A Symphony: New England Holidays

A Symphony: New England Holidays, also known as A New England Holiday Symphony or simply a Holiday Symphony, is a composition for orchestra written by Charles Ives. It took Ives from 1897 to 1913 to complete all four movements. The four movements in order are:

  1. Washington's Birthday
  2. Decoration Day
  3. The Fourth of July
  4. Thanksgiving and Forefathers' Day

The movements coincide with each season; winter, spring, summer, and fall, respectively. While together these pieces are called a symphony, they may be played individually and thought of as separate works. As Ives dictates in his Memos:

There is no special musical connection among these four movements ... which leads me to observe that quite a number of larger forms (symphonies, sonatas, suites, etc.) may not always necessarily form, or were originally intended to form, such a complete organic whole that the breath of unity is smothered all out if one or two movements are played separately sometimes.

Holiday Symphony exemplifies Ives's varied, unique use of dissonance that gave his works a more dynamic range of emotion. "Each [movement] expresses its particular scene and feeling ... [using] the mingling of stylistic voices, the meta-style, that had become second nature to Ives. They all contain the shared pattern of splicing introverted slow music and extroverted fast music."

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