Ruggles, Angels

The American composer Carl Ruggles (1876-1971) had a very limited career before his meeting with Varèse around 1920. Varèse’s International Composer’s Guild provided platforms where new music could be performed and it was at one of these concerts that the premier of Angels took place (1922). Even with the opportunities provided by the guild, Ruggles only composed a handful of pieces and only eight of them were published. These publications came to the attention of Charles Ives and the two composers developed a mutual respect towards each other.

Despite his closeness with Varèse and Ives, Ruggles’s style of writing was distinctly different. His conception of music was quintessentially polyphonic; not in the sense of contrapuntal techniques like canons and fugues, but in the care he put in to ensure that each voice moves in a purposeful and melodic way, that the voices are not there for filling in the harmonies. This audio image of voices weaving around each other can be so mesmerising that one can forget about the harmonic aspect of the music, which is exactly what Ruggles achieved in Angels.

September 2012