charles,” Grove Music Online.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. “Symphony No. 3 (Ives, Charles),” IMSLP.