Scherzo Over the Pavements by Charles Ives Score - Sheet Music

SKU: PR.610717910

UPC: 680160425037.

'Over the Pavements' was started one morning when George Lewis and I had the front bedroom in Poverty Flat, 65 Central-Park West. In the early morning, the sounds of people going to and fro, all different steps, and sometimes all the same—the horses, fast trot, canter, sometimes slowing up into a walk (few if any autos in those days)—an occasional trolley throwing all rhythm out (footsteps, horse and man)—then back again. I was struck with how many different and changing kinds of beats, time, rhythms, etc. went on together but quite naturally, or at least not unnaturally when you got used to it—and it struck me often [how] limited, static, and unnatural, almost weak-headed (at least in the one-syllable mental state), the time and rhythm (so called) in music had been: —1-2-, or 1-2-3…This piece, 'Over the Pavements,' is also a kind of takeoff of street dancing, and a cadenza, and some parts of piano pieces thrown in. The cadenza is principally a 'little practice' that I did with Father, of playing the nice chromatic scale not in one octave but in all the octaves—that is, 7ths, 9ths, etc.— good practice for the fingers and ears, especially as each time (up and down) was counted differently: 8-7-6-4-5-3-2-3 -4-5- etc., and accented sometimes on the beginnings of the different phrases. -- Charles Ives.